School Board Study Session: October 12, 2020

001hello everyone good afternoon um welcome to the north shore school district school board study session we're very excited to have a study session here today we'll be discussing p9 equity parameter 9 and we're very excited for our presentation today so dr reed would you like to make introductions please i would thank you president swain and we are fortunate this afternoon to have our um quite a number of people actually with us during the study session and this will be the first time we're kind of trying a panel study session review on zoom so we're looking forward to walking through this together as a sort of a technology opportunity as well but dr chris bigelow our executive director of our racial and educational justice department is heading up this presentation and i'm going to ask him

002to introduce the staff that have attended with the department um as well as i know kenneth is here somewhere and is working also in the department so a warm welcome to you kenneth as well i do want to share that we're going to spend about 90 minutes together this afternoon and siobhan is actually going to be sharing documents while members of the presentation group are talking so we may have a little lag as we look at new documents but it's really uh groundbreaking work i think and i look forward to hearing um more from them and again feel free to interrupt at any time board members um this is a question and answer session because as you know at our four o'clock regular board meeting we'll actually be reviewing parameter nine uh directly with me

003so this is your opportunity really to think deeply about this work so i know the team is ready to answer any questions you have um and here are the ideas you have to deepen the work so i'm going to turn it over to dr bigelow everyone and thanks for letting us be here today and we do have quite a lot of people here and this is requires a lot of people because this is a lot of work so let me introduce my team first uh of the the racial education justice department we have baby thomas she's the assistant director we are rena harp the coordinator of the department swindon vos community and family coordinator of the department and our special guest is dave wellington dave is the um assistant superintendent for the workers region and

004they will be presenting us with some data that will tie in with our retention and hiring efforts of staff of color and dr kenneth jones will also be joining us to speak and on how he's going to help support staff this year as well and melissa riley the assistant director of the equity pedagogy department or not department but that's her title but she's from the ciu department and she'll be talking about ethnic studies and framework mike talley will speak on disability justice and how that work intersects with some of the work that we're doing we wanted to bring this group in because last year was just even myself but this work is all about our work and uh and we work with all departments and branches to embed equity and social justice work throughout the

005district so that's why you have so many people here today it's not just it can't be just one department's work it has to be all about work uh but before we get started i do want to recognize that today is indigenous people day and we have been working since last year i think longer that to develop the land acknowledgement statement for the district uh but we wanted but we wanted to make sure it was done right i mean north shore expands through king county and parts of snowys county so we want to make sure that it was done right so a couple of weeks ago you know i met with some indigenous community members to ask their help in creating something to honor the native land so i would like to start our presentation with

006land acknowledgement and this is what they helped me with so we acknowledge that north shore school district functions on traditional lands of the coastal halish stukwamish develop and indigenous people in areas that are now called waffle kenmore redmond and windville we acknowledge that the experience of genocide forced relocation ethnic cleansing and land death of indigenous people so we can build our awareness of how the settler's colonizations exist today we honor the way of life of tribal nations and that the resilience resurgence of the culture in our area we resolve to learn from these realities to promote a more just society we thank these caretakers of this land who have lived and continued to live here since time in memorial you know i do want to uh start by also by thanking dr reed and you

007the school board and making this work possible without your support it would not be happening and in working and i worked in many other districts throughout the state and around the country many have shared with me that the unrest that followed the murder of george floyd and brianna taylor made it easier for many of them to start this work or to acknowledge that racism racism does exist you know it took many it took that incident to start this work but i'm proud to say that we have been doing this work for long before those awful incidents and i think i know the country felt a sense of urgency and over time you know and i believe this also i talked to many of my colleagues about this the protests will fade and this and this

008work will get hard but we need to continue to make sure that we stand up against systematic racism now and especially when it's not easy anymore you know sometimes so and i wanted to examine tonight let's look at let's look at continue let's look at ways of how we're going to do that you know we want to continue examining our policies our practices curriculum and most important our own behavior you know as i always say the hardest thing to do in this work is change hearts and minds you know but i i like to believe that we are putting processes right people and other things in place to continue this work long after the unrest and protests have stopped and that's what we hope to show show you this evening i often say as i

009just said you know it's really hard work you know which is why i have a team of people here helping me you know so it requires a great deal of energy time and and it's also what i feel we have to stay in students lives and their futures at stake as well so ran out what slide are we on in case people didn't notice i cannot see anything on the screen but you can hear me so randall's gonna it's gonna guide you through this through the presentation all right so we are on we did we just did our land acknowledgement um and ava i think you're going to be doing doing our opening activity yeah thank you rena so my name's ava thomas i am the assistant director of racial and educational justice glad to

010be here and keep moving this work forward chris mentioned and gave a really thoughtful land acknowledgement and part of that is our continued and strengthening partnerships with our local tribal members and tribal nations it's not enough to just acknowledge the land that is still being occupied but taking it a step further and continuing to partner with the people who are still here one of the things that we found that's a really great tool actually is a phone number that anyone can text to find out what indigenous land you are on based on um your city and state and so um the board members would like to welcome you and all of the panelists here to get out your cell phones and text the city and state in to 907 312-5085 and then it will immediately

011text you back the indigenous land that you're on and so i'll just give you a couple minutes to do that and then maybe just a thumbs up when you've gotten your answer back i haven't got my answer back but you know there's an app called native land that if you download it it just when you open it up wherever you are it will tell you what lands you're on so we wanted to do this just as a tool to help ground ourselves in where we're at today and recognizing indigenous people's day today but also acknowledging their existence their resilience and their survival also beyond today and every day so this is a tool we wanted to put the phone number there and guide you through this activity so that you could utilize it but then

012also so that educators families and students can also utilize this tool so i think we can go to the next slide so the first thing we're going to talk about today is transformative racial and educational justice in north shore school district we want to frame it like this because as chris was saying earlier this work shouldn't just happen within our department it has to become who north shore is and what north shore does and so the difference is that transformational leadership or transformational work is really grounded in the people who are leading the work but we want it to go beyond that beyond the people who are leading the work so even the people who are here right now that will eventually leave one day that the work continues to be embedded and institutionalized in

013north shore school district and so chris is going to be talking about ways that we've been working on that um over the last year and how we'll continue to work on that this year okay and we started with um cabinet you know as the leader of this work in the district and a cabinet member you know i've had the opportunity to partner with district with district leaders as well as building leadership you know and i often say the principles there are many ways to approach this work but there is no one-size-fit-all approach but the one thing that we all must do is be intentional and thoughtful about this work you know one we must be conscious that um oppressive practices and systematic racism exists at every level of the schools and our school system and

