001Let's, all right, welcome everyone. Let's start today's work session on listening to our engagement. I'm gonna kick it off to Dr. Duran. Great, thank you, good evening everyone. And as everyone just knows a little logistical, we have the mics on the table are the only ones we have. So if you need to speak, you're gonna have to grab the mic and then speak right in front of the microphone. So, all right, so this great opportunity. So good evening everyone. I'm glad we have this opportunity. I'm excited to have this work session with you to talk about listening tour and just plan a process to be able to learn about the great work that's been going on and highlight anything about the things that we can build upon moving forward. Actually, I think it's good. I
002think one thing for you all to know is that I think from previous time when I've done a listening entry plan, I learned a lot from that experience and intentionally have asked for cabinet and the board to be part of this conversation because as much as this is something that I wanna learn, it's something that I think all of us need to be part of and hear and have a portion in so that we can learn from the experience and what we're gonna be, the type of information we're gonna be gathering. I think the other thing that I learned is that I did a lot of it previously kind of on my own and kind of isolation. And so I don't wanna be in isolation. I wanna make sure that we are working and serving
003together as a team and as a unit to support our students and our family. So I wanna make sure that we do this in the best way possible. The other big thing that I've learned is that how important student voice is and that's gonna be a really central part of some of the work we're gonna be doing for listening plan and this entry plan that we're creating. So it's something that I learned from in the beginning of my initial tenure in another district around how valuable student voice is and as I left, I just found that it was incredibly valuable. Something I really wanna build upon here within the district because I think our students are ultimately our key stakeholders and I wanna make sure that we are centralizing them and their families and the
004experience that they're having so that we can get better of what we're trying to do on a day-to-day basis. Next slide, please. I think you all know the promise. I've shared this with many people many times but the promise continues to just resonate for me and it was last March I was standing in this room a little petrified, a little worried, excited. But I share with all of you that that promise had resonated with me and it still does and I really look forward to finding out what we can learn about how that promise has been true for our students in the areas that we've done some great work on and then also what are things that we can do to improve that process to support our students. And then with our strategic plan and
005the goals that we have that tie to that, I just have to just say that the more that I read, the more that I learn, we have so much that is codified in writing and paper around the work that we're trying to do and I'm still just continually deeply impressed and this is basically the fifth year of the strategic plan so we're gonna be up for a strategic plan refresh and I really wanna ensure that what we're learning from this entry plan and listening tour is really gonna gather information for us that we can think about what that strat plan refresh. I anticipate we're not gonna change much from some elements of the strategic plan. I do anticipate some possible changes with the goals but I think what we have to do initially is just
006listen and learn and then make decisions based on what our constituents, including our students and families are saying about how we're doing and what we need to do next. Next slide please. This is just a brief kind of outline around just what the components of the listening tour as we've been already talked with board directors that we plan on having seven town halls. Five of them will be in each of the directors of respected areas and then we'll have two just kind of general that will be virtual to ensure that we're gathering stakeholders that may not wanna come in person or just have not had the opportunity to participate in one of the other ones that's there. And then tonight, a big focus is gonna be on focus groups. So in partnership with the Center
007of Educational Leadership at the University of Washington, we have our executive director, Max Silverman, here with us and we'll introduce him here in a second who's gonna be supporting us in this process and a lot of their work's gonna be centered on these focus groups and engaging with our students, families and other key staff and stakeholders that we believe are important that we hear their voices on. Important piece, I think, for you to know why I went with this partnership is I also think it's important that we have an objective perspective and view in terms of how we've been doing and I think we'll be able to get this from their work. I also have seen some of the Center for Educational Leadership work in other districts here in Washington and it just really struck
008me how powerful some of the processes they've created to hear from students and how that has led to changes both at the school level and district level in pretty short amounts of time so I feel pretty confident that we will learn so that we can then move forward in terms of what we wanna do next. Next slide. Oh, and I think, go back one slide. Thank you. The other, not exclusively, sort of just some of the other engagement examples and we've talked around, I've already started doing meetings with staff here in central office, just meeting with different departments, connecting, getting to know them at a deeper level, having them understand why I'm here and then hearing some of their work that they're doing to support the promise and strategic plan and then we're also considering
009some surveys and office hours and of course we'll have some school visits and meeting with stakeholders. We had a great meeting with our community partners today and just seeing that initially there was just seven of us in the office, from central office, on the call and then they came out of the breakout rooms and there were 65 people on the call so it kind of made me realize, wow, I have a lot of meetings to be set up here to get out into the community so I gotta think about how I organize that so it's a little bit more efficient. Next slide. And then finally for me is just kind of anticipate a timeline, just knowing that if we're gonna do a strap plan refresh, considering it, what we end up having for our final
010numbers for enrollment numbers and the budget information that we have, that January through May is kind of like the target I'm thinking around, information that we need to have so we can start thinking about what we're gonna be doing moving forward and then we'll use these other times and all these are within this timeframe with some shooting for some targets but we have some flexibility built in also. So it gives me a great opportunity to introduce Max Silverman, Executive Director, Center of Educational Leadership. Max and I have worked together in many other professional settings and done a lot of work supporting the role of principal supervisors and we respect for the work that they're doing, the way that they have shifted as an organization so Max, I turn it over to you, welcome. All right,
