I call this regular meeting of the Hopkins School Board to order. Today is Thursday, May 21st, 2015, and the time is 7 p.m. Our first item of business is open agenda. Open agenda offers the public an opportunity to address the school board regarding issues or concerns or ideas related to the school district. Anybody in the audience an open agenda card needs to be filled out before addressing the board and if you don't have an open agenda card They're in the back and please fill one out and bring it forward At this time we have a special presentation and so John I'll turn it over to you well, well, thank you sitting in front of you are participants of from our school district that went on the civil rights tour and I'm gonna turn to Stanley is Stanley here. Okay. Are you? Are you introducing this or?
Okay. Introduce yourselves and talk about this great event. All right, absolutely. Well, thank you for having us tonight. This is a great opportunity for us to talk about the trip that we took over spring break from this school year. And my name is Mike Baybine-Dennon, and I teach social studies at Hopkins High School. And I'll let the other students introduce themselves, and then we'll get going on a presentation. I'm William McClendon. You guys. Known me from the past. I'm Madeline Buckner-McCurdy. I'm Julie Uneza. I'm Xavier Johnson. There we go. Perfect. So this is about our civil rights research tour from 2015. And just to start out, we thought it might be a nice thing to show you a little bit of a trailer from our documentary that will be airing in next week, which I have an invitation for at the end of this as well.
But here's our trailer for the Unapology documentary. I'm apologizing. I don't apologize for anything I've done. We were fighting and we would never go back. God, the dream. That represent freedom or peace. Stripping of culture, genocide, a slavery. Now something's telling me it wasn't made for me. So that's the trailer from the documentary that we're going to be premiering next week. And we'll get it returned to full screen. All right, so here is our mission statement from our trip. Our mission statement was to address misinformation, create a human connection between students, weave information into our journey, and bring people below the line with our personality, knowledge, and experience to create change unapologetically. So the unapology is representative of all of our shirts, and that was kind of the hashtag that we went on our trip. So whenever we marked photos or anything like that on our Facebook or Instagram pages, which we'll talk about, we always tag them with this hashtag unapology.
And our itinerary was out to Washington, D.C., to South Carolina, Selma, Alabama, Tuskegee, Alabama, Birmingham, Alabama, Jackson, Mississippi, Memphis, Tennessee. So we hit all of these cities over the span of eight days, which was a whirlwind bus tour. And we got to know each other's body odor pretty well, I would say. But it was an amazing opportunity to spend. We used the time as kind of a mobile classroom. So we would watch documentaries, we would have conversations, and further the dialogue that was occurring. Our documentary and microcontest that we did, it's like we created a Facebook page and an Instagram page to connect the outside world from what we're doing. So each time we took pictures or we went somewhere, we would post those pictures to Facebook and Instagram and connect to not only Hopkins, but to different kind of schools in Minnesota. So that was good.
We also discussed about, we watched a movie and we discussed about different ideas and we connected what was happening right now to our personal, what we have experienced as black people. We tried to connect it to what we were watching during that time. And sometimes it was kind of emotional and we learned a lot. We got to interview like we got interview with the students and civil rights leaders. So that was really good. We made the mayor of Tuskegee and the mayor of Selma. So that was amazing to meet people like that for me. So that was really amazing. During the trip we noticed different patterns and themes. Starting with connecting with your past. So when we were in South Carolina on the St. Helena, on the trip we would have these discussion groups. And one of the things we talked about was how do we keep up with our culture or how do we stay connected to our past with our ancestors.
And people said through food or their language. One of the special people that we met was Queen Quet, and she talked about, or she stressed the idea of staying connected with your past, and she is a South Carolina native, and she is fluent in the Gullah Geechee dialect of, and it was very like... tricky to your ear to hear when she was talking because she would just go switch from language to that language. And actually, we learned that Gullah Geechee is, so when slaves came over through the Middle Passage, their way of communicating was through this, they created the Geechee language from combining all of these African dialects together, creating the Geechee dialect. So that was great to hear. And then also on the trip, we learned a sense of identity. So like what Mr. Beattie was saying about watching a series of movies and creating a mobile classroom on the bus, we watched Hidden Colors.
