The nonprofit, which launched at Berkeley High in 2000 and sent volunteer writing coaches into classrooms across the East Bay, ended operations May 29. Former coaches are working toward a revival.

WriterCoach Connection's last session at Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School in Berkeley happened May 29 — when a program that had spent 26 years walking volunteer coaches into East Bay classrooms simply stopped. No more pullouts to adjacent rooms, no more one-on-one sessions at Elmhurst Middle School in East Oakland or Betty Reid Soskin Middle School in El Sobrante. The volunteers went home. The organization dissolved.

The nonprofit launched at Berkeley High School in 2000. By the time it closed, it had trained more than 5,600 volunteers and sent them into classrooms to work with over 42,000 students, according to figures on its website. At its end, it employed four full-time staff, five part-time site coordinators, and 247 active coaches spread across four schools: MLK Middle, Albany Middle School, Elmhurst in East Oakland, and Betty Reid Soskin in El Sobrante.

The model was hyperlocal in the way that matters to a neighborhood: a coach pulled a student out of class for 15 to 30 minutes, worked with them one-on-one, then sent them back. No one was turned away for weak writing. At Albany Middle, the entire eighth grade — roughly 300 students per year — cycled through the program.

The cause of death was financial, though the pressure came from several directions. Public tax filings show the organization ran more than $100,000 in the red in 2025, even while ending the fiscal year with over $250,000 in assets. The Wayfarer Foundation, a significant funder, sunset its own operations last year. Other donors shifted their priorities.

Board chair Lones Stern-Banks, who spent 12 years as a coach himself, told Berkeleyside he believes some donors pulled back because of whom the program served. "I think some donors were concerned that we were helping underserved people," he said, noting the organization had deliberately avoided using the term DEI on its website.

Executive Director Lynn Gerber, in a written statement, pointed to a convergence of pressures: federal funding cuts have steered donor attention toward food insecurity, homelessness, and healthcare, crowding out programs without immediate crisis appeal. School district budgets have contracted, leaving less room for outside partnerships. And the board, Gerber wrote, had to reckon with "the emergence of AI-powered coaching and tutoring tools that schools may increasingly adopt."

At MLK Middle — the only Berkeley school using the program this past spring — site coordinator Alisa Morrill told Berkeleyside the news landed hard on staff and coaches alike. Teachers there described a specific kind of multiplication the program enabled: in a classroom of 28 to 30 students, a volunteer in the room let instruction stretch where a solo teacher cannot reach. Teacher Mya Hotter noted that coaches were willing partners through every stage of the writing process — brainstorming, drafting, revising — and that students valued the intergenerational dimension of the relationships.

The program may not be entirely finished. Longtime coach Maura Shannon told Berkeleyside she and another coach are reaching out to former volunteers, exploring whether to rebuild — as the same organization, as part of another program, or as something new. Talks are early.

Whatever form that takes, the infrastructure that sent a volunteer into a classroom on a Tuesday morning in El Sobrante or East Oakland would need to be rebuilt from the ground up. The schools are still there. The students are still in those seats.

Reporting by Tony Hicks for Berkeleyside.