Opinion

THE HALFWAY POINT

Published

6 years ago

December 21, 2018

Trustee Mister Phillips

Mister Phillips

Thank you again for electing me to the West Contra Costa Unified School District (WCCUSD) Board of Educa¬tion in 2016.
I am now at the halfway point of my first term. Here are a few of my shared accomplishments:
Passed resolution recognizing Indigenous People’s Day;
Increased teacher pay by 15 percent to attract the best and brightest to our classrooms;
Banned discriminatory discipline to keep Black and Latino boys in school and out of jail;
Saved No Child Left Behind Act transfers to give families choice;
Saved the School Resource Officer program to keep students safe;
Stopped the takeover of San Pablo public schools by Rocketship Charter Schools;
Saved our second-highest performing high school, John Henry Charter, from closure; and
Hosted two career fairs to help students obtain high paying jobs with benefits in the building and construction trades after graduation.
Nevertheless, there is still much work to do.
87.5 percent of Black and Latino students in the WCCUSD are not proficient in mathematics. 77.5 percent are not proficient in English language arts. In my opinion, the school board should declare a state of emergency.
I have attempted to offer short and long-term solutions to our problems, including:
Reorganizing the WCCUSD internally: the current system simply does not work for the majority of students;
Adopting Let’s Go Learn (LGL): LGL is an internet-based reading and math assessment and supplemental instruction program that has shown promising results in communities like ours;
Converting Stege Elementary School into a dependent charter school owned and operated by the WCCUSD: Stege requires drastic change; a new structure could give the WCCUSD the flexibility it needs to make such a change;
Converting John F. Kennedy High School into two schools, a school of the arts and a trade/vocational/technical school: unfortunately, many students have checked out; if the WCCUSD wants to bring them back, it must offer alternative yet proven programming that will reignite their fire, like art, trade, vocational, and technical;
Using proven practices: lower performing schools should not be allowed to exper¬iment on students; they should be required to adopt proven practices from higher performing schools that fit their stu-dents’ respective needs;
Continuing efforts to recruit, hire, and retain quality teachers, administrators, and support staff: an organization is only as good as its people; and
Starting a massive volunteer drive: the WCCUSD does not have enough adults to work with its approximately 29,000 students.
Of course, the community should have an opportunity to weigh in on these proposals. However, I am reminded of the following quote from our late president, Franklin D. Roos¬evelt:
“One thing is sure. We have to do something. We have to do the best we know how at the moment… If it doesn’t turn out right, we can modify it as we go along.”
The WCCUSD must do something. Time will not heal all wounds. If we truly want to educate our students, we must take direct and deliberate action now. The future of 29,000 students depends on it.
Mister Phillips is an attorney and member of the West Contra Costa Unified School District Board of Education. He lives in Richmond with his wife Angela and four children.

Trustee Mister Phillips

Posts by Trustee Mister Phillips

Arts and Culture

BOOK REVIEW: Love, Rita: An American Story of Sisterhood, Joy, Loss, and Legacy

When Bridgett M. Davis was in college, her sister Rita was diagnosed with lupus, a disease of the immune system that often left her constantly tired and sore. Davis was a bit unfazed, but sympathetic to Rita’s suffering and also annoyed that the disease sometimes came between them. By that time, they needed one another more than ever.

Published

3 days ago

April 28, 2025

Oakland Post

Love Rita Book Cover. Courtesy of Harper.

By Terri Schlichenmeyer

Author: Bridgett M. Davis, c.2025, Harper, $29.99, 367 Pages

Take care.

Do it because you want to stay well, upright, and away from illness. Eat right, swallow your vitamins and hydrate, keep good habits and hygiene, and cross your fingers. Take care as much as you can because, as in the new book, “Love, Rita” by Bridgett M. Davis, your well-being is sometimes out of your hands.

It was a family story told often: when Davis was born, her sister, Rita, then four years old, stormed up to her crying newborn sibling and said, ‘Shut your … mouth!’

Rita, says Davis, didn’t want a little sister then. She already had two big sisters and a neighbor who was somewhat of a “sister,” and this baby was an irritation. As Davis grew, the feeling was mutual, although she always knew that Rita loved her.

Over the years, the sisters tried many times not to fight — on their own and at the urging of their mother — and though division was ever present, it eased when Rita went to college. Davis was still in high school then, and she admired her big sister.

She eagerly devoured frequent letters sent to her in the mail, signed, “Love, Rita.”

When Davis was in college herself, Rita was diagnosed with lupus, a disease of the immune system that often left her constantly tired and sore. Davis was a bit unfazed, but sympathetic to Rita’s suffering and also annoyed that the disease sometimes came between them. By that time, they needed one another more than ever.

First, they lost their father. Drugs then invaded the family and addiction stole two siblings. A sister and a young nephew were murdered in a domestic violence incident. Their mother was devastated; Rita’s lupus was an “added weight of her sorrow.”

After their mother died of colon cancer, Rita’s lupus took a turn for the worse.

“Did she even stand a chance?” Davis wrote in her journal.

“It just didn’t seem possible that she, someone so full of life, could die.”

Let’s start here: once you get past the prologue in “Love, Rita,” you may lose interest. Maybe.

Most of the stories that author Bridgett M. Davis shares are mildly interesting, nothing rare, mostly commonplace tales of growing up in the 1960s and ’70s with a sibling. There are a lot of these kinds of stories, and they tend to generally melt together. After about fifty pages of them, you might start to think about putting the book aside.

But don’t. Not quite yet.

In between those everyday tales, Davis occasionally writes about being an ailing Black woman in America, the incorrect assumptions made by doctors, the history of medical treatment for Black people (women in particular), attitudes, and mythologies. Those passages are now and then, interspersed, but worth scanning for.

This book is perhaps best for anyone with the patience for a slow-paced memoir, or anyone who loves a Black woman who’s ill or might be ill someday. If that’s you and you can read between the lines, then “Love, Rita” is a book to take in carefully.

Oakland Post

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Activism

Faces Around the Bay: Author Karen Lewis Took the ‘Detour to Straight Street’

“My life has been a roller-coaster with an unlimited ride wristband! I was raised in Berkeley during the time of Ron Dellums, the Black Panthers, and People’s Park. I was a Hippie kid, my Auntie cut off all our hair so we could wear the natural styles like her and Angela Davis.

Published

3 days ago

April 28, 2025

Oakland Post

Karen Lewis. Courtesy photo.

By Barbara Fluhrer

I met Karen Lewis on a park bench in Berkeley. She wrote her story on the spot.

I got married young, then ended up getting divorced, raising two boys into men. After my divorce, I had a stroke that left me blind and paralyzed. I was homeless, lost in a fog with blurred vision.

Jesus healed me! I now have two beautiful grandkids. At 61, this age and this stage, I am finally free indeed. Our Lord Jesus Christ saved my soul. I now know how to be still. I lay at his feet. I surrender and just rest. My life and every step on my path have already been ordered. So, I have learned in this life…it’s nice to be nice. No stressing, just blessings. Pray for the best and deal with the rest.

Nobody is perfect, so forgive quickly and love easily!”

Lewis’ book “Detour to Straight Street” is available on Amazon.