When Benjamin Salop takes a look at the Oakland public education landscape, the biggest overarching issue he sees is the lack of student and family engagement. He sees a disconnect between the system and the people it is supposed to serve, and the result has been dysfunction and students who are negatively impacted.
His view comes from his years as an Oakland public school student, and he believes the perspective of a recent OUSD graduate is what’s missing from the Oakland school board.
Ben is running for the District 1 Oakland school board position as a 20-year-old who graduated from Oakland Tech in 2022 because he believes that students and families deserve a seat at the decision-making table.
“On the board, I can share my personal experience,” said Ben, who is studying civil engineering and intellectual history at UC Berkeley. “More importantly, I can speak to other students and ask them what they need, and represent Oakland youth on the board.”
Ben was a politically-active student, the student body president of Oakland Tech and the co-chair of the Oakland Youth Commission. He participated in the Tech school site council and the district’s LCAP committee. In Ben’s view, there are a lot of issues plaguing Oakland education that have common-sense solutions.
“It was shocking to me that these universally popular, high return-of-investment initiatives were not being provided for,” Ben said. “Things like getting tablets for special education students or allocating funds toward Restorative Justice.”
Ben also sees a strong link between student engagement and student success. “It’s important that students feel like they are an active participant in their education,” Ben said. “It’s imperative Oakland youth are engaged because if they feel that their voice matters they will treat their education with more respect and focus.”
Each of these issues comes from his personal experience as a student. As a current college student, he does not feel like he was adequately prepared for college. Though he graduated near the top of his class at Tech, Ben said he was “floundering” in classes he was supposed to be prepared for.
“I can speak to the fact that our math courses need to be more relevant to what’s offered at universities, or how high schools should be more closely interconnected with community college courses,” he said. “We need a system for understanding college readiness starting not in high school but way before that. Middle school algebra is critical for college success, so it’s critical for us to have algebra in all of our middle schools.”
During his time with the Oakland Youth Commission, Ben worked on the Oakland youth vote measure that was recently approved by the Oakland City Council. (The ballot measure passed by 67 percent of Oakland voters in 2020, authorizing 16- and 17-year-olds to vote in Oakland school board elections.)
Ben said that “youth suffrage” and giving young people the right to vote had been an issue he was passionate about, and the experience of working on the campaign closely with other organizations was powerful. While getting students voting was the goal, Ben said there are other benefits for students as well.
“You are going to have all these students registering to vote for the first time and learning that government is a tool that they have in their own arsenal,” Ben said. “That was never really offered before.”
Ben said he got the idea to run for school board while he was volunteering for Loren Taylor’s 2020 campaign for Oakland mayor. Ben said he felt valued by the campaign and Taylor himself, and was inspired to run for office as a public-service endeavor.
“Working in the field with a lot of great people who were doing this because they cared about Oakland and it was something they believed in was a road map for me to think about how I could serve,” Ben said.
Though he would be decades younger than the other elected school board members, Ben said he has years of experience others don’t have, from his time as a student and serving on OUSD and Oakland boards and councils.
“Most people running for school board don’t have seven years of working with OUSD, and most people weren’t the chair of a district committee or have worked directly with a school board member,” Ben said. “That’s experience.”
He said his parents were pretty surprised when he told them he wanted to run for the school board. But after talking with him about his platform and what he wants to accomplish for students and families, they got onboard. “Now I have two top tier parent advisors on my campaign who have OUSD experience,” he said.
“I also want to be an advocate for parents and teachers, not just students,” Ben said. “And that comes from the experience of parents like my own who have shepherded kids through Oakland schools and see a lot of opportunities for growth.”