014people working every department in every role have a stake in this work and that includes cabinet so all of us that sit on cabinet you know have a major role you know in the district and it's and it's systems and as i lit the cabinet you know i said no we are the system and we also need to be held accountable and i'm also a believer that you know what you permit you know you promote and every choice we make either oppose a system a racism or seeks to dismantle it and i believe cabinet is a in working with them you know it's a very talented group of people you know um working together and we work together to accomplish a shared vision and mission no great things can happen so as i looked at

015cabinet you know i thought we need to be doing this work as well so with the help of mike bailey you know we develop an action plan to assist cabinet leaders in developing formal structures to ensure that we design implement sustain and institutionalize you know our educational equity initiatives you know and to address the uh the inequities and to address the equities in our system so the purpose of the plan is to ensure that we put systems in place that will enable us to track the work over four phases that means to analyze problem identification action and most important accountability members of the cabinet are championing one of the major goals based on the equity policy deputy policy had seven goals in it and the goals were equity access and outcome curriculum instruction assessment hiring

016and staff practices professional learning and growth community family engagement and distribution of resources and institutional structures and members and cabinet are all champion you know one of those goals on the uh in our equity uh policy the action plan contains a desired outcome of plan for cabinet members and a brief narrow description of the uh the process of the process actions along with action steps that would be done by by certain dates and it's a plan that that mike and i created to hold cabinet accountable in fact we talked about it this morning because everyone and everyone goes to rotation and now that we've gone through the first rotation of everybody speaking on behalf of the work they're going to be doing you know along with the uh with the structures in place and certain

017dates to be in certain due dates for things to be done by we spoke this morning on it to make sure that was working and i think we i think what i heard was that you know it's it's the structure that is really holding cabinet accountable you know so it seems to be working and we're going to be going through the second round i think starting starting next week and what that means is is that uh is that the work that they've done previously the first let's see the last two months we want to check on it to see where they are at this time in network you know so it's so it's going to be an ongoing rotation throughout the year and continue continuously updating the work you know holding cabinet accountable as well

018and and i'm talking right now about the uh because i can't see the screen i'm assuming i'm talking about the rise plan the sap plan so the site plan this year was revised with equity being the focus uh in the past the template you know i really didn't think that it provided the best assessment for principals to really demonstrate or reflect the work they've done around equity you know it felt more like a check box than it did a um and actually an actual plan where focused on the work and the mission of the district and uh and since the the plan needed to align with the strategic plan of the district because equity needs to be the through line of all of our work and and plans in the past did not really speak

019to that or address that so with the help of the rises we revise the purpose to guide the purpose of the plan to guide district leaders to intentionally achieve equity for all students as they implement planning and their decision-making processes so that all students receive what they need to achieve you know to reach their full academic and social potential and i and i know we just gone through the first round where principals are coming in to talk to dr reed and i'm part of those meetings as well you know to uh to talk about their initial plans for the year um i also you know asked the plan to be sent to me in advance you know just so i can review it it's a working document so what they do with the first round

020you know it's not like it's laid in stone you know they have many chances opportunities to revise the plan you know for the year and in the year we see what it looks like and uh and then during these meetings the participants you know identified points of pride no challenges and they create objectives for the short and long-term future to address issues of equity and knowing this could include like desegregated data to identify underserved marginalized groups such as the i ready data does and the district data surveys that they have uh conducted in their buildings and how and how are and how they are focusing on domain two of the equity framework so these sap goes know integrate and align with appropriate equity tactics and in the district strategic plan you know the way the

021sap template has been redone by the horizons is to ensure that all efforts are made to make sure that students learning is rooted in our commitment to equity to the equity work that we're doing as a district and the rej or the rest of the race and educational justice central office this is something that i'm working on trying to put together as i said i believe the whole holding cabinet accountable for the work that we're doing as a district where every department also i'm asking as well to have a member from that department to be part of a um i guess a central office team and a central office team you know making will consist of somewhere from tech department transportation support services we're working with those groups now we haven't we haven't we are

022in the process of identifying a person from each of those departments that i will meet with monthly and the purpose of the committee is develop you know that lens for the work and awareness and awareness of the processes and rules that might be creating unknown barriers within their department and to talk about the work the department is doing as well it's really to develop that lens around around the equity work the socc event that we are and that's the staff of color coalition and we started doing this a couple of years ago and our vision when we uh created this was a cultivated safe space that offers members and guests of the adoption members of the district who who identifies as people of color the feeling of being truly represented in ways that they are

023not in their job or community as well as provide an outlet to have authentic and open and open conversations you know to share their joys sorrows you know anything that might be going on at the time within their within their professional lives and sometimes it gets very personal it's very emotional and means to affirm the unique experiences and identities and and basically to create a support system that promotes empowerment and resiliency now our plan is to meet once a month you know last year we met uh every other month we're gonna try to meet once a month this year i really do think uh the zoom makes it a little bit easier you know providing people have the time you know and i know it's like you know for many years in the district you

024know i was the only person to cover in district office and being the only one means you stand out you know and it's very uncomfortable you know and when i was the only um person of color you know um i remember feeling along you know and i don't want people to feel that way you know when we bring in staff of color we want them to feel welcome and wanted here so that's the whole purpose behind having staff staff of color coalition you know per no personally i've always believed that when we stand together when we stand together if any people stand together you know i'm usually stronger you know in those connections you know and we have a lot of people color that we've brought into northshore school district and we're breaking down some

025of those doors in many ways and we need to share those experiences to inform and inspire others and that's what the purpose of the soccer event is about also is folks coming here wanting to know how can i you know you know move forward in my career and so um we like we want to share those things with them you know and help them along the way as they as they uh move through north shore school district hiring hybrid and retention strategies you know there's this one there's always that wondering or confusion over diversity hiring it's it sometimes lies in the mistaken perception that the goal of diverse recruitment and hiring is to increase workplace diversity for the sake of diversity you know that is not the goal here no we want the best possible

026candidates you know diversity hiring is is hiring based on merits with special care taken to ensure procedures are free from bias you know you know schools our all of our schools should be representative of everyone and when we are when we a teaching staff does not reflect the diversity of our schools in our community it points to a systematic inequity that needs to be addressed and it is the right thing to do you know in working with hr the goal of diversity is to identify and remove potential barriers in the screening process you know how we shortlist candidates you know the interviewing process and to assure that hiring teams are aware of their own blind spots you know so they did so they don't annoyingly discriminate against qualified or diverse candidates you know we want