And one of the main people that they talked about was Mansa Musa, who was... the richest African during that time. And that's something that is left out of our textbooks because when our history classes, they kind of just skip over Africa and go into Africans being as oppressed and subordinate. Just watching that movie gave us a sense of identity that our people were prosperous and still are. And assimilating and hiding one's culture to fit in. So that's also, I guess in a social setting, of connecting to a sense of identity because you feel that your culture is less than someone's and you are scared to represent who you are as a person and privilege that leads to power. We talked about how a system that was created to protect those that created it will still continue to do that. So, for example, in the Constitution that was created, it was held or created to protect those for it.
That was patterns and themes on the trip. Just to clarify one thing she said about Manamusa, he was actually the richest man in history. He was, in today's money, he was worth over $400 billion. When he made a trip to the, when he made the Hajj, it's an, at least I think it was the Hajj. The Hajj is a... House is a pilgrimage to a holy site for it for the religion of Islam. He gave out so much wealth that the Pride that the worth of gold actually dropped Because he was spending so much and just anything and I think they said that the handed out over 10 million dollars worth of gold on his way there and now to changes for Hopkins One change that we would like to see is creating a black student union. It'll give us a greater sense of who we are racially because there seems to, from my perspective, there seems to be a lack of it.
I never really felt as connected to my history as I did when I was on the Civil Rights Research Tour. We also want to create a Dare to be Real club that would help encourage conversations about race. Race, I've noticed, is a topic that people tend to shy away from because of all the controversy that can come up from it and from people's fears of being perceived as racist if they feel confused about something and so they decide to not saying anything at all. And we also want to have influential teachers to support us. And we also want more diversity within teachers. And from my perspective, one thing I've noticed, but never really brought up any time, or at least never really realized until I went on the tour, is most of the teachers that I've ever had were white. I think it wasn't until...
Yeah, it wasn't until I came to this school district that I had a I actually had a black teacher and he was he's my advisory teacher and and it would feel it would Black students would feel more included if they felt that they had teachers who sort of looked like them instead of always white Hopkins should definitely participate in the CRT trip again because Like I said, it makes us feel closer to our history. We always study the history of, from my perspective, white history, you know, European history. But there's very little black history, African history. And this trip... There's just so much information that I never knew, that I was never exposed to. There was even so much that it was overwhelming at the amount. I tried to write as much as I could in my journal, but there was just so much. There was even a time when we were at a museum, I was running as much down as I could, and I was just in the first part of the museum, and I had to get out of the museum because I almost ran out of time.
And I was just at the first station. And so as I'm walking through the rest of the museum, which was very thorough, I was practically walking from, like... like pre-silver, pre-silver rights movement era that we would consider to be, that most people would consider to be a civil rights era all the way through to like what seemed like the 2000s in the span of 10 minutes. So that's the general gist of what we did on our tour. And we just want to take a couple minutes to give even some more personal testimonies about some of the ways that it actually impacted the students. And I want their voices to be the last ones. So I'm just going to talk quickly about my personal testimony for this, is that it was just an unbelievable opportunity for me to be surrounded by incredible... students not only from Hopkins but from the other we met schools as well and to just learn from them and be at a place where I could soak up and see One what it means to have white privilege.
What does that look like? And what does that look like not only in the US but also within we map and then even more specifically at Hopkins High School What does that look like? How am I? Either in kind of continuing that stereotype or how am I breaking against that stereotype? As a teacher within the school. So that was kind of my biggest test or testimony about it is What am I doing to create this change and to bring about this change within our school system? Um for me First it all started when Mr. Crocek gave me the application to the trip I didn't like I was like I want to just spend my spring break on Netflix watching movie instead of like going to a trip where I won't have we only have like six to like seven hours of sleep and the rest I'm gonna be working it's better to spend it on Netflix so but But then my dad was like, I think this is going to be a really good opportunity.
So I was like, ah, dad, stop. You know how parents try to push you, but you don't want to do it? But then at the last moment, I turned in my application at the last moment. And I had to take, on that day, since it was almost like the final, I had to take a lot of tests so that I won't miss anything. So I gave up my time and I read the test. And that morning when I woke up, going to the bus and I was like, oh I'm actually doing this. I'm actually going on a trip. And once I got on a trip, I was so glad I went. It was such an amazing experience. It made me feel like I'm back in Africa. I'm like back home and that meant a lot to me. Well, from my experience, I was on the same thing as her.
