Business owner, educator, and former basketball player are just some of the roles held by Elisha Lili Davis, known to students as Ms. Davis. Before becoming an educator, Ms. Davis was a standout basketball player at Berkeley High School, later earning a place in the school’s Hall of Fame. She continued her career at Arizona State University, playing college basketball for four more years. Even with the demands of elite athletics, she excelled in the classroom, graduating with a 3.81 GPA.
After graduation, however, Davis was forced to confront the reality that a professional basketball career was no longer a viable path. Though she had held onto the dream of reaching the WNBA, the invitation to try out never came. With international offers proving too low to sustain the life she had built, she had to pivot. Her lavish life and luxuries that came with being a top tier athlete subsided, and Davis saw her financial security evaporate.
Reflecting on that difficult time, Davis admitted, “I never had a dream other than basketball, and that’s where I messed up…I was blinded from the fact that it wasn’t forever.”
Faced with the pressure of being broke for the first time, she took the first job that would hire her—a substitute teacher—before finding a permanent vacancy in Physical Education. She initially chose the role of a PE teacher as a means to “find herself” and earn a stable living, but she quickly found a bigger purpose. She built relationships with her students and was drawn to the daily conversations she had. Through these daily interactions, she discovered that her students were deeply anxious about their own financial futures, a feeling that resonated with her as she was experiencing the same reality. She realized that while the informal side talks in class were helpful, they were not enough to provide the tools her students needed to avoid the cycle of instability. Driven by this, she decided to create a financial literacy class dedicated to addressing these issues and build a community of support.
Ms. Davis’s money class is rooted in the belief that “finance is a lived experience,” a philosophy that led her to move away from traditional textbooks in favor of experience. From bringing in professionals across various industries to hosting Oakland Tech’s first ever Hackathon, Davis is introducing a level of innovation that has never been seen before at Oakland Tech. She describes her approach as a necessity, noting that “most people think that they can just teach business and finance, but that’s very misleading because you have to teach from lived experience and current day.”
This hands-on approach has allowed her to integrate students into the real world. Her Hackathon, an event where students create ideas into technological innovations to pitch, proved massively successful. Mentors from Google and pitch coaches from across the Bay attended, with artist LaRussell investing $2000 to student business ideas and $620 from Davis for debt-free capital to start up seven beginning businesses. Beyond this, Davis raised $35,000 this year alone strictly through community donations for her class. For Ms. Davis, this class is about more than just money: it is about sovereignty, as she firmly believes that “financial literacy freed me from allowing anybody else to determine my future.”
Building on this success, Davis sought to solidify the class’s future and incentivize student engagement by meeting with CollegeBoard to transition the curriculum into an AP course. Her vision was to teach students practical skills while earning a GPA boost. Her efforts were successful. The Money Class was approved for AP Business and Personal Finance, a new course set for the 2026-2027 school year. The approval was granted in just three months, which is recorded to be one of the fastest approved classes for an AP.
However, despite these record breaking successes, Davis was met with devastating news from the administration. Principal Martel Price denied the AP class. Even with Davis’s clarification that the course would require no district funding and with 67 letters of support from the community, the decision remained unchanged. Furthermore, the CTE financial literacy class was entirely removed from the upcoming year. Davis feels as if this move effectively dismantled the communal space she worked so hard to build and does not seem to quite understand a logical reason behind this.
Mr. Price, however, offered a different explanation for the decision. The choice to discontinue the class was due to a logistical demand in the school’s Master Schedule rather than a lack of support for the subject. To accommodate a growing 9th grade class and ensure the school remains compliant with contractual staffing requirements, the administration prioritized expanding PE offerings. Price noted that the previous removal of these PE classes created unforeseen scheduling conflicts and “stress” on the system. This led to the decision to return to a more traditional five period PE schedule for Ms. Davis to ensure stability for the upcoming school year.
There is immense value in teaching financial literacy, as it can shape how students understand and manage their finances later in life. Davis feels as though this removal conflicts with the very goals the school says it strives to achieve. However, this does not signal the end of Davis’s impact. She is tentatively planning to build an outside school club, and this setback is only the beginning for what is yet to come.