027to make sure that that the work we're doing in the district and ensure that the uh procedures are free from biases and we've done a lot of that work with hr you know we've examined you know just our brochures you know our videos and our workplace website and our social profiles that are out there for the public to see you know doug hale and uh his team you know we work quite closely together on making sure that we are putting the best picture out there for north shore you know in attracting uh candidates of color but as i said we want the very best people when we when we when we are hiring staff where where am i at now rana i have no clue i can't see you nadine you're still on this slide

028i think um at this point you want to introduce dr jones uh no not yet but i will wait well dr jones i guess you can come in on this slide you know because we are we are talking about retention of staff and i know you're to be mentoring a lot of folks of color so if you want you want to talk about that now i really would appreciate it we bring you in now because dr jones there he may be muted i'm sorry yeah i was muted so so thank you i i have dogs as uh dr reed knows so they they make noise so i wanted to make sure i was muted but uh anyway i was saying thank you for for inviting me and um you know in terms of uh what

029dr bigelow has has uh mentioned to me about this uh this study session you know the the the issue of coaching is um well first of all i i applaud you for doing it um it's something that's that's very important it's not done in in many sessions and having been a per person of color who many times throughout my career i've been quote unquote the only one and it can feel um you can feel so alone you can and even if people are supporting you [Music] not feeling the support the way you want to feel it and to have someone just even even if it's to vent to to have someone that you know you can call that you can talk with about about anything and when it comes to um racial issues or racial

030justice uh being able to to talk with another person of color about some of these issues um is extremely important and in terms of re being able to retain some of these individuals giving them an environment where they feel safe and where they feel supported and and not only about the emotional things but also about um personal goals personal goals of achievement how how do i uh connect my personal goals with the goals of the district you know um each school is to have a strategic action plan you know how how how do those three things uh the district my building and i um how do we match up with each other and how do how do i be successful for in this environment um and so there there are a number of things that

031um one can be supported on um the the issue of i i'm happy to see transformative racial and educational justice in north shore and when you think about that rather than transactional it's deliberate it's planned it doesn't all always go the way you want it to go but it's also much of it and i i'm glad to hear you say disaggregated data uh dr bigelow because looking at though you're talking about educating students you can't get into issues of transformative educational justice unless you know the data so you've got to be able to understand what data to collect and how to disaggregate those data so that you can make the right decisions and that you can know not just a not just the group but individual students that you know these students the and and

032and the administrators that you're bringing in they have to be able to understand that and feel comfortable doing it because even though we're talking about you're talking about retention of the new administrators et cetera the bottom line is education of students that's for me that's always the bottom line and how do we do that in an equitable fashion [Music] there are pockets of students that have been neglected in every school district i would say not just north shore how do you figure out what students those are and and what to do about it so having someone who understands many of those things and and and again and just to be and to be available to bounce some things off to give some um i don't i don't want to say give advice all the time

033because that connotes something else but to give them alternatives to think about uh giving decisions um as if some of these are new leaders beginning to understand the difference between job assignment and delegation having them having them try to figure out what things that they need to do and what things they need to give to someone else on the staff an assistant so whatever those particular needs are they need to have someone they can call on and just ask a question bounce some something happens and the person wants to [Music] respond to maybe have someone to give a call to and say hey this is what i'm feeling right now this is what i want to do should i do this or should i not and have somebody guide them through the thought process about

034why are you feeling what has happened why are you feeling this what's going to happen what's the outcome if you don't send this email or what's the outcome if you do so those are those are some of the things that i that let's say uh i had i had a coach and a mentor and that those those were some of the things that uh i learned from from her do you really want to send this email okay [Music] but again i'll say for the third time have just having someone there that you know you can count on and just just just just to talk with just to bounce things off of just to help you make decisions about things and someone um who looks like you and who has been through some of the things

035that you're going through even if it's been in a different situation i was uh at one point i was the the first um vice corporate vice president in a in a corporation um first person of color there was a corporate vp that was a lonely time uh and and and the ceo hired um of someone who with whom he had worked before as a senior vice president who became my boss and she was a person of color and she became one of my mentors and that was one of the best things that ever happened to me so having someone on there is very important i don't know if you want me to be just any more specific than that dr bigelow but i think that's good i mean i think what i didn't explain very

036well was that you know we've actually come in you know support staff of color you know as you pointed out you know having someone who's been through it that looks like you you know um a lot of times explanations are not needed yes it's just understood and i think it's it's what your purpose is this year and we appreciate you being part of the team this year dr jones i have just having uh having another layer of support is important no i totally agree i don't agree and uh you'll be working with yara and once again you know we it's up to staff you know uh we have many staff of color this year and has been working with them you know a lot of them are in their buildings and as you pointed out

037also i know what it's like to be a place where you're the only one so we don't want staff to feel that way we want to retain the staff that we have because they're all extremely qualified and good people and so you're going to help support that this year and we appreciate that well i'll be there i just wish i could fly out more often i miss being there we missed you all right thanks dr jones i appreciate it okay all right good seeing everybody bye-bye um chris just as a heads up we're on the racial and educational justice department work slide okay thanks thanks ryder office hours okay so we're going to try something this year we're going to have office hours and what doesn't look like we want to find time at least

038right now we're thinking every other week to find two hours as a department we're just open for questions you know for people to come and talk to us we have learned that even times we've met with administrators and staff within those conversations some of the best learning has taken place and we want to continue those ongoing conversations and so we're going to have an open time just two hours maybe over the week when staff can visit us administrators teachers no even a board you want to visit us you're welcome also visit us as well you know come in and just chat with us you know about what's ever on your mind you know around around the issues of equity or diversity um but we want to make ourselves available you know you know to the

039um you know to administrators and teachers you know within the district now as i said some of the most meaningful dialogue has come when we have that one-on-one and i think it's because you know there's that sense of not being judged you know that they they feel they can be somewhat honest about what they're thinking and feeling you know without it without being in front of a whole large crowd so we're going to try that this year uh table talks i think that's ava chris you're going to talk about counselors oh gotcha i'm on that one all right uh counselors okay so we're looking at uh counselors this year to uh come in and train our counseling staff on racial battle fatigue or racial trauma you know with um with the incredible events happening uh

040nationally towards people coloring our country you know do we understand how these profound events and the related issues are impacting you know our students of color and with whom we uh interact with every day you know we're in the process of working with a counselor slash trainer you know i've had many conversations with her i'm trying to find a really good qualified person and we first started talking about just training our counselors as we thought about it and just and just zoom the way of doing zoom now we can train up 300 people so we thought about now looking at counselors nurses possible administrators you know get them trained on racial trauma or in racial battle fatigue you know let me explain what that what that is you know this is fine it's defined as

