The Kenneth Rainin Foundation envisions a world where every Oakland child has the literacy skills to communicate, learn and thrive. In 2025, our Education grantees navigated mounting challenges, working to sustain programs and budgets while also responding to evolving family needs and community safety concerns. Despite these strains, the early education community showed up with care, sharing resources and creating safe spaces that nurtured learning for vulnerable children, families and providers.

Together, with our dedicated and passionate grantees, we continued our focus on building strong readers. Everything we witnessed reinforced that literacy remains one of the most powerful and reliable pathways to opportunity. Each time a child connects with a book or expands their vocabulary, it reflects real growth for them and the adults who nurture their learning.

Informed by community insights and evaluation findings, we intentionally adapted our Education strategies to better impact literacy outcomes. Our updated strategies build on our strengths and existing opportunities to support equitable, community-rooted approaches to Structured Literacy. Our priorities are increasing proven literacy programs, improving teaching and learning practices, and strengthening family and community partnerships. We also sharpened our focus on culturally connected approaches like translanguaging, which encourage children to use all the languages and dialects they know. 

The year’s profound disruptions affirmed the importance of literacy as the key to unlocking academic success and future opportunity. We developed a multiyear policy and advocacy strategy focused on closing gaps and strengthening California’s foundation for literacy. We used the Foundation’s Response Fund to seize opportunities and invest in organizations leading this work across advocacy, implementation and evaluation. Grantees included EdVoice Institute, The Reading League, Evidence Advocacy Center, Public Policy Institute of California and the Eat. Learn. Play. Foundation.

Recent legislative wins in California offer momentum for improving reading outcomes, such as requirements for evidence based reading instruction and screening all K-2 students for reading difficulties, including dyslexia. EdVoice Institute, a key partner in advocating for these policies, is now focused on monitoring their implementation. Their report Universal Screening In Action documents the first year of adoption of screening tools and offers considerations for state leaders. Our grant supports EdVoice Institute to continue tracking both policies, which is a critical step to ensuring every child is reading effectively by third grade.

Our Early Care Spaces program funds community-driven solutions that integrate language and literacy development into programming for children from birth to five years old. Drawing on learnings from the first year, we prioritized upskilling and career advancement for informal caregivers—family, friend and neighbor caregivers—in Oakland’s flatlands. A panel of early childhood education leaders and grantees was recruited to review grant applications and make funding recommendations.

Our 2025 grantees offer diverse solutions to promote literacy in early care. BANANAS and Black Californians United for Early Care and Education will build informal caregivers’ capacity around early literacy practices. Center for Accessible Technology and LightHouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired will strengthen accessible literacy strategies for children who are blind, low vision or DeafBlind. Trybe Inc. will expand its play-based caregiver-involved initiative and Roots Community Health will transform health and neighborhood centers into literacy hubs. Dads Evoking Change, Brighter Beginnings, Museum of Children’s Art and Oakland Children’s Fairyland will offer creative, interactive storytelling for families.

Our newest funding program, Accelerating Literacy Leadership, recognizes schools as sites of change for literacy. Through the Oakland Public Education Fund, we partnered with six schools—Burckhalter Elementary, Carl Munck Elementary, Franklin Elementary, Hoover Elementary, Horace Mann Elementary and La Escuelita Elementary—to pilot it. Our aim was to improve student reading outcomes by strengthening conditions for educators, students and families to work together. The program included flexible funding, as well as expert coaching by Fair Schools.

Our Community Advisory Council of district, school and nonprofit leaders was integral to the design. Their insights deepened our understanding of the factors that influence student access to resources and opportunities for learning to read. Our shared learning from this process and our one-year pilot will shape the program’s broader launch in late 2026.

Investing in educators and community leaders is essential to sustaining their efforts and realizing our shared vision for Oakland children. They are intimately connected to the hardships facing children and families. By prioritizing their well-being and centering their wisdom, we strengthen the foundation for high‑quality supports for children.

The Teaching Well works to create healthy workplace cultures by focusing on educator mental health and wellness, which stabilizes schools and retention. East Bay Agency for Children’s Little Steps to College program offers early literacy and wraparound services for families in Oakland’s Fruitvale neighborhood.

This discretionary fund supports exceptional and emerging opportunities that will have an outsized impact and move us closer toward our vision of Bay Area artists thriving, all Oakland children reading at or above grade level and no one suffering from Inflammatory Bowel Disease. Learn more about the 2025 Response Fund Education grantees.