011thank you Dr. Duran. You didn't mention anything about one-on-one basketball which will leave for another setting for sure. All right, first of all, so Max Silverman as Dr. Duran mentioned, it's really a pleasure to be here. Before I say anything about myself or Sal, we work with a number of school districts, probably 60 or 70 a year and it's such a treat for us to work with a superintendent who is so, from the first time we started talking about your entry plan and Highline, the level of intentionality around engaging the community and really just being very thoughtful about how you enter into a system that has had so much success already and how you can add to that success. So for us, and for me, it's a real treat to work in a system that's
012moving forward with such thoughtfulness and attention. So thank you for that. And I should say, it's a little nerve wracking being here with so many former colleagues and friends that I've worked with for many years. So it's good to see everybody and it makes me a little nervous. So I'm Max Dorman from the Center for Educational Leadership and I think as many of you know, I'm a former Highline employee. I spent 10 years in Highline, working at Taiye High School and then in the central office as well. So it is good to be back. And now I'm the executive director of the Center for Educational Leadership. I left Highline in 2009 for this current role and have engaged with Highline teachers and principals in central office over these years. But this is our first, my
013first opportunity, our first opportunity to really support you in deep engagement around racial. So that means a lot to us. And so just a little bit of, how many of you have heard of the Center for Educational? Oh great, so I'll do this really quickly. We are part of the College of Education at the University of Washington. And we're unique, we're being part of a tier one research university in that we're all practitioners. And we get to live in the best of both worlds. We get to work from research, but we also understand how to translate that to practitioners. And so when you work with us, you work with people who worked in schools, worked in central offices, and I think understand how to help you all use the best research and help translate that
014with you. We have a vision and mission really, I think similar to yours, centered around what happens for students in school. And for us, we talk about limitless future. And the way we work towards that vision of limitless futures for students is helping leaders like yourselves build adult cultures and build cultures of leadership that really can focus on racial equity and what happens. And this is my favorite slide, and I've done this slide so many times, and it always gives me goosebumps to hear those words happy and proud. And those words were given to us by students, some of them students from Cascade Middle School. We spent the first six to nine months of COVID talking to students in the country and asking them questions, K through 12. What's a good day at school? What's
015a bad day at school? How do you want to experience school? And the kindergartners drew pictures, the older students wrote stories, but then we let the students analyze all of this. And what the students told us is, oh, it sounds like we want school to be a place where we can feel happy. And we've just adopted that as our definition of equity. And it just makes it so clear to us that we know we're working towards equity or have achieved equity when every student, regardless of their own circumstance, when they can go home any day and tell people who love them, what made them happy and proud. We're pretty sure we're moving our school system towards something pretty cool. So we work with leaders to create schools that are happy. And as an organization, I
016think we're a different center for educational leadership than the one I engaged with when I was the principal of Taiye High School. We've done a lot of our own internal work and reflection and processing around what racial equity means to us as individuals and as a team. And we work really hard to hold ourselves accountable to make sure that that's part of how we work with students. And we work from Florida on up to Anchorage. And it's sometimes a little weird to be in rural Louisiana talking about racial equity. But we make sure to do that because it's how we wanna show up. We do wanna show up as partners. We wanna show up as people that could help you bring your own expertise forward, and in this case, help you bring the expertise of
017your students and community. That's a commitment we make to you as we work with you. And so we've, I can't say we had the pleasure because it wasn't a pleasurable experience. But after George Floyd referred, Minneapolis Public Schools called us and asked us if we would do an equity audit. And we told them we don't do audits, we don't even know how to do it. And they called a couple of times and asked us about how could they understand how their community's experiencing school at that moment. And we talked them through that the only thing we would do would be talk to parents and community members and teachers and principals and report back to you how those people are experiencing equity. And the superintendent went through. And that was the first time that we've done
018what I'll be sharing with you. Was in Minneapolis one of the toughest times that city's ever experienced. And what our team learned from just listening to students and listening to teachers about their experience in relation to what a district said they were doing around equity, pretty profound for us. And since then, just so you know, we've had a chance to do this in Washington, D.C., the Atlanta area, Charlotte, and a number of other locations that have quite diverse communities that have pretty strong equity. And yet what came back from the community was really helpful to the system to help them understand what was next. So that's where this work comes from. And so what we're gonna be doing is, I really appreciate Dr. Duran, as I mentioned, the fact that you already have ideas on
019how you want to engage as part of your reentry and as part of your strategic plan refresh. So we're gonna be grafting sort of what we typically do onto what you all wanna do and to make sure that we can be helpful in bringing other voices forward and then being helpful in analyzing. So I know board members had these slides in advance, but I do wanna just mention, we're gonna help you get clear about how people both experience equity and equity leadership, how it's understood and how people experience. We'll also help you build a roadmap for how you all can lead differently or how you can evolve your leadership in response to what you hear. So it's very, it's listening-oriented and then it's next step-oriented. And it's really focused on, it's really focused on those
020who have the most power, how they can lead differently on behalf of your community. So go ahead, please, Aaron. And so we're gonna learn a lot. We're gonna be able to share back with you how your community experiences, how equity and equity leadership are understood. We're gonna be able to report back to you, and this is some of the coolest things, your community's vision for leadership and what they mean by equity. When those, when that term is given to them, what that looks like and sounds like to them, and to be honest, across the country, it's very different than what we typically read about as to what equity is. And you can see on here, we're also gonna help you understand your principles are really the people that are most critical for ensuring equitable experience.
