Beloved District Employee, Credited with Helping Get Homeless Kids into School Retires

Announcement submitted by Alameda Unified School District:

This week Alameda Unified says “farewell” to a very beloved employee, Vickie Smith, who is retiring after 14 years with the school district.

For more than ten years, Smith has implemented the McKinney-Vento Homeless Act in AUSD, which helps homeless students get enrolled in public schools. She has brought tremendous compassion, skill, and dedication to her work and has helped hundreds of homeless students get not only the education to which they have a right, but the services and supplies their families need to get back on their feet. Those services and supplies have included backpacks and materials for school, clothing, transportation, food, counseling, and health care.

“I grew up in the projects in Alameda,” Smith told AUSD in 2013. “I was one of six kids and we were poor. We didn’t have a lot. So I understand what it is to come from hardship. In this economy, you can be on your feet one minute and then just one thing can take you down. Homelessness is not a choice; it happens for a variety of reasons, including domestic violence, a job layoff, an eviction, and budget cuts. The important thing to remember is that all people want to be treated like everyone else. They don’t want to be labeled.” (You can see the 2013 community bulletin in which Smith was quoted here.)

“Vickie’s work with our most vulnerable students has been truly awe inspiring,” says Superintendent Sean McPhetridge. “I have learned so much from her about viewing and treating homeless students in our district with care, respect, and dignity. She has always treated everyone, including myself, with such loving kindness.”

“Deep soul searching” on issues of race, equity

Prior to her work with the McKinney-Vento program, Smith helped found the Coalition of Alamedans for Racial Equality (C.A.R.E.) and then the Multicultural Student Relations Program at all three high schools in Alameda, as well as at Chipman Middle School. For years, that program helped teens meet and better understand their peers from other cultural and ethnic backgrounds.

“The curriculum included trainings on sensitivity and building allies,” Smith says. “It involved deep soul searching and some pretty heavy stuff. The goal was to make students aware and to empower them.” Smith also was instrumental in establishing the Alameda Multicultural Community Center.

Smith was also involved in the powerful Team Diversity project at AUSD during the 1990s, through which administrators interviewed students from across the district about social problems they were experiencing and witnessing.

“We learned shocking, shocking things about race relations in the schools,” Smith says. “I think all of us learned a lot from that.”

“It’s the right thing to do”

Long before Smith became an AUSD employee, however, she was a vocal advocate of diversity and equity issues in Alameda. As a teenager at Encinal High School, she was one of the co-founders of the first Black Student Union and the first Ethnic Study classes, as well as one of the first African-American cheerleaders. She went on to do remarkable work around issues of diversity and equity for the community, including helping to found Renewed H.O.P.E. (Housing Opportunities Provided Equally), which eventually resulted in more affordable housing on the West End.

Smith says she hasn’t made definite plans for her retirement, but she’s mostly looking forward to being able to rest.

“Civil rights work is tiring,” she says with a gentle smile. “It’s the right thing to do, and I met a lot of good people along the way, but it’s tiring.”

“It takes a while to learn what your life’s journey is about,” she adds. “But something will lead you to the right place and then everything falls into place. In my life, I always came back to the youth. That was the journey I was led to.”

We are incredibly grateful for the work Vickie has done for our students, families, and community. We will miss her! And we wish her the very best in this next stage of her life journey.

Photo via Shutterstock