For Gov. Gavin Newsom and anyone else promoting college savings accounts for low-income children, Oral Lee Brown has some advice:

“It’s not about the money.”

Brown, an Oakland real estate agent now in her 70s, has been promoting the same idea since 1987, when she “adopted” a class of first graders from Brookfield Elementary School in East Oakland, promising to pay their college costs if they stayed in school.

Of that original class of 23, one went to work, two died of gunshot wounds, one went to culinary school and 19 went to college — a college-going rate that rivals the highest-achieving districts in California. At the time, Brown’s students vastly outperformed their peers. In the 1990s Oakland Unified had some of the lowest test scores and highest dropout rates in California.

Since then, Brown has ushered more than 120 low-income Black and Latino students through school, with 80-90% graduating from college debt-free. And as philanthropies, cities and states — including California, with its forthcoming CalKids program — rush to create similar programs, Brown is eager to share her reflections.

Namely, that money alone does not guarantee a child’s success in school, especially if that child faces a gauntlet of other obstacles related to poverty and generational trauma.

“To me, the money is the least of it,” Brown said during a recent interview at her 99th Avenue office, where she’s run her real estate business for 42 years. “Kids need guidance, support, someone to talk to. … That’s why my kids succeed. They never say, ‘Ms. Brown, thanks for the money.’ They say thanks for the love and support.”

Brown didn’t realize that in 1987, however. Initially, Brown thought she was making a straightforward financial commitment, a promise to put $10,000 a year into a bank account for future tuition payments.

But as she got to know the children, and they started asking her for things like food and shoes and occasionally a bed to sleep on, she realized the need was far greater and far more complicated.

Her college tuition promise turned into a 24-hour-a-day vocation, which she embraced even as she raised her own two daughters and ran her business.

She hired tutors to keep her students on track academically, took them to ride the cable cars in San Francisco and see the Monterey Bay Aquarium, flew them across the country to tour colleges, drove them to and from school when they needed rides, bought them Christmas presents and answered her phone at all hours if they just needed to talk.

Her former students, who call her “Mama Brown,” say her commitment to them was nothing short of life-saving.

“Honestly, if it wasn’t for Mama Brown, I’d be behind bars or under dirt,” said Jeffery Toney, 40, an Oakland writer and musician who was among Brown’s first class of first graders. “Mama Brown is my real-life angel.”

. . .

Poised and sharply dressed, Brown seems like a typical busy, successful real estate agent. Her office, on a corner of Oakland known as Deep East, is immaculate and orderly, with walls covered in framed awards and photos.

Among them are honorary degrees, photos of Brown and her students with celebrities, news clippings about Brown’s work, including a 2002 Woman of the Year spread in Glamour magazine and dozens of graduation photos.

But the poverty and hardship are never far from her mind. A native of Batesville, Mississippi, Brown grew up on a cotton farm, one of 12 children sharing a two-bedroom house with no electricity or running water. She walked 3 miles each way to school. When she wasn’t studying, she picked cotton and corn and tended to the family’s hogs.

Jim Crow segregation laws were in full effect, impacting nearly all aspects of life for Black people. Brown remembers walking down the sidewalk with her mother and having to step into the street to let a white person pass. One day, when Brown hesitated, her mother said, “We need to get you out of here or you’ll get us all killed.”

Even at a young age, Brown was eager to get out.

“I can remember standing in a cotton field saying, ‘God, get me out of Mississippi. I will do whatever you want me to do. Just get me out,’” Brown recalled.

When she was a teenager, her parents sent her to live with an older sister in Newburgh, New York, where she graduated from high school. From there, she visited a brother who had moved to Oakland, and she never left.

She got married, went to community college and eventually earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of San Francisco while raising her two daughters.

One day in 1987, she was walking to the corner store on 94th Avenue to buy a Pepsi and a bag of peanuts, like she did every day, and a girl asked her for money. Brown said she’d buy her a treat, but the girl picked out a loaf of bread, cheese and bologna.

“We walked out, and I said, ‘Where is your mother?’ She said, ‘I don’t know.’ I said, ‘Do you go to school?’ She said, ‘Sometimes.’ And she almost, like, froze. So I didn’t say another word to her. We crossed the street. She made a right and went down 94th Avenue, and I went back to my office,” Brown said. “But I kept thinking about her.”