021And if Highline is different, it is similar to other school systems across the country, they don't have what they currently need to be able to do that thing. So we're gonna help you think through how your principals get the support they need, how central office leaders get the support they need, all in the name of leading differently and better. Go ahead, please. Really important to us that we work together on, and we've learned a ton by asking leaders to listen about all the things that get in the way of people listening. It's really pretty profound what we've learned when we talk to leaders about even what they hear when they're talking to a student and the role that confirmatory and implicit bias and identity and privilege all really get in the way, but we've also
022learned they get in the way of students willingness to talk to a leader. So we won't get into tonight, we'll actually use a tool that some of your students helped us with that allows students to feel like the questions being asked and the way that people are engaging is actually authentic. So we'll do that, and of course, you'll hear me talk about equity centered learning focused leadership a lot. Okay, go ahead, Aaron. And we're gonna open this up for your feedback and comments and questions in just a couple of minutes. So for our part of this work of Dr. Duran's entry plan and your strategic refresh, we are gonna help you think through again, and we'll give you a nice map of your vision of equity and how that is portrayed in the community and
023how people experience it. We'll also help you see the degree that you're deploying or employing equity leadership practices. And it's kind of fun because we'll have an opportunity to look through everything you say you do, and then we'll have a chance to sort of hold up a beer and report back how the community is here. And no doubt, if you're like any other school system, there will be a gap. And then we'll also help you contextualize your practice based on what your community is. And it's actually a pretty simple process. We don't look at the whole school system. That's not, that's what an audit. This really is a, we call it a review. It's a way to help you see things. And we focus on leadership at the central office and school as a sort
024of microcosm of how equity is being experienced in your system. So the way we do this is after we get input tonight, we'll meet with Dr. Duran and members of his cabinet and really begin to map out some of the technical aspects around focus groups, that'll be students, 21 focus groups, students, family members, community members, as well as family. And then we'll work with folks. We'll get as many artifacts where you talk about equity as kind of policies and procedures. But it's also gonna be things like frameworks that you use, professional development. And then we'll be able to map what we hear in the focus group to what you say you're doing. And then our report was pretty neat. And shared this with Dr. Duran already is we take a strength-based approach in everything we
025do. So we will work with you and talk about what's already in place and what you're on the verge of. And we'll help you because people only really grow from what they're on the verge of. We'll help you see what you're on the verge of and help you actually. We'll also, if need be, name anything egregious that we see because we think it's important for you to be aware of that. But it's on that verge of where you really are to make definitive movement forward on capital. Why don't we go back one slide and just let me pause and see if there's any questions at this point. That was all the process stuff, the background. We'll talk about street data because I know you're all reading the book. And then I'm really eager to hear
026your thoughts on how we should proceed. It's not pretty. Can I ask a question? In the planning process or in the discovery process, I know from my experience with CEL that a big part of your work is having teachers, well, as a teacher when I was getting coached, engage in the discovery and that embedded coaching. So you're not coming in and performing a review and then handing it to us or to Dr. Durand. Is part of this plan really coaching us how to have an inquiry stance and how to engage this way? Yeah, thank you, Director Howell. This is actually a different process for us because what we learned was we would get on the ground and not understand the code. So we will work closely tonight with you all to get your input and
027then we'll work closely with the cabinet and community engagement team to design how we move forward. But we will do much of the lift. There will be spots where we'll be sharing the data with Dr. Durand and we'll think about who he wants to include and process that data. But this is really a review. But then ideally from here we'll learn what's next with teachers and principals. Now just kick in that I think the other part of that is that again, I think it'll help us think about the Strap Plan Refresh and some of the things that we wanna do and I know when I've seen a couple of the reports that they've done, it just really struck me in terms of the strength base. I think we really have to emphasize around how that
028comes off and it really felt like it provided some of the districts that I was reading the reports on a really good idea around the things that they're doing well in areas to consider work on which I think will be beneficial for us. This is just I guess a logistical question on the process. When I look at seven town halls and focus groups in the timeline, the September, October in particular, which is when we will be in a full on campaign for a bond, is there an overlap or a coordination of this effort that comes together? I think you said there's a little bit of an overlap as we talked about some of the town hall work. The bonds, it's gonna be obviously entry plan, listening and learning, media and community, board members being out
029there. And then we will tie a little bit in with some of the bond in the ways that we can when we're publicly speaking about the bond, great question. And then the focus group work, just to follow up, that's gonna be SEL's responsibility work in partnership with our teams here to make sure we get that set up. And conversations we've had with them, we feel confident they'll be able to get it done within that timeframe. Mindful also that we don't wanna mess in with the beginning of the year and everything gets going at that process, so. Um, I'm just wondering, I've been thinking about this, we talked about having this type of work done is how do we really set up our community to really be successful and have that complete loop? And how do
