Photo from Oak Town Life: http://oaktownlife.com/
The City of Oakland has the unique honor of having as residents, a number of the nation’s foremost policy institutes that are experts in the fields of education, transportation, workforce, healthcare, crime, and economic development. The US Departments of Labor, Energy, Justice, Education, and Health and Human Services contracts millions of dollars to these institutes to assist them develop, evaluate, and implement public policy across the nation. Yet despite the fact that they are experts on many of the critical issues impacting the City of Oakland, these institutes have no known history of working together to address City concerns.
What is proposed here is an Oakland Public Policy Day: A day-long conference where Oakland leaders, policy experts, and community could come together to discuss and share knowledge on major policy issues affecting Oakland. The conference will be informal with the goal of building bridges and identifying avenues on how the City and these institutes could work together. Below are just some of Oakland's nationally recognized policy institutions.
- Mathematica
- MDRC
- PolicyLink
- WestEd
- SPRA
- Insight Center
- Prevention Institute
- Transform
- Urban Strategies Council
- Urban Habitat
- Data Center
The proposal of an Oakland Policy Day is still just an idea. We are looking to build support around it as well as put together a committee of individuals with the time and desire to seeing such an event take place. Please let us know if this is something you would support, and how you might be able to contribute. This especially goes for individuals who work at one of these institutes. Also, we are definitely open to ideas and suggestions. Please email Dennis Rojas at [email protected].
Dennis Rojas
Eastbay Job Developers