A few days later Brown tried to find her at the local elementary school. After meeting the principal, Brown visited a few classrooms but never found the girl. But she was struck by the scale of the need. All the children seemed just as impoverished as the girl she met outside the corner store.

Somewhat spontaneously, she promised to pay for the college education of every student in a class of first graders that the principal said was the most disadvantaged. She agreed to put aside $10,000 a year — a quarter of her income— for the purpose.

And then, after that class graduated, she adopted another group of students. She’s now on her third cohort. A nonprofit, the Oral Lee Brown Foundation, now handles the fundraising and day-to-day operations, while Brown keeps up with her students and alumni. She never misses a college graduation.

“The one thing I felt I could give these kids, that would last them a lifetime, was an education,” she said. “Money doesn’t always last, but no one can take an education away from you. With an education, you can make decisions. You can get a good job. You can have a voice.”

LaQueta White, 38, was among the first crop of Brown’s students in 1987. At the time, White was living with her four sisters and her mother in East Oakland, and money was almost nonexistent.

White was a good student and wanted to go to college, but without Brown’s help and encouragement it probably would have been impossible, she said. Her friends who had to borrow money and work throughout their college years struggled, and some never graduated or were saddled with debt. With Brown paying her college bills, White was spared those hardships.

“Without her, life would have been a lot more difficult for me,” White said. “My whole family is so appreciative of everything she did for me. All of us, we love and adore her.”

White graduated from San Jose State University and now works as a supervisor in a maternal and fetal medicine department for Kaiser Permanente.

She has a 9-month-old son, and still considers Brown a role model.

Like White, Daishar Young, 31, was also a motivated student, but college seemed far-fetched. His mother died of complications related to asthma when Young was 13, and he moved in with a godmother in North Richmond.

Every day for five years, he took the train and bus for 1½ hours each way to school and see Brown in Oakland.

“Ms. Brown was like another parent for me,” Young said. “She gave us a lot more than money. It was her energy, her love, that got me through. … When you have your head down, she gives you a reason to lift your head up.”

Young went on to earn a bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Berkeley, and a master’s in education from the University of Michigan. He’s now building a business promoting bicycle transportation.

Cherrish Cook, 19, a sophomore at Sacramento State, joined Brown’s program when she was in middle school, after Brown expanded eligibility to second through seventh graders.

Although Cook always wanted to go to college, Brown’s encouragement and support helped her stay focused and keep her grades up.

But more important than academic guidance was Brown’s influence as a role model, Cook said. One day Brown was describing her childhood in Mississippi to some students and broke down in tears.

“It was like she was saying, here are my tears. Crying is a way of releasing,” Cook said. “I thought, wow, I am in the presence of a Black woman who’s strong and independent and not afraid to be vulnerable. For me, that meant a lot.”

Cook hopes to someday go to law school and give back to her community in East Oakland as Brown has.

“She gave me a sense of direction. She made me believe I can accomplish anything with my life,” Cook said. “I cherish her. She is a light for me.”

Nekita Noel-Ikulala, 40, can pinpoint the exact moment Brown changed her life trajectory. Noel-Ikulala, who grew up in public housing in East Oakland, felt like she had conquered the world when she headed off to Chico State University as a freshman — but within two hours of arriving on campus, she was desperate to come home.

As one of only a few hundred Black students at the school, Brown felt the lack of diversity and cultural differences were too difficult to navigate, she said.

“It was absolutely the wrong school for me. I was ready to give up,” Noel-Ikulala said. “I wanted my mom to come get me. I called Mama Brown and she said, ‘You can do this. You got this.’ And she told my mom to leave me there.”

Without that push, Noel-Ikulala is certain she would have left Chico and probably abandoned her college plans. Instead, she stayed for two years and then transferred to Sacramento State, where she earned a bachelor’s degree.

Since then, she’s earned two master’s degrees and now works as a social worker in Sacramento.

“Ms. Brown kept me on track,” she said. “She was literally always there for me when I needed her.”

Jeffery Toney’s story is a little different from Brown’s other students. He was not particularly motivated to go to college, he said. Although he had decent grades, he spent much of his adolescence selling drugs and committing other crimes — what he felt he needed to do to survive. Homeless as a teenager, he needed money for food, clothing, bus fare, school supplies. College was not on his radar.

But Brown pushed him hard toward college. She took him to Atlanta to visit Morehouse, a top historically Black college, and other elite East Coast schools.