030we set them up to really, a lot of times we say show up yourself as your whole self and then, you know, we're not ready for them at times to really, as they show up their whole selves. But also, how do we set them up to really complete that feedback loop? A lot of times we gather a lot of information from them, we do reports, but really, how do we bring it to them to really, like you say, if they're on the, if we're on the verge, and they're on the verge of doing something, how do we get set up so we can also help the community to make that next step and take it? Yeah, I can probably tell you, first of all, I've remained a fan of Highline since I left and a
031fan of Catherine's work, and I always appreciate just the effort and attention that's gone in towards engaging with the community and looping back with the community, and I think that leads that work as well. I can tell you that if Highline is like other districts, your community members and parents and family members are gonna ask that same question. We will have some number of people, and I don't know, this is what we hear often, that we come to these things and we're not sure what happens with it, and we also, we will always offer, as a really high-level next step, thoughts and ways to loop back to the community, but I don't know what that looks like right now in Highline, but I know that will be on our minds, and I'm sure it's on
032Dr. Duran's mind as well. Yeah, and I just say, I think it's a great question, I think it's something that we always have to be thinking about, it's a constant concern in terms of how we ask for feedback and then people have no idea what happens with it, so I do think we'll definitely have already been thinking around what the back end of this will look like from just a reporting standpoint, but I think in between, I kind of see two levels. One is based on what we learn, I think we may learn things that we're doing really well that we need to see to really make sure that we continue to do and support that, and I think there's things that we find that are gaps that we can solve for immediately, I think
033we need to try to do that and make sure we let people know how we've done that, and then I do think the second layer is gonna be, there may be some things that come up as ideas for us to consider that I think will be ripe and fresh for the Strat Plan refresh and things that we need to bring into that, so I think making sure that people understand here's what we did with it or here's what we're gonna do with it and here's how we're gonna consider moving into that or moving that piece into the work that we're doing. I think we're sitting in a really, I feel like it's a perfect storm where you want Strat Refresh that we all of this community, you know, listening sessions, and sometimes I, you know,
034my worry is like over, always asking, asking, asking for our bond, this, I don't think there's ever like a perfect, something by itself, but I think that something, there's a lot of people here that, yes, there's, they're hearing one here, but they're not happening, I think having like the perfect storm gathered to refresh for us to grow. I love the phrase, you know, when you're on the verge of, that's what, I think we're on the verge of a lot of things, and how do we capture that? Can you have all those balls in the air while they're still moving, just to come? We'll have time for lots more questions, so I just wanna talk briefly about street data because I'm so thrilled that you're all reading the book. So I got to cut out a
035lot of slides on what our approach is, and so we know you have plenty of satellite data, and we, our whole approach for these reviews are street data, and again, we'll use a tool that's, with students, that students designed to gather their stories. One of the questions that students create, not created, but designed for us was using the metaphor of heroes and villains, and they thought that if an adult asked them questions like, oh, tell me about student engagement at school, or does your teacher have high expectations of you? To them, those are adult questions about an adult agenda, and they said, if you ask us like, what's a good day, what's a bad day? I can just tell a story, and if you ask, who are your heroes in your school day, and who
036are the villains? Again, they feel like they can just tell a story, and that's what street data is about to us, is finding the right questions so that people tell their stories. So much of what we're gonna feed back to you is street data, and what's fun for us is, I don't know how far you are in the book, but Shane Safir talks about epistemology right from the onset of the book, and we've created ways to collect this data and share it back to you, so that as a community, you really begin to see that these stories are actually real qualitative data that you can act upon. It's not just an event to make somebody feel good that you're listening, or for you to feel good that you went out and listened. We'll actually create
037data sets for you, and we'll analyze that data so that stories begin, these stories begin to change what you accept as knowledge in the system. I shouldn't say change, because I know you're already far along. We might help you take a next step in systematizing how you use those stories as data. And again, we'll then map that data to what you more formally tell your community and staff about what they'll experience. So this should sync pretty well with what you're learning as a board, and I think what you're learning as a school system. I don't know if you wanna, did you wanna add something? And so for our part of this work, what we seek to explore are these four areas up here. And I'll let you read that. And then I'd like to start
038just by asking what questions do these four areas raise for comments? I think for me that they are in the order in which we're posing the questions, because you have to define it in order to actualize it, to experience it, to be supported. So when I try to think about these questions outside of that, it's like, well, can you support something unless you really defined it first, and if it was actualized and experienced? So I feel as, I think that these questions are in the order in which it should be posed and should be thought of too. And I should say, we don't ask these questions. These are the questions that drive our analysis. We'll ask questions about, tell us about how you get to engage with your school's principal, or your student's teacher, or