041a social psychological stress response associated with being a person calling predominantly white institutions you know these conditions emerge from uh constantly facing racial or dismiss racially dismissive demeaning and sensitive or hostile racial environment and individuals for many of our students racism is in everyday ordinary experiences which which many contend with on a regular basis a lot of times it's in the form of microaggression or covert acts but cumulative efforts a racism weighs on the body you know it weighs in the body physically and emotionally and mentally and it's important that to bring awareness and understanding what our students of color staff and community members are dealing with and to be able to guide them in ways which they can get help you know um these these stressors can lead you know to long-term health issues

042and cause people of color to lose confidence in themselves know their self-worth you know and so i am in the process of just trying to find someone to come in and train you know our administrators our team around these issues to help support students you know and this could look like in the form of self-care or or professional counseling you know or or alternative coping strategies you know such as being being part of the networking you know getting involved in you know in a network or affinity groups you know like yourself you know participating in social justice classes you know a number of things that can be done to ease that tension those stressors so i'm gonna be uh in the process probably for the next month or so and trying to find someone to

043come in and do a training you know for our counselors possibility our nurses also administrative team depends on how large we want to go yes and we also have a series of professional development opportunities for our district administrators building administrators and educators and it can be frustrating at times to be in 2d environments and not being able to see people in person and that has also afforded us the opportunity to be rethinking professional development and best practices and strategies for that and as has actually allowed us to be able to open up professional development for educators at a scale that we otherwise wouldn't be able to in person so incredibly negative circumstances and reasons for the virtual settings and it has also allowed us to be creative and innovative about the ways that we've been

044developing and thinking about professional development one of the things that we're doing at every administrative team meeting with district and building admin we've been able to carve out time for racial and educational justice within each of those time frames and so they're once a month the atms are three hours long but we've been able to have about an hour of that for racial and educational justice work and leadership and i think that they've been incredibly meaningful this year i think dr edy you could attest to that um especially last week um dr eden and i had a very candid conversation around current events around the social uprisings and around the harm that continues to be inflicted on black women and girls today and i was talking about my own personal experiences as a black woman

045not just working professionally but also just living in this time and space right now and how that impacts me and how i know that it's impacting our administrators and educators and students of color and so i think that from there i think it was a pretty emotional meeting but there was also a lot of intellectual labor that was going into that and a lot of critical self-reflection time for our administrators to get into small groups and talk about how they can strengthen um their allyship practices how we can better look out for one another and how we can continue to move this work forward productively and intentionally so that's one of the pds that we've been focused on another one is thinking about professional development for educators and in person settings it's hard because you

046have to get um substitute teachers and think about the spaces for bringing um thousands of staff members together but with these virtual settings we've been able to rethink that and and we've also shifted from thinking about it as a pd scope and sequence um to a pd syllabus and that's because this work requires us to be thinking broadly about these concepts um broadly about what's happening in the world and what's happening in education and then able to take that more broad information and bring that back down to the school or classroom or department level and so we've carved out this syllabus it's a working document so we're adding resources as we go um later on reynold will share with you the schoology platform that we've created which is a place for educators to go to

047share resources and exchange dialogue and that's been a great opportunity because it's getting us to think more broadly about why this work matters and how it's still impacting us today and how we can be educating our students and educating ourselves and then there's that also that direct application strategy for how they can be bringing that into the classroom so that's another thing that we've added and are already working on this year another thing is that we've shifted the language from um equity and diversity teams to racial and educational justice school teams and so we're also providing professional development to them we're utilizing this book this year culturally responsive school leadership by muhammad khalifa we chose this book because there's diagrams in here there are sections for there's case studies to be looking at there's discussion

048questions i mean it breaks it down like for teachers for administrators for central office personnel and so we'll be utilizing this book as we work through pd with our racial educational justice school teams and leads another thing is our racial and educational justice district committee which has multiple district i'm not going to say stakeholders we're shifting the language to shareholders because each of us shares a part of this north shore community so we're utilizing the term shareholders now and trying that term on but we will be holding monthly virtual meetings with them as well to continue that work and then chris mentioned earlier table talks table talks are are an idea that we had to be bringing in community members so that it's not just our department's voices in terms of professional development but we're

049bringing in community members to also be amplifying their voices in this work too um and again that'll happen in virtual settings as well um rana can you go to the next slide please another critical part of this work is student voice and leadership it's it needs to be part of everything that we do it's our grounding why in education is for students but it also has to be with students because students have a great deal of knowledge about their experiences we need to value embodied knowledge we need to value experiential knowledge um and we need to be um utilizing their voices in ways that make them be able to take on leadership roles and that values the voices that they already have one of the things that i started doing last year was going out

050to the black student unions at all the high schools and we wanted to have an opportunity to bring them all together and so we organized this field trip to the northwest african-american museum in seattle and it was a great opportunity at first we went down there and all of the schools were in different corners of the room kind of sticking to their own um bsu and then we went around as um adults in the room and we're like this is the time to be building community with another this is the time for you to be making friendships across schools um and and then they started to do that and by the end there was this lunchtime experience where they were all together and you couldn't tell which school they were from um and it was

051just it was beautiful and after that we thought about how can we continue to be bringing students together across schools um so we're creating this bsu alliance this year we had our first meeting in the summer time i think it was july and it was virtual but it was a time again for them all to come together and we'll be doing that this year again virtually but we're also thinking about how to extend um that type of concept into additional student groups um another thing that we did there were a few student petitions that were floating around this summer i'm talking about like is this work happening is that work happening and we were like yes it is and renault will later talk about how we're being more transparent about the work that we're doing

052on our website platforms but from there i i reached out to a few students who are white currently at one of our north shore high schools about the work that they're wanting to do um and i had also gotten an email from a few students who are white who are north shore school district alumni and i brought them together for again one mentoring so that they can be mentoring each other but two thinking about how they can utilize their voice and their positionality to engage in this work and to be allies but to display what even moving past allyship means and looks like so together as this group we met with them and then again for the student leadership part i kind of sent them on their own and i was like i don't want

053to oversee you or surveil what you're doing but together as a group they created this really great resource bank and guide that's on our website about resources for allyship and they broke it down by different district shareholders so that's another thing that's been created and we're going to continue to figure out how we can partner with them and expand that and the last thing that i'm really excited about is starting a student social justice task force in north shore because there are so many students that are utilizing their voices and so many voices that need to continue to be amplified and so this will be another opportunity to bring students together to make sure that that's happening and so that they can be building relationships across schools and now i'm going to turn it over