At her urging, he applied and was accepted to Columbia College in Chicago. He graduated with a degree in business management and then earned a certificate in music business through UCLA Extension. A writer and musician, he now runs a recording studio and clothing line in Oakland and has a 5-year-old daughter.

“The lifestyle I was living, I was going to end up dead or in jail,” he said. “But she snatched me up. She never lost faith in me. And I embraced that, 100 percent.”

. . .

Brown hopes to retire from real estate next year, but she has no plans to give up her work with young people. She still answers her phone day and night, offering advice and encouragement and just listening.

Sometimes, students call her who aren’t even in her program. One day a girl in Texas called, asking for Brown’s support for college. Brown demurred, explaining that she had to set some limits. After all, the foundation’s resources are not infinite.

But then Brown changed her mind.

“When a child knocks on your door, and they have good grades, and they want to go to college, who am I to say no?” she said. “Who am I to say no to a child who wants an education? To me, it’s a no-brainer.”

How ‘Mama Brown’ changed students’ lives by paying for college and so much more: ‘It’s not about the money’

On June 23, EdSource’s John Fensterwald gave a presentation on California’s school finance system to several hundred high school students. The event was the final day of the second Summer Academy, organized by the California education nonprofit Ed100, for students interested affecting education policies.

Addressed to the class of 2020-21, “The Ginny Chronicles” is a 15-minute short course on two decades of events and federal and state education policies that have shaped their years in school. It follows Ginny the guinea pig from kindergarten through high school as she experiences the consequences of two recessions, a pandemic and policies like the No Child Left Behind Act.

Note: The final dollars for education in the state budget, which was passed three weeks after Fensterwald’s presentation to the Ed100 academy, differ slightly from the slide in the video. For details on the 2021-22 budget, go here.

This video was co-produced by EdSource artist Sunny Xie and digital communications manager Andrew Reed.

Guinea pigs of change: Class of ’21 endured recessions, a pandemic and big shifts in education | VIDEO

In a perfect night of taffeta and glitter, the most perfect thing of all was Lauren Toon’s sky-blue prom dress.

Lauren’s mother helped her pick the sleek satin gown a year ago – blue to match Lauren’s eyes. Lauren planned to wear the dress at her high school prom last year when she was a junior, but school officials canceled the event at the last minute due to the pandemic.

And then in September, Lauren’s mother died of Covid-19.

Last weekend, Lauren finally got to wear the dress. The occasion: the senior formal at Merrill F. West High School in Tracy, southwest of Stockton in San Joaquin County.

“I wanted to celebrate for my mom,” Lauren said during a break in the festivities. “It’s very emotional. I haven’t cried yet, but a lot of other people have.”

Lauren wasn’t the only one feeling emotional at the event, held in the school’s central quad. West High’s outdoor, socially distanced “non-prom” was one of the few sanctioned, in-person celebrations for the Class of 2021 in California.

After more than a year of distance learning and hardship related to the pandemic, more than 120 seniors gathered in tuxedos and long gowns to celebrate the end of a year like no other.

Dancing was not allowed, but the event had everything else: a catered dinner, a DJ, games, photos, miniature golf, a caricature artist, balloons and streamers — all festooned with “Alice in Wonderland” decorations.

The student leadership committee planned the entire event, raising money, collecting donations and handcrafting nearly 1,000 Cheshire cats, Mad Hatters and White Rabbits.

For some students, the night was bittersweet. The celebration made them acutely aware of how much they had lost.

“I’m definitely really excited. And I’m so proud of our class. We’ve worked for weeks on this. It’s been such a long year, I feel relieved we made it,” said Marc Masana, a senior. “But I’m also kind of sad — with everything that’s happened, it feels like our senior year is incomplete.”

Like schools throughout the state, West High closed its campus in March 2020, and students learned remotely for more than a year. In April the school re-opened for hybrid learning, although some students opted to stay remote.

With a diverse, predominantly low-income student body, West High was hit hard by Covid. Many parents lost jobs or toiled long hours on the front lines, either as health care workers or providing other essential services.

Some students looked after younger siblings while their parents worked. Others got jobs to support their families while keeping up with remote learning. Many said they suffered sadness or depression while isolated from their friends and feeling disconnected from school.

And some contracted Covid or had family members or teachers who did. Lauren Toon’s mother, Christine Toon, was a popular special education teacher and volleyball coach at West High before she died. Another teacher-coach, Armando Tailes, got infected twice, spending five days in the hospital the second time and nearly dying.