039if you're a student, tell us about a good day at school, and then we analyze it underneath. But I think that one feeds into the next really well. And so, because if you won't be able to really get that data that you need unless you really are able to create that framework first, which is created by the definition of it. Yeah, thank you. And pass this mic around also. My question would be on number two, where it says to understand how these definitions are actualized for public stakeholders, and you had mentioned in the beginning, students are our stakeholders. That, the definition here in this line as well, are stakeholders staff or stakeholder parents? Typically when we do this, we have a broad understanding of stakeholder. I think for us in our work, I don't know
040the right percentage. 60% of the people we're gonna talk to are students. And so, their data is gonna hopefully be overwhelming, to be honest. But we also believe that their families and those that love them and members of their community and the Highline staff are really important. We've learned through these processes that particularly for teachers and principals, often share what it's like to be asked to lead for equity, or teach for equity, and then, or as many, to be honest, a number of African American leaders have specifically talked about how they are basically charged with liberating their community, and the expectations their communities hold of them, and then the support they get or don't get to do that. So that stakeholder voice is important, along with teachers and other staff and families and students. We'll
041paint a nice picture for you of what this is. So it's a long way of saying you have broad stakeholders, and we're gonna try and capture as well as we can. One question I have that I think kind of ties to the third bullet, or the fourth bullet, is around what are things that are getting in the way of leaders leading for equity? And I remember as a teacher, when a coach said to me, how would you teach differently if your goal was for your students to be lifelong readers and writers versus to pass the SBA, right? How does that change how you approach? And it radically changes how I would approach my day. And I think about that, I obviously work in a school every single day, and so when I think of the
042leaders I see in my building and the leaders I see at central office, oftentimes I think there's so many things that they have to manage that they often approach their work as managers rather than leaders for equity. And that doesn't mean that they couldn't be leaders for equity or that they don't want to be, but I feel like there's other things in the way. So that to me is a question I'd like to explore. Thank you. Many of our students don't yet have what they need to do the equity. And looking at these questions, I'm excited to, I guess, visualize perhaps a framework that our administrators can use so that they can do the work I think is gone, to go into equity without understanding how it acts as a target. As you do that
043with your thought, I believe this is equity in administration, and you move forward with it, and it creates a lot of tension. It could potentially create tension in the classroom if they see it differently. And so with people without having some sort of definition, we are all agreeing about using framework. It's, I think, too scary to go into the work of trying to ensure equity for all of our students. They are happy and proud every single day. It looks different for everyone, but with a framework moving forward, my hope is that it removes that tension and those fears that go along with it to do the work. Hopefully. I think that's it. One more thought. This is maybe the second or third point, but thinking about many of our communities see our educators, teachers, educators
044as they hold them up in what they expect, that you don't question anything they say. And so how do we support and give permission to our stakeholders to understand that we want to hear it all, and that a lot of times, that especially in my culture and the Mexican culture, that teachers are held up really high and they're not questioned for what they're doing. And how do we not just provide space or permission to really help them understand like the definition, what it looks like, so they can come prepared and ready to have those, I think, not necessarily high conversations, but really say what they're truly experiencing without feeling like, oh, no, I don't want to say that. Thank you for that. I mean, thank you for all these questions and comments. That's going to
045be really important, both from the sort of district perspective and how communication is done at the purpose of these sessions, as well as the work of our team. I don't know if people say everything to us, but I'm amazed at what they say. It's really incredible. Again, I think when people believe that the person asking the question really wants to hear them respond, they might not be sharing everything with us, but they're sharing more than districts can handle in terms of feedback. So this might be a next step for us, right? Like, let's do pretty well with this and get people talking and provide the feedback and let people know what we heard so that when they show up the next time, they maybe share even more. But I also appreciate just the preparation so
046people can engage. That's very helpful. I just wanted to add on. Next, we'll be working with our team to found out on the family team. So we'll be employing our best practices and probably working with some of our grassroots community organizations to really be able to have authentic conversations where it's in a safe space. So obviously, basic will have language ability, but we do know the strategies that really can help open up those conversations and pass exactly what you're talking about. And we have, I believe on our team, expertise and understanding some of our community cultural norms. So we'll be working closely together. That's why Lita's here at the table. I've been trying to work with Lita for years. I spent 10 years here, so that's great. Why don't, there's, I have a couple of
047even more specific questions. Did you want to? I have a couple of even more specific questions. And this is also a chance to just say what you're thinking. Don't let these questions inhibit what you're saying. But I just wanted to make sure that I know you had a chance to look at, we included a principle support framework in what Dr. Duran sent out. That was just to help you see, like, maybe take your curiosity or imagination about what we could delve in. So I wonder if there's other broader areas or questions that things should be emphasized in this exercise, as well as whose stories should be prioritized. And the second question is important, because we, again, in all school systems, there are people who are least well served or less well served. And it's harder
