by Ty-Licia Hooker, Executive Director, The Children’s Education Project
Every night, I read to my 3-year-old daughter before bed. She loves when the books rhyme, when the characters look like her, and when I ask her questions about the story. She’s also just starting to recognize letters and sounds. These are a few early building blocks of literacy and I love seeing her little face light up with joy as I affirm her brilliance.
Someone asked me recently, what keeps me up at night. I took a second to respond, and thought back to my daughter’s and my nightly routine: I read and tuck in my baby, the light goes off and I can’t help but feel anxiety and anger for what happens next for my daughter and her peers as they get ready to enter the school system officially.
I don’t have to wonder. I know what happens to our babies when systems around them fail to give them the support they need to learn.
I’ve seen it firsthand. I used to teach kindergarten in Oakland Unified School District. Some of my students came to school as asylum seekers from places like Nepal, never having held a book. Others already knew their sight words. The gap was wide — and the resources to close it were scarce. Now, as the executive director of a nonprofit focused on children’s education, I see how hard we’re still working to fill holes that should’ve been sealed long ago.
Literacy in Oakland has been in crisis. I say this as a third generation OUSD student myself. Currently only about one in three students isreading at grade level — and the numbers are even more staggering for Black, Brown and low-income students.
Children who aren’t reading by third grade are four times more likely to drop out of high school. That’s not just a statistic — that’s a sentence that has been true for far too long. We’re also witnessing the school to prison pipeline reinventing itself and too many Oakland kids who don’t know how to write complete sentences are being handed ones.
Our schools and nonprofit partners are doing everything they can — running tutoring programs, after-school reading clubs, parent literacy nights and more — often on shoestring budgets from short-term and very small grants.
Now imagine what happens if federal funding is slashed even further.
Donald Trump’s platform includes steep proposed cuts to public education — including Title I funding that directly supports low-income schools and early literacy efforts. These cuts wouldn’t just reduce programming. They would erase entire ecosystems of support, leaving the most vulnerable children to fall even further behind.
When we cut education, we cut literacy. And when we cut literacy, we cut off options for our babies’ futures.
This isn’t just about numbers. It’s personal. It’s my daughter’s, her friends’ and her cousin’s future. It’s the legacy of every child I’ve ever taught. And it’s the fight I show up for every day through The Children’s Education Project.
Oakland’s children are brilliant. But brilliance alone won’t teach a child how to read. That takes time, training, resources and care — and right now, we’re losing ground.
We need action. Now.
We need local donors to step in where federal dollars may disappear. We need voters to elect leaders who treat education as essential — not expendable. We need our community to demand that literacy is a right, not a privilege.
Literacy is on the line — and if we stay silent, we risk losing not just funding, but the brilliance, voice and future of Oakland’s youth.
Ty-Licia Hooker can be reached at tylihooker@gmail.com.
