This excerpt from a speech that Ericka Huggins gave at the Chicago Alternative Schools Conference provides a history of the Oakland Community School, describes the students OCS served, gives an overview of the services the school provided, and outlines the pedagogy practiced at OCS. Huggins says that the Intercommunal Youth Institute started as a supplementary after school program after children of Panthers received harassment in school. It grew rapidly and gained community support. In 1973, they formed the Educational Opportunities Corporation nonprofit and moved to a large church.
Huggins says that OCS worked with students traditionally labeled “uneducable” “educationally disadvantaged” “economically deprived” who would otherwise be in public schools; the students at Oakland Community School were primarily Black, but also included some Latinx, Native American, Asian and white students. Moreover, OCS strove to remove obstacles to learning by providing three meals a day, free medical care, parent-student counseling, full curriculum, and most importantly, lots of love and individual attention. Classes had no more than 20 students, and there is a 10:1 student to teacher ratio. Furthermore, Huggins asserts that at OCS, they taught students how to think, not what to think.
Huggins’ attendance at the Alternative Schools Conference, and her participation by way of giving two speeches, helps illustrate one of the ways that the Oakland Community School drew from and contributed to other organizations. In her oral history, Huggins notes that the Alternative Schools community was very influential in the development and growth of Oakland Community School. This collaboration is one example of how OCS was not an insular, isolated school, but rather an interconnected project that has had ripple effects in the world of education and in Oakland today.