048to hear, it's harder to find, actually, it's hard to get the system to go out and seek those stories and access them. There's plenty of people willing to share them. So we talk about students furthest from justice as thinking about those students who are least well served and making sure that through this process that we prioritize those stories. And we keep learning again and again that when we meet the needs of those least well served, ultimately, everybody is better served by the system. But we don't know whose stories, from your perspective, really need to be prioritized, again, as well as if there's other areas you want to. You want to be considered for this exploration, particularly around equity and equity. And I do know, I'm eager to hear what you have to say with this,
049I know the cabinet's eager. I know there'll be a process then to take this information back and make sure we can fit this into a dual listening project according to that. But this is your chance to really share what's on your mind. Just some initial questions that I think always come up whenever we're talking. What are gonna be some commitments in regards to the allocation of resources to this so that we can authentically create that space for community and what are ways that we can help make sure that we're honoring time, which is our community, like that's some of our biggest resources. I know that can look like a lot of different things for a lot of different people, but how do we respect people's time? Because that's what we're asking of them when we
050do this kind of work. And what does that mean on our end, on what do we have to do to commit resources to that? And also, connected to this theme of resources, after listening, typically a lot of system change work means that we then have to reallocate how we have resources as a whole. So then what commitments are we going to be upfront about that we can actually do that with community versus the reality is sometimes we can't do the things and how can we communicate that throughout the process effectively so that we're not telling people that they can ask for the pony and then we can't give them the pony. That was a broader theme that I've been kind of thinking about throughout this process, stories that I would really want to prioritize. I
051would say populations that we, so I would say if we can reach out to opportunity youth, so the 16 to 24 year old young people who've been disengaged from our education setting. If we can center McKinney-Vento students, people who are facing a housing scarcity. If we can center some of the, like we know who it is, but people who've disengaged. If we can center students who have been enrolled from our system so that we can hear their story and figure out why. Would be those, those are the folks that I would want to say let's prioritize, let's listen to them. And that's kind of a weird ask, right? Because they're no longer around. But those are the folks that I would say we should center in the process. I think that it's well in terms
052of stories to prioritize but I think for me, I find it incredibly frustrating to see the results that we get back from community and not match the data in the community. That to me is always frustrating. You'll see a percentage of folks with a specific background who are participating in such a low amount from other marginalized. So for me, I want to see, I really want to see our responses matching who we have. And all stories should be prioritized. It's a really difficult question to answer because everyone's story in my mind and we can take in value from anyone who has. But I really want it to match. I would 100% agree with both of those. And some specific populations that I feel like often are unheard are newcomers. And students with IEP services, specifically
053those in EDP programs and things like that. And I think also about students maybe accessing new start or vitals for whom the traditional school setting wasn't working. I would love to hear why and how from those students. And also some younger students. We often talk to our older students because perhaps we think that they're more articulate. But when we did our soup search, we went all the way down, I think, to third grade. And I know the Student Experience Story Guide was designed to be able, but I would love to hear from younger students. My youngest is seven and she has really strong opinions about what makes her feel happy and proud at school. So I think reaching out to younger kids as well. One of the challenges in this work is, one of the
054easier things is how quickly stories corroborate. So it's actually not hard for us to come up with trends. The hardest part is finding, again, seeking out the stories that aren't often heard. I fully, I truly agree, every story is important. Everybody's story is important. It'll be important for us as we work with you. Maybe a better question would have been is, whose stories do you hear most often? Or whose stories do you feel like you know pretty well and whose stories don't you know and that you wanna know more about? Because I think for this, that will help guide the work a bit. But that question wasn't intended to minimize anybody's story. I know every student and their family. Personally, for me, growing up with two immigrant parents who never had the time to be
055involved nor the resources to even access to voice their opinions because they didn't understand the material. So the first thing that I really think about is making sure that they understand what's even being asked, right? And that means all our neurodiverse individuals as well and are able diverse individuals too because it's not just a language in terms of the way that we speak, but it's the language that's expressed in various forms and the way that is understood in various forms too. So I think it's really important to make sure that that's being part of that conversation open to them so that they are able to see. Yeah, thank you. But having those, I guess, I don't know how you'd put it together, but in some way having a visual of some sort of guiding questions
056or something available for people to think before or have some, you know, gather their thoughts and get inspired. I think it's difficult even for me to show up and have opinions or thoughts. I need a think time. Thank you for both of those comments. From our end, we'll work closely, I think we'll see that in every other district we've done this in, these have been very personal invitations to people and very thoughtful sort of process to think about who do we need to hear from? How do we give them access to the conversation? And our team is really open to what that looks like. And I didn't get a chance to mention, we have a wonderful team. Dr. Janai Amal who's listening in Boston right now will be sort of leading the project for us.