Zachary Boswell, the West High principal, said the hardships and tragedies ultimately brought the school community closer. Younger teachers helped older teachers with distance learning technology, and everyone pitched in to solve problems. In the fall, the school held a gathering at the school for Lauren’s mom.

“We learned how to help each other in hard times,” Boswell said. “We learned a lot about collaboration, how to support each other. We’ve always been a relationship-based school, and that’s what really helped us get through this past year.”

Scott Benham, an English teacher and activities director, described the pandemic as “gut-wrenching and heartbreaking” for many students. Not only did they miss seeing their teachers and friends, but they also lost activities like sports, clubs, drama, pep rallies and dances — the heartbeat of any high school.

That’s why the senior formal was so important, he said. It was a chance to experience school spirit, if only for one night.

“The pandemic was brutal for so many kids. So, for our seniors, we knew this event was critical,” he said. “If we didn’t do anything, we’d be cheating them out of the high school experience.”

Students had jumbled emotions — mostly ecstatic but a little sad, too. In either case, they said they wouldn’t miss the event for anything.

West High senior Keona Siufana has a close-knit family and, as an introvert, said she was comfortable being home during the pandemic. But after months of distance learning, even she experienced a degree of loneliness, she said.

And she worried about her parents working during the pandemic, her father at FedEx and her mother in retail. Helping plan the senior formal was a welcome relief from a year of uncertainty, she said.

“I am super excited about the event and so thankful we’re able to do it,” she said. “But I guess I have mixed emotions because it means we’re all going to leave and become adults.”

For Izaiah Quiruz, a junior who served on the event planning committee, there was nothing bittersweet about the event. It was a hundred percent joy.

“I love being back at school,” he said. “I had some real low points this year. School is my second home, so tonight means a lot. It’s a step towards normalcy. To be out, see friends, have a meal, have human interaction … it’s just so nice.”

Tianna Staveris, a junior, felt the same way: The senior formal represented “pure happiness.”

Over the past year, several of Tianna’s family members contracted Covid, including her mother, who became seriously ill. Her father, a flooring contractor, was also out of work for a while. Quarantining at home was hard on the entire family, she said.

“It was especially hard when my mom was sick,” she said. “We’re really close, but I couldn’t be with her. I had to stay back. I hated it. … To be able to see everyone tonight is just amazing. I’m so excited to finally see some smiles.”

Raevyn Kaigler, ordinarily a straight-A student, was so sad being away from in-person school that her grades dropped this year, she said.

“I’m a social person, and for me, it was really difficult to be isolated from my friends,” she said. “But I learned I can handle more than I thought I could. I found some hobbies, and figured out distance learning and got my grades back up. … I think I learned a lot about myself this year.”

Seniors Gianna Uribe and Stella Hunt, heads of the planning committee, said their friendship got them through the year of distance learning, especially when Stella and her father both contracted Covid. After Stella recovered, she and Gianna would drive to the canal — an agricultural aqueduct that runs through Tracy — and watch the sunset and muse on the state of the world.

“It felt like we were living through history,” Stella said.

That sense of momentousness was, for them, the main reason to plan a senior formal, they said.

“We felt we needed to give people something to look forward to,” Gianna said.

Stella added, “If you’re in high school, the prom is a big deal. It’s the biggest night of your life. We felt we really had to make this happen.”

After a night of socializing and celebrating, West High’s Class of 2021 will soon part ways. Keona plans to spend next year on a church mission. Raevyn is working at Jamba Juice this summer, then heads to Cal State Fullerton to study kinesiology. After a summer working at Ace Hardware, Marc plans to study economics at Cal State Long Beach. Stella and Gianna don’t have concrete plans yet but will probably stay in Tracy and go to community college.

After her mother died, Lauren Toon decided to graduate early from high school — in December — and pursue a passion she and her mom shared: sports. In January, Lauren enrolled at William Jessup University near Sacramento, where she’s on the volleyball team.

But when school officials invited her back to Tracy for the formal, she didn’t hesitate. The chance to return to the campus where her mother taught, wearing the dress her mother chose, was a chance to pay tribute to her mom, she said. Lauren even wore her mother’s pearls to the event.

“I wanted to be here with my class,” she said. “I think that would have made my mom happy.”

After a rough year, senior formal this spring was both joyous, bittersweet