The Roses in Concrete Community School is a K-8 school in East Oakland functioning as a center of health within the neighborhoods surrounding it, providing wrap-around services in education, health, housing, and job training. The long-term goal is to create a model for urban education that prioritizes the needs of youth and families as the pathway to building healthy and sustainable communities across the U.S. and around the world.

The name of the Roses in Concrete Community School was inspired by the book of poetry based on the writings of Tupac Shakur released in 1999, The Rose That Grew from Concrete. This vivid image captures the need to celebrate the tenacity and will of the rose that against-all-odds, finds a way to grow in the inhospitable and toxic environment of the concrete that it might transform the concrete into a rose garden.