057And she's done a number of these. And just a super brilliant person who both is able to be highly organized and really thoughtful and analytical. Jonathan Aldenese who's on our staff will be joining us. And then we'll bring in a couple other people so that your community and students are engaging with people that they're comfortable with that look like them. Our program coordinator, Temneet, just got promoted today to program coordinator itself as an Evergreen grad. And so we've learned that that's also very helpful. A lot of folks don't wanna sit with me and tell me their experience in the Highline Public Schools. So we're well aware of that. So we'll bring a team that can do that. And we'll also work with the staff. We've learned like for young students, some of them really prefer
058Zoom. They really are more comfortable over Zoom and some older. So we've done these over Zoom. We're beginning to do them in person again, but we'll be able to be on the ground. Folks that make sense to do in person and we'll be able to do it for Zoom for folks that that's more comfortable. And we'll use whatever happens. I don't know if you have any further comments or questions. The one I guess the question I do have, I think ties into the artifacts that you gather and how that process is analyzed. I would say that, as I've been preparing for commercial break equity symposium next Tuesday, I've really been digging deeper into our policy and equity policy and the terms and phrases and then seeing the direct connection to what we have in policy
0595000 around work climate and conditions. And I think one of the questions I was asking myself was thinking, how do we define our work as being an anti-racist leader and organization? And I think a lot of our policies really do speak to it. So just again, kudos to the board and staff and leadership that have put some of that in work. The more I learn, it's so solid. So like, what's that process for? You're gonna gather a lot of this information and then how does it kind of get connected to the conversation with our stakeholders? Yes, thank you for that. So in many ways, we keep these processes separate until we do the analysis because we really wanna understand what's on paper. But we will, oftentimes, and probably not in Highline, but maybe we will
060meet with a team that will give us all of the professional learning they've done on anti-racism. And they'll share with us how much money they spent on it, agendas from the meetings. And then we'll hear from principals or teachers like what that really experience was like for them. And then we'll hear from students like how they experience school. And there'll be a story that, rather than being a story of anti-racist leadership, is a story of racist leadership. And we work with pretty good sensitivity because I know the work that Highline has done, particularly the past 10 years, to make great strides. That's why we take a strength-based approach. But we will really feed back to you what your documents say that you say that you do. We'll also find some gaps for you, like some
061systems will find that your evaluation tools actually don't mention equity or anti-racism in any meaningful way. So it ends up, in some systems, they have thousands of employees who have never given any feedback around equity or anti-racism in their work, even though they might attend training. So initially, we do this work separate. And then together, we make sense of here's the stories. Here's the story that your more official documents say and what's confirmed through the experiences of your community and then what gaps there are and we leave a lot to you, particularly, I think, in this case, because around what makes sense to do next. And we'll provide some guidance on that, but it'll feel important for you to also make sense of, oh, here's what we said we did. Here's the stories that have
062been pulled together. How are we making sense of that and what are we? Thank you. I think the other part, just a reminder for everyone and audiences that the focus groups are one part of this listening tour that we're gonna be doing in the town halls and again, appreciate the board and the work that we'll be doing to go out into the community for your representative areas. Then we'll have two that will be virtual building upon that. I think what we learned, some of the positives of the pandemic is that we can bring a lot of people in via the virtual environments. We'll continue to do that. And then we have some other potential surveys, thought exchanges, other ways that we'll be gathering that data will be brought into the conversation also. I guess one
063last thing I would say is, what this is not, and we've talked about this and Dr. Dren has been really clear. This is not an equity audit. This is not a full scan of every system, not looking at how well you budget and allocate resources. There might be stories that come up around how people experience budget and resource allocation that might indicate you might wanna do some work there, but we are not analyzing your whole system. And that's very intentional because we want to bring this data, we wanna elevate the stories of your community and let that tell the story as opposed to a more diagnostic audit approach. It might guide you to wanna do some other looking and research, but I don't want you to think that you're gonna get a 75 page report
064with lots of tables and numbers. We're gonna feed back to you the stories of your community in a really thoughtful, analytical way so that you can move forward. I actually told Max not to scratch out the word equity audit. I don't wanna see that on a piece of paper. We live in part of equity audits in districts. I've re-approved the PowerPoint before I sent it. They are very complex pieces that require very large processes and we're not doing that. So I think the other part of this important, you don't wanna miss out on is that, I think some of the connections that I think are important for the board to know is that Dr. Grubb, Brian and I, we're also part of a group called Central Office 10, which is with Meredith Hoenig and the