054to srinivas thank you sorry okay got it yeah hashtag assistant principal at lockwood elementary school and last couple of years or three years i would say been working closely with the racial and educational justice department um so i work uh closely with the asian indian population which is one of the largest with about 16.8 percentage of them are and they are increasing gradually and uh oh boy they have needs even though they have uh you know uh maybe academically or economically they might be most of them may be at a better place but still they do have needs and i communicate with them regularly um in three four different languages which uh asian indian languages which i'm familiar i can speak i can write also and they appreciate that they feel close to the home

055when i communicate or talk to them on the phone also so like i update them with what is coming up i encourage them to participate in the community activities and the district activities um and and share their ideas and as well you know support their students and support other support of their families too and the second initiative is assisting parents and students with academic social emotional even mental health issues also uh this because of the cultural background i would say you know they do not come out and admit that openly that they do have these kind of issues because it is a social stigma so i work closely with i am actually a non-profit leader for the last 20 45 years in this community and we support so many communities nationally internationally also so uh

056i support them with our fellow organizations and as well as some professionals who are on mental health and as well as uh social emotional like i work closely with the doctors our counselors and so on we we organize some events over the weekends something like that to support them answer questions and point them to the right direction to the best of our ability um so that you know they are there to come and take support uh from us so and assist parents with that and um again over the weekend i have a privilege of being a hindu priest you know they come to me more openly i wear double hats you know so they come to me openly they either share the information without having to worry about confidentiality or anything like that so that

057helps me to support our families who are going through those kind of issues and guiding asian indian parents and para educators to become i know now there are so many power educators indians you know who have some of them have a bachelor's degree in education or master's degree in education but they don't know how to make the transition to become a teacher over here and they face so many hurdles so last two years i was able to uh support and as well as guide them to seek certification or go to the university and so on now we have at least a half a dozen or plus uh teachers who are in line and the matter is getting them to into the classroom you know that's what as dr jones said before earlier and dr bigelow

058also mentioned that you know how we are trying to hire people of color into the system but there are some systematic systemic challenges that we are facing and how we can bring them into the classroom maybe you know the work that we are doing helps administrators to um you know look into hiring people of color especially asian indian population i'm hoping that we'll have some success this year and as well as the next year so i guide and mentor them how to seek certification how to become a teacher i constantly prepare them and support them uh how to be prepared for the you know best for the interview and succeed in the intro so i'm feeling good about that but there is so much work to be done in that area and encouraging participation in

059school and community activities that is something that you know indian families or asian indian families are a little bit you know hesitant or shy or uh they don't do that when it's cultural again it's a long story so but they are able to get out there now and they're participating better and they're trying to be part of committees or school pdas and so on trying to voice their opinions and so forth and partnering with community organization to introduce and strengthen programs such as foreign language program we are looking into uh you know introducing some foreign languages that are very close to the heart of these people asian indians and as well as some there are some issues challenges that we are facing in terms of how the foreign language credits are being awarded to indian

060languages there are so many you know translations the translation that they use is absolutely you know not right and children are thrown off the test or they don't perform very well they fail they say that one why bother i don't get the credit it's why do i have to even bother studying my own language so i'm trying to work with the several department to make sure that when those gaps are eliminated and arranged last year we had like uh no never alone mental health decision you know along with in partnership with couple of other uh community organizations and as well as our own organization plus parent who lost this child for suicide you know he was instrumental in bringing in you know um we have a celebrity um and hollywood actress um and uh and

061we were able to bring in from you know experts from new york and who work with the never alone project it is called in sanjay not sanji gupta deepak chopra organization so our instrumental in doing that we continue to do that work and um and recently you know we conducted parent orientation programs in four different languages so that is really asian indian languages that's a good thing and parents appreciate it they participated and they're looking forward to more in their own languages these sessions sessions and as well as some support services too and um yeah that's what had been happening in the asian indian community so my goal is to you know bring more folks up asian indian origin into the classroom that way you know students and as well as families feel better that

062they can see a person of their own color and as well as person who speaks the same language i think that's going to be a big uh um support for the families and as well as students and i'm looking forward to you know make progress in that regard and thank you dr reed for all the support that you do with regard to my work and thank you dr bigelow and all the team and as well as the school but of course you know without you i don't think we can get this work done at all and compared to other districts i know i would say don't like to compare but you know uh we are in a better place when i share the news and they say oh my god your school district and your

063leaders are your board is absolutely amazing so i get the credit for that thank you thanks sweetie thank you chris do you want to talk about family liaisons okay well we do have them that's the first thing we do have family sometimes in the district so i'm working with elizabeth mesa you know and her team you know continuing to support you know our um latinx students you know they do a great job you know going out to meet families know where they are and when i when i do really mean where they are you know where to be at their homes or different locations in the community you know they just meet them wherever they are and they're doing an outstanding job continuing with that with that work you know and and i can't say

064enough good things about it and i don't really have much more to say about it than that except for she has a great team her and um her no i can't remember name uh the last name anyway but um that's really about all i have to say about that you know they're continuing to do a job they've always done yeah and then another thing really quick i just wanted to surface we're partnering with the nsd ptsa council this year and will be participating at their presidents and principals workshop on november 5th to talk about building and strengthening equitable collaborations and partnerships with families and communities this year so i'm incredibly excited um to do that and to be working with robin who is the head of that and i'm thinking about how we'll be presenting

065during that time for 45 minutes so and then the next thing we'll be talking about um melissa riley would you like to start with yeah hi it actually might make more sense to talk about the partnership with with uw first on the last slide if you're unaware this year north shore and school district and north shore foundations partnered with the university of washington um lawful to offer a series of teacher leadership academies each academy consists of three saturday sessions where um occurring in the fall and then three in the winter where um staff and north shore can come together focused on leading for equity so this despite the unprecedented time that we're in at the beginning of the school year over 50 staff from across the district signed up for and participated in a september

066orientation module and that was focused on really trying to understand the impacts of de-culturalization in our past and the educational ramifications of systemic oppression that's happened as a result in our schooling system and so now each northshore staff member is currently signed up for and participating in either teacher leadership for instructional equity or teacher leadership for youth and family engagement and the purpose of each academy is to help to build and enhance collaboration uh for instructional equity within and across the schools in each region as well as with the university um to leverage the cultural wealth of our youth and community voices when we first got together in september even though it was a harry start staff were very brave inquisitive they were reflective and they really engaged deeply in in intimate conversations about their

067own identities with people that worked in north shore but they hadn't ever met before which brought a level of community that was really powerful they engaged in courageous discourse last weekend thinking about and talking about artifacts or evidence that are barriers to educational justice within our system and the exchange was additionally powerful like i said because of the range of participants and so we've had members in our school district who are para educators nurses deans teachers from each of the high schools almost all of our middle schools more than half of our elementary schools and across programs and levels of content be engaged one one cornerstone of the partnership is in relation to the support we have from university of washington bothell's faculty to explore what's called participatory action research and so they're being led

068through a process in small teams and departments to collaborate on identifying a problem of practice that they as a team authentically desire to change and what i've noticed is that many are beginning to see the connections between things that they're reading like the khalifa text that ava held up is also a text they're reading in that program and how this is connecting those learning opportunities to the work that's being done in the schools with their administrative teams their leadership teams pbis and and the rej teams uh and so we hope to continue the partnership i know um beyond this school year and outside of the classes to continue to support the work that the that the groups are going to be um doing together and there's also um the desire to increase student voice through

069this partnership and offer an opportunity for our youth this summer and i'm also here to talk about our pre-k 12 ethnic studies framework and share a little bit about the pilot timeline so as part of north shore's four-year equity department plan under domain three to teaching and learning uh this year we've committed to continuing our charge with ethnic studies so if you'll refer to the documents that have been provided our objective is really to grow this team in size to accommodate the scope of the work as well as to develop the knowledge their knowledge of ethnic studies and and also the pedagogical skill set that's needed to develop a pre-k 12 ethnic studies framework this framework it will be broken down by grade bands preschool through second grade third through fifth sixth through eighth and

070ninth through twelfth and that will serve to aid teachers in integrating culturally responsive and relevant content and curriculum into practice in addition once the draft of the various frameworks are ready for trial use the work of the team will be to develop an ethics studies high school course uh the the framework that we speak of is also aligned with our diversity and equity policy and the high school course as well as the high school course and that's that's intended to promote the self-identity humanization and empowerment of all students healing for his historic trauma for excuse me healing from historic trauma and civic action as well as continued community engagement so in terms of the the timeline the work is tentatively set within a three-year plan and that's in its initial draft phase which you can

071see in enclosed materials that you have today due to covid and just trying to balance the needs within the system uh we are still finalizing our pilot process in partnership with our union as well as dr reed and we look forward to seeking interest from from teachers students family members and administrators within this next month and so because of that truncated timeline we're really committed to honing in on building a strong infrastructure within the framework that best supports teachers and students in the following school year we're excited about the opportunity to have that in place and then to kick off next year with something that can support teachers as they think about their practice with the support of the north shore schools foundations we've also funded the and secured the consultant as well as the

072books that we'll use to to study and learn together as a team to achieve our goals and then next year after moving beyond the development and the implementation phase the intent is to seek the approval of an ethics of an ethnic studies uh graduation requirement uh yeah in addition we just wanted to share that aligning this work effectively and achieving coherence is really essential so we are going to continue to watch closely the work that's happening at the state level as well as um with interest groups within washington and there's other states that are surrounding us that are putting ethnic studies policy in place as a whole in a whole state system we've also started a regional group for north side school districts shoreline and edmonds are part of that and we've invited a few

073more districts as well to join us they're all in varying phases of this work and so we feel like although it's in its infancy it's really an opportunity to grow in collaboration to benefit the students within and outside of north shore as well finally it's important to note that as we continue this work we will continue to work with our community partners and to seek input to maintain the in integrity of our process and the content within our framework and our courses um and let's eat here let's make sure so the other thing i wanted to share was that the continuation of this charge over the next few years will further engage and support north shore educators and the work in the in in the equity framework which which will intersect nicely with the ethnic

074studies framework it'll help our educators to become more knowledgeable about the histories of diverse ethnic racial and cultural groups so that they can better engage students by understanding the ways in which race and ethnicity culture language and social class intersect and influence students learning and their learning behaviors and the last thing i'd like to say is that my role as the assistant director of equity pedagogy is really interwoven within this parameter and across other parameters and so to that end i'd like to end by thanking dr reed for the opportunity um and the board for the opportunity um to be part of this work and for your vision for our students families and staff in north shore first you know talk about pride oh okay oh well yesterday was uh coming out day you know

075and it's a uh i normally mention that well it ties into what i'm talking about about june but it's also an awareness day deserved by many in the lgbtq community so talking about june we missed out on june this year which is pride month due to due to covet so um we hope this gym will be better you know we'll see what happens with that but uh we hope to um to continue to celebrate the impact you know lesbian gay bisexual and trans transgender individuals i've had on history and locally and locally and nationally and internationally the impact they've had on not only our country but throughout the entire world it's a great time to recognize the contributions no of those folks along with uh recognizing our students you know learn a little bit more

076about them you know their history you know a time to celebrate diversity you know consider the ways that we can contribute to create a more inclusive society you know pride might have celebrated every june you know and it's a tribute to those involved in the stonewall riots you know um so uh pride month you know it's also excellent time you know to um to meet with students especially those who are who are struggling around these issues you know to uh and the goal behind that you know conversations always you know are always uh we learn more when most uncomfortable and so uh in my experience you know talking to students around these issues along with adults you know we learned a lot about our lgbt community you know any justice they face and all that

077specs of their lives now we still hope to continue the tradition of the flagging district office and if covert is willing you know that's all going to pin nine data course and possibly other events that will be created by our district uh no subcommittee which that's which lgbt is their focus along with some of the many events they might be planning for the year as well and they're part of our larger committee all right and that's really about it so just look at hope hoping that we can uh make pride might happen this year for our students in our community another thing that i want to talk about is black lives matter at school um last year we participated in the national black lives matter at school week of action and that was ended by

078a community gathering on that friday and one of the things that we did was bring in students black students to engage in a student panel and that i facilitated for them and that was the opportunity to join hands and community around this work we often hear that this is political but really it's about our lives it's about honoring our lives valuing our lives recognizing our existence um and valuing our humanity and so we want all of our students to make sure that they feel seen heard and valued and humanized and so that's why we're engaging in this week and um even with that even with rena we'll talk about diversity engagement weeks and months but we want to be recognizing and valuing all of our students all of the time and that's one of the

079things that we're continuing to do with time carved out to recognize our different diverse communities within north shore and then i would also like it to recognize that it's national disability employment awareness month and turn it over to michael tully one of our regional assistant superintendents to talk about inclusionary practices in north shore well thank you ava um when i was asked to speak to this topic for a little bit um inclusionary practices but we have to ground ourselves into data a little bit and and why this ties directly to the disability justice movement that we need to continue to support our when you look at the data at the state level we know that less than four percent of our students actually have intellectual disabilities while ninety percent of our students with disabilities actually

080have uh typical intellectual uh functioning but then when you take that data and compare it to the fact that about 57 percent of our students with disabilities actually access general education classrooms um uh in that 80 to 100 percent of the time cap bracket there is a disconnect or discrepancy in our data we know that 90 of our students have the intellectual ability to function within the general education classroom but only of them actually are accessing the general education setting 80 90 100 of the time and that data point actually is lower for our students of colors is less than 50 that requires that we change our practice and change the way we address and serve our students to that end in 2019 the state legislature actually set aside 25 million dollars to focus on

081this particular topic and uh last year 10 10 million was made available for school districts to apply for uh professional development funds and this current year the 2021 school year is 15 million available for schools and school districts to apply for funding to increase professional development in an effort to focus on increased inclusionary practices within in schools and districts we have actually about 10 of our schools in north northshore school district that apply for and receive funding to support that and as as part of the state level inclusionary practices project so all of the schools in the north region of our district along with north shore middle school and woodenville high school are all involved in this work through those those grant funds the it's exciting work and it's it's it's going to be rewarding

082but that's not to indicate that we haven't been focused on this work prior to receiving these dollars this has been an interest of north shore school district for a while for example this past year we have was convened an inclusionary inclusive models and practices advisory committee charged by the superintendent to take a deep dive into this topic and come up with a set of recommendations as to how the district should move forward in increasing inclusionary practices within our system as you also may know as a result of our last bargain with our labor partner in nsea part of coming out of that bargain was the formation of a special education service model and staffing model work group that work group is taking a very close look at the way we are providing services to our

083students with disabilities in north shore and would take the recommendations from the inclusionary practices committee incorporate that in their discussion however as you know when we close schools last spring that these committees and the um the work group actually paused their work and haven't reconvened however we did get the set of initial recommendations from the inclusionary models and practices committee available we have those and as soon as those work groups and committees start competing again the special education service models and practice service and staffing models committee or work group will actually begin to take a look at that i say all that to say that north shore school district data has been going in the correct direction when we look at what we refer to as least restrictive environment data we are actually at six

084for the first time sixty percent of our students with disabilities are accessing 80 to 100 of our uh general education classrooms and on that data continues to move in the right direction i want to commend our all of our educators um our both our general education staff as well as our special education staff in making that possible thank you um and then i'll be speaking to diversity engagement but for the sake of time i might just show you all um diverse engagement and where that lives at the latter part of the presentation but for now we have a list on our internal and external facing website um um a list of monthly cultural observances with resources and other information for educators um this all the resources that are listed are optional for educators to use

085um and like i said i'll just go ahead and show you all where that lives on our internal side and then the resources that live on our external side in the last slide so i'm gonna move forward with data tracking and progress also sorry just really quickly i do want to end that previous section just by saying thank you to the school board for the black lives matter school board resolution that you passed um it means a lot to us and to north shore's community so i we do really appreciate that sorry i didn't want to cut you off um dave would you like [Music] yes um can you all hear me okay about a month ago uh mr hale came and presented to you a series of slides showing an increase in the number

086of staff of color that have been hired between i believe it was 2016 and 2019 and the numbers were impressive and it really showed some remarkable work that was taking place in multiple areas of the system to recruit and hire and retain staff of color in the north shore school district so we wanted to ask the next logical question what is the impact of that work on the experiences our students are having in school are more students seeing themselves represented in the administrators and the teachers and the office staff custodians para educators and bus drivers we know that it matters research in our own experience tells us that it's really important for students to have reflected back to them their language their culture their ethnicity their religion particularly from those who represent positions of significance

087outside their family not every student or excuse me not every person needs to represent that for them but certainly we know in in education there's not enough of those mirrors for our students of color not only do students need to see themselves represented in the institutions that serve them but parents need to see themselves represented in the institutions that serve them communities need to see themselves represented and institutions we know to be healthy must be representative of the communities that they serve we know from research and from our own experience that increasing diversity and educational staffing helps students and adults to prepare to live in a multicultural society it helps break down negative stereotypes it helps students and peers understand and confront racism helps expose all students and adults to multiple perspectives and there's ample

088research to show that it not only helps students of color but also white students in a number of different ways so how are we doing to create a more diverse more representative learning community you won't be surprised to know that there are there's a chart for that so to answer the question we pulled i had abel and doug help me pull hiring data from 2017 all the way through this current year the 20 2020 2021 school year um what we then did was highlight those students who are directly in contact with students every day or i should say would be if we weren't all sitting in front of our computers and them sitting in front of their computers so this is this is what a typical school day would be we should say on the

089far left you'll see a list of those job titles and descriptions they're pretty broad so for example you see clerical there typically that would include district level staff but we've taken those staff out and just the staff that would interact with kids on a daily basis like for example office managers are going to be represented here so then what we have is two categories we have staff of color and white staff the number of records that you see at the top for 2017-18 and 2021 school year are the number of staff holding those positions in those categories in that year so basically starting in 2017-18 and then this this present year what's the number of staff in those categories um some of the staff were hired that year many of the staff were already in

090that position during that year so for example in the first column you've got eight administrators of color in our elementary middle and high schools in 2017 and you have 17 currently in this year and then the last column there just represents the percent of difference over the last four years so you can take just a moment to take a look at that as chris said in the beginning of this presentation we're a system right and and i think as dr jones highlighted um when he's talking about transformative educational justice begins with an analysis of data and then asking your question asking the question what are we doing right and what can we do better every part of the organization has a role to play and has played certainly the raz have been working closely with

091chris and doug when we hire principals and assistant principals in our system and principals in turn work closely with raz's work closely with rick we're closely with chris and and doug similarly what we're trying to do is remove the barriers either mechanical or systemic barriers or the barriers of bias an example of mechanical or systemic barriers the practice i think somebody was noting earlier of just hiring either internal candidates taking only internal recommendations when you create a slate for interviews or just looking at your current interns rather than looking at everybody that you have access to and then of course there's many personal barriers and biases that we erect our preconceptions our predispositions to select and hire people who are i guess quote just like me we don't say that right what we say is

092that these people are a good fit right and um then eliminate a host of other possibly potentially better candidates in that process and and what this does inevitably is it locks us into a continuation of the same practices the same priorities the same expectations and unfortunately the same outcomes so what we are continuing to do is trying to remove these barriers in essence to increase the pool of qualified quality candidates that we can select from the very best so that's the the work that you see represented there there's still work to be done even though you see the needle moving in the right direction nationally teachers the teacher pool you're looking at 75 to 80 are white and you can see ours even though we're moving the needle 86 percent of our elementary teachers are