As soon as I got the first packet, I did not pay any attention to it. I grabbed it, gave it to my parents, and said, I'm not going. But then they made me go, and I didn't really want to waste my spring break, but this was actually not even close to a waste. The biggest thing for me at this trip was a sense of identity. walk around in our society nowadays, I feel that I have to filter certain things I do, filter certain things I say to, I guess, fit in or be amongst normal or whatever you want to call it. But then after this trip, I learned so much about myself. I found a new confidence that, and with our hashtag being unapology, I'm not apologizing for anything anymore because I am the way I am and if you have a problem with it, that's a personal problem.
That's, I don't know, that sense of identity. I know who I am and I'm very comfortable with it. I agree with Xavier with the sense of identity. But for me personally, Before this trip, I was so used to settling. I would hear the racist comments or whatever, being called an Oreo, black on the outside, white on the inside, or saying you talk white or whatever. And on this trip, it just gave you a sense of identity. I just really learned who I am as a person. just just just taking it and running with it and I'm like what Xavier said I'm just unapologetically just living life and I'm just really happy I went on this trip I just learned so much for me this trip is actually suggested to me by my little studies teacher I had thought that I'd actually missed the due date on when I was supposed to actually turn it in, only to find out, I think it was like a week later, that the due date on the packet was actually wrong.
Luckily, I did get it in time. I still made it to the trip. And it was my dad that reminded me that my granny who passed away over the summer, my granny was... She was a very strong woman. My dad can attest to that. He could almost never get away with anything. And I know she would have been really proud to know that I went into our history because although I never got the chance, well, I did have the chance, but I missed my opportunity. She did walk with Martin Luther King in one of the marches. And being on the Civil Rights Research Tour, I found out a lot of things that my granny might have known, might have not known. But either way, I know that it would have been the proudest moment of her life had she lived this long. Thank you very much.
I appreciate it. Can I say something? Yeah, one more thing. With this trip, it has so much, like, the window's so big for it to be so much bigger. Because I don't know if we've, if Hopkins went on this trip before, but with this, it can get to the point where there's so many kids that need this. Because I just feel with our generation, so many people are just lost, don't know who they are. Or even if they know who they are, they try to not show it because they feel ashamed or they're not comfortable with who they are. With this trip. It could it's so eye-opening that I wish everybody could go on it. I wish this would be like a school trip like that would be a lot of kids but That I think that that's how big it is and it shouldn't even just be for African Americans We there's so much stuff that we when we go through our school system and learn That they leave out When it comes to anybody's history, they only put things in textbooks that they want you to know And it's key for people to find out below the line information like we did.
So this trip needs to happen. And there's a notice on the screen here that there's going to be a documentary. Yep. So on Thursday, May 28th, so next Thursday. There are actually three trips that went out through WEMEP. So one was the Native American experience. And they will have a premiere about kind of their story of the pre-settlement of the United States from European settlement. And that will be at 6.30. And then our documentary, which is an apology, will be shown starting at about 7.10 or 7.15 with some Q&A afterwards. And then there will be another one that's talking about systems of mass destruction. that will go on about eight o'clock and then with a Q&A after that as well and we just extend the invitation to all of you if you're able to make it it's at Robbinsdale Armstrong and again starts at 630 okay that's good thank you so much for your time thank you very much and this whole evening really gave me a fantastic opportunity miss miss Buckner because um My first grade teacher is sitting right there, Ms.
Buckner. So just to introduce Ms. Buckner to the public. She did really well. She said I was a really good student. Good luck to me. Taught me everything I know. Thank you for that great opportunity. Thank you. Thank you very much. The board wants to thank the individuals who came forward this evening and we value that experience very much. And the board wants the public to know that we realize it's not always possible for everyone to... attend the meeting and so we still are interested in hearing your comments and Would refer you to the Hopkins schools website contact the board form and Also, our telephone numbers are listed there and we welcome your comments so with that we will move to the Next to the next item of business Which is the approval of the agenda?
there's a one change in the agenda the item and M under consent calendar will be heard separately so with that I look for a motion to approve the agenda so move second all those in favor please say aye aye opposed same sign okay then The next item on the agenda is the approval of minutes so I would look for a motion on the approval of minutes so moved second all those in favor Please say aye. Aye Opposed same sign the minutes have been approved Then the next item is the consent calendar minus item M So I would look for a motion approving the consent calendar so moved It's been moved and seconded to approve the consent calendar. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, same sign. Okay. Then item M has been requested that we take a roll call vote on that. I don't know if anybody has any comments that they want to make prior to making a motion on it.