065University of Washington. And it connects to this work because part of that conversation is thinking about how we as an organization really ensure that central office is in support of our schools. And so we have had a couple meetings. We're gonna be doing some learning with some other districts, some Montgomery County, I'm not gonna be able to say them all, Montgomery County, Long Beach, a few other districts that are really different from Highland and similar in some ways too. So that's also part of this work that we're doing is to really understand how our overall system supports our schools, which I believe is really kind of the core where the work happens. The other part is our principal supervisors, our ILEDs are participating in the American Association of School Administrators principal supervisor training, which is
066being facilitated by the Center for Educational Leadership. So that principal framework that you saw is part of that conversation. And then there also is a set of standards for principal supervisors that our ILEDs are orienting themselves around, which again align to how does central office ensure that our school leaders are focused on instructional leadership to serve our students and communities in the best way possible. Are there ways that you've seen this happen where this has been incorporated into today and in a constructive way that isn't disruptive versus us doing these like after school time things or is that part of the plan to do it during the school day? I'm just curious, how do we like not disrupt the rhythm of the school year, but also make sure that supporting. All right, we really leave
067that up to you. Our preference, particularly with students is during the school day. And this logistic, this is more than you need to know, but logistically then that raises do we wanna do it over Zoom? So students can be in their schools, do we want to bring them to a central location, which means we have to start moving students, so we'll think that through with the team. But at least with students, our preference is during the day, with staff during the work day, and then with community and parents, you'll all tell us what works best. The biggest things is that our schools have what they need to do when they're in need. That is it, because they're in front of the children, they're working every day in and day out. So if our administrators and
068teaching staff and the staff have some really good takeaways and strategies that they can implement in the building throughout the school years, or even confirm some of the things that they are doing that's working well, that to me is the most powerful thing. Thank you. I just have a quick comment. For the last two years, I worked at the University, we've been, we have what we call the Youth Wisdom Council, we've been elevating the voice, and something that we have found to be successful in bringing students' voice from road map. We provide a stipend for them to come, but also I think letting them, coaching them, and they run the meeting, because then it's peer-to-peer, and we've been able to get really good data, and they've been able also to help. We've been having what
069they say themselves, call it making meaning out of the data. So helping them also make meaning out of the data so they can help the community make meaning out of it. And they've been the ones really running a lot of the meetings with our support, and we've been able to get lots of voices. That's wonderful, thank you. Unfortunately, for this process, given the time that we'll have, we'll have to run those student meetings. However, how you all choose to analyze the data from, and who you include in that, is I think a choice that you all can make. Some really research just came out from Villanova University on when students, not so much get to design the student surveys, but do the actual first cut analysis, it really gives the school system a very different
070look at what those results say. And so we would be really happy to work with you all to include whoever you deem most appropriate to help analyze. And then the other thing that in order to engage them, we did both virtual and so it was a hybrid. So we sent a central location, and then for those that were coming from far, those that were nearby would come into the ESD, and then we would hold the virtual ones or hybrid, and they were able to log in. And so it built a sense of community as well amongst them. And I think developing the trust even amongst them to be able to really speak. That's wonderful and we would certainly be open to a hybrid approach, makes the most sense. I'd like to add to just, so
071we've had the superintendent student leadership team over the last couple of years, and we've played around with the infrastructure and how we run those meetings, and virtual and in person and providing transportation if they're coming from afar. So I'm, Lita and I are taking in all of your comments and really wanting to add on to some of the infrastructure we have in place to improve, but we wouldn't be starting from scratch at this point. I'd say thank you for that. And I think we've been also percolating some ideas to ensure that this listening tour, these focus trips just isn't just a one time thing and then how we can incorporate the superintendent's student leadership team into ongoing processes and work that the board engages with students as part of our street data and listening to
072help just keep continuing to learn and build upon our experiences that our students are having every day. So we're watching for some percolating ideas be coming out and how we can do that. All right, well, if there isn't anything else that gives us a little bit more time to help set up the room for the board meeting. So any final thoughts, Dr. Teran? No, I just want to say thank you all for this time. And again, I just really want to emphasize that we are building upon the great work that's gone on here in Highline. And I'm honored to be proud to be serving here and just really look forward to seeing what we can learn so that we can just get better and sharper to support our students and families. And there's great work
073going on. We just want to build upon that. So thank you all. And Max, thanks so much for coming out and we'll see you on the basketball court. Thank you, Max. Thank you for having me.