093white and our community as we talked about at the very beginning is roughly 54 white and so there's work continuing to be done to make sure that all of our students are represented in our staff appreciate that you know i think what this does show it's um it shows that we're serious about the commitment you know to putting people you know in roles with the goal of not only increasing our diversity staff but also make sure we have good qualified candidates and reach attention and i've always said one of the biggest thing diversity does is diversity attracts diversity you know we want to make sure that we retain people or attract more qualified candidates you know in rows of teaching you know whatever they might be classified or certified thanks a lot dave showing that

094i think now we're going to move in second time uh rana i think you're on next all right so i'm going to be talking about um the website and our communication transparency um so when we're talking about the external the internal and the schoology platforms that uh we created um i'd like to frame this in the way that it is all these are all working web pages and documents which are constantly being updated um to provide the newest information for educators and district community members so just keep that in mind as we as we plug along um and also i'm going to share my screen how do i exit out of this there we go so you will see oops technology so fun okay um so on our main uh web page we have updated

095our names from equity and diversity equity and diversity to reach racial and educational justice um you may see that things haven't really shifted around or changed but the bones of some of the things on here have changed um we have added a page for scholarship opportunities so we can go here and click on it and there are now this is a new page so it's still being built out there's a scholarship opportunity open now for graduating seniors that's due on the 21st um and they can click on this and they can go ahead and download the application and see if they're eligible to apply um we also have let's see here the racial and educational justice news so this is where we hold all of our newsletters um we just came out with a newsletter

096in september of 2020 um and it really talks about our name change and uh you know national hispanic and latinx month and a lot of new resources that we have on our website um and we also have this is the part where i'm i was talking about um that our our website is like an ever living document that's constantly being updated this page is probably the most updated we recently created um ava's talking about working with students graduated and alumni students who created a whole document on what white allyship means and this is i think this is a five page document that is for elementary middle and high school and really walks you through what each document or what each link means and how um educators can use this in their classrooms um and to

097go back so i did also just want to note that um we updated our website to reflect our new department name change we want our we want our community to be very clear in what our role is um in the district which is why we placed education in the title um this name change makes the statement that addressing these issues isn't a luxury or optional part of education in north shore it places an emphasis on the work that needs to be done and provides a clear focus for us all i think that's really important as we continue this work as a district community and so with that being said i'm going to navigate to our internal site so this site is for specifically for educators and this is kind of where we house all of

098our training modules and this is where i was talking about earlier about the diversity engagement um we have a list of cultural and religious observances with a description of what each month kind of represents and what each month means as well as a couple of resources um to provide educators with like a preliminary resource as they continue on their um research in bringing these months to the classroom um so we have a couple of these up here and this is also constantly updated um and then i'm gonna switch over to our resource page on our internal website which has our updated syllabus on it which well ava was talking about earlier this is what we're going to be um presenting on each month for those wednesdays for uh professional development and then if you click

099here this is our schoology platform that will take you to the racial and educational justice professional development resources so far we have 18 members this is for um staff and educators who are interested in um attending our professional development this is where we hold all of our resources and we have some discussion posts here to kind of create that open forum and constant flow of communication um and let's see here i was going to go to outlets resources and in our resources tab we have all the resources that we list in our professional development um and i think let's see i think that is it for me i know we have two minutes left so i'm trying to save some time i'll throw it back to chris well with the last two minutes i just

100wanna i just wanna say i really do appreciate you know uh the school board and dr reed for your ongoing supporting leadership and making this work possible you know with without your support you know none of this would be possible so it truly is appreciated and i'm going to open up the questions from that point well um i of course have a couple of questions and um i'll preface it by recognizing that we have a very limited amount of time so i'm going to ask them and not expect a complete answer but maybe at a later date um get that information the first question is that thank you for your kind words and your appreciation of us uh it is very kind um however we are still a very white board and our opportunities for

101professional development around this work is extremely limited so any suggestions and um i'm not sure you wanted to open it up for us to come to your office hours because i think we will take advantage of that but any ideas you have around book learnings or classes or anything um that we can do to learn as a board would be greatly appreciated um and then my my second question is i'm curious about um i'm gonna call them covet learnings both negative and positive that we've had around this work over the last six months what are we learning about discipline data bullying i'm hearing that a lot of those things are down and so is you know what what are we thinking that we may take with us going forward and so just curious if that

102kind of in-depth studying is happening okay you want me to answer those right now with 30 minutes or you'll be no no no what i preface that with i recognizing those are very uh lengthy and so just to take with you and and later at some date um yeah i would do that and feel free to come to our two-hour work office work office times i'm really i'd love to talk to you you know so so feel free to take me up on that okay you got a lot of head nodding from the board be careful [Music] and then if if you're done director hayes i have i have a couple questions too i'm going to limit it to two also so under i this might be affected by covet and might not but i'm

103really interested in trying to get y'all's input in how to measure climate for students you know the the last line in the parameter um it i think was our first attempt as a board at trying and trying to find a way to quantify what might be unquantifiable and so i think this has shifted and coveted since we don't know how long we're going to be in this coveted state perhaps that makes it even trickier to try to get a feel on but ultimately um i wrote down ava i think that you're the one who said this basically this works about to better look out for one another right and especially our students and our staff but how can we um start to get a feel for how that climate's going for our students and that's

104just a pondering i have and i think it's not a simple one so that definitely don't answer unless you want to answer it right now i'm thinking that might be a tough one and then my um second question i'd love to learn more about is is the um teams in the school buildings i know this is something that um there's lots of references made to you know how things are done across different districts and i think um we are from what i can tell kind of leading the way in this work a little bit on taking what is all this great work being done in the administrative office and certainly the board's desire to keep sponsoring and and helping support this work and then but how how do you oper operationalize systems but also the

105hard work that goes into this as well and so i'm very curious about that as well i would love to learn more and and i'd like to also make a plug for director hayes request for um for your suggestions on our learning i did a lot of reading this summer too i'm sure my fellow board members did as well but any suggestions you have would really welcome so thank you again for all your hard work it's so appreciated dr cass i can give you a quick answer as you said it's as we as i said again it's hard to measure hearts and minds you know it really really is you you can't measure how many hearts and minds that we change today but you can get a feeling when you walk in the building that

106is different and you can talk to students you know they will share with you if it's different if they feel included they feel welcome there they feel like they belong i think all of those things are good are good indicators especially with students of color how they feel about their building they feel safe you know do they feel valued seen heard no no is their