![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Caringal_032625_BUSDOratorical_26.jpg\")
Students from Thousand Oaks Elementary School performed at the Berkeley Unified School District\u2019s 7th Annual Black History Oratorical Fest on March 26, 2025. Credit: Myron Caringal\/Berkeleyside <\/p>\nStudents from Thousand Oaks Elementary School performed at the Berkeley Unified School District\u2019s 7th Annual Black History Oratorical Fest on March 26, 2025. Credit: Myron Caringal\/Berkeleyside <\/p>\n
Every year since 2018, Berkeley elementary, middle and high school students have honed their public speaking skills by performing on stage in a tournament-style competition celebrating Black history.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But this year, there will be no district-wide Black History Oratorical Fest, no grand finale, with the Berkeley Unified School District citing staffing concerns as a reason for canceling the festival.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Individual school sites will continue to host their Black history oratorical events.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile the districtwide finale was meaningful, it ultimately elevated a small number of students,\u201d Superintendent Enikia Ford Morthel wrote in an email shared with Berkeleyside, estimating that 37 students participated in the culminating Black History Oratorical Fest last year.\u00a0<\/p>\n
While a grant from the Berkeley Public Schools fund was awarded for this year\u2019s festival, Ford Morthel wrote in the email that hosting the event would have required \u201csignificant cross-departmental staff capacity.\u201d<\/p>\n
In previous years, the oratorical festival was structured as a tournament\u2011style event, where students in grades 3 to 12 performed published and original speeches and poems tied to a yearly theme. Top performers from each school advanced to the district-wide final to compete for prizes.<\/p>\n
Some Berkeley teachers and parents said they were disappointed that a visible celebration of Black culture was ending in the city as diversity efforts and programs are being scaled back across the country under the Trump administration.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Amanda Cardno, a special education teacher at BTA, said there aren\u2019t many opportunities for the district to come together, especially in celebration of Black joy. She said having each school host their own oratorical event this year felt like \u201cit missed that note.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s sad to feel like we\u2019re losing all things that are Black excellence, and we\u2019re really fighting for those spaces, so it can be frustrating,\u201d she told Berkeleyside. \u201cIt constantly reminds us that we have to do it on our own.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some educators attributed the event\u2019s staffing shortage to budget cuts last year that affected the Office of Family Engagement and Equity<\/a> (OFEE), which helped organize the oratorical festival. There are eight staff (plus a supervisor and assistant) listed on the website, down from 12 specialists<\/a> last March when layoff notices were issued for each position in 2025.\u00a0<\/p>\n BUSD did not respond to questions about whether cuts to OFEE were related to the event\u2019s cancellation.\u00a0<\/p>\n Ford Morthel announced the \u201csite-led oratorical model\u201d during last week\u2019s school board meeting. In an email to Berkeleyside last week, BUSD said schools will host classroom showcases, characterizing the showcases as a \u201cdistrict\u2011supported\u201d pilot program and an opportunity to \u201cexpand participation across campuses.\u201d<\/p>\n But Berkeley Technology Academy (BTA) teacher Caety Klingman, who spoke during public comment about the oratorical fest last week, said it\u2019s inaccurate to describe what BUSD plans for this year as a pilot program.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe already had the site-based model,\u201d she told Berkeleyside. \u201cIt\u2019s not like this is a new thing. As far as I can tell, all they\u2019ve done is take away the district-wide festival.\u201d She said teachers were emailing district leaders since December to ask for more information, including the year\u2019s theme and classroom materials.\u00a0<\/p>\n Ford Morthel told Klingman that district funding is available for site-based competitions. BUSD will collect community feedback as they plan for next year. Kamar O\u2019Guinn, the event organizer and manager of the African American Success Framework, declined to comment.<\/p>\n Cardno\u2019s daughter, a fifth grader at Emerson Elementary, said she was excited to compete and see if she could make it to the district finals during her last year of elementary school.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI felt a little sad because it\u2019s really fun to talk about Black history and it feels like such a big deal to go to the district,\u201d she said. \u201cOnce I found out that there was no district oratorical fest \u2026 I felt like I had nothing to really look forward to.\u201d<\/p>\n Emerson is planning to host its oratorical festival in April.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cAn oratorical fest is still a great opportunity, it\u2019s still going to be fun. It just might feel a little different,\u201d she added.\u00a0<\/p>\n Berkeley\u2019s Black History Oratorical Fest exposed kids to cultures and public speaking<\/p>\n Oratorical festivals have a long history in the East Bay, celebrating and uplifting Black art, culture and community. One of the original events, Oakland\u2019s MLK Jr. Oratorical Fest, was founded in 1978. Since then, thousands of students have participated in the program, which has launched similar events in nearby school districts and served as a launching pad for young people into the performing arts.<\/p>\n At last year\u2019s oratorical festival, Berkeley children as young as 7 and college-bound high school seniors came together on the Oxford Auditorium stage to pay tribute to Black leaders and culture<\/a> under the theme \u201cNew Negro Movement,\u201d commonly known as the Harlem Renaissance. Klingman said students benefited from the public speaking opportunity, with some writing about the experience in college essays and others giving speeches at graduation.<\/p>\n The superintendent said, in addition to site-based oratorical festivals, BUSD has planned other events to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Black History Month<\/a>, including assemblies, guest speakers, and film screenings. The district website<\/a> also has grade-level reading lists, family guides, and teaching resources.<\/p>\n On Saturday, Rosa Parks Elementary School hosted Black Legacy Month, a community-wide celebration with music, art and food.\u00a0<\/p>\n Earlier this month, BUSD hosted a screening<\/a> of the documentary \u201cThe Epicenter: The Struggle to Bring Black Studies to Higher Education in the Bay Area,\u201d a new film by a Berkeley High alumnus Doug Harris. BUSD was the first school district in the country to offer African American studies in high school<\/a>.<\/p>\n Malcolm X Elementary recently hosted School Yard Rap, a live educational performance group that \u201cuses hip hop to teach Black history and highlight Black excellence in science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics.\u201d<\/p>\n “*” indicates required fields<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Students from Thousand Oaks Elementary School performed at the Berkeley Unified School District\u2019s 7th Annual Black History Oratorical…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":202306,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[93883,6765,68879,2465,2466,143,145,144],"class_list":["post-202305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-berkeley-public-schools-fund","tag-berkeley-unified-school-district","tag-black-history-month","tag-home-highlight","tag-home-lead","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202305","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=202305"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202305\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/202306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=202305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=202305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=202305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Caringal_032625_BUSDOratorical_07.jpg\")
Rahwa Kiflemaryam, a student at Malcolm X Elementary School, won second place in the youth division at Berkeley\u2019s 2025 district-wide festival. Credit: Myron Caringal\/Berkeleyside<\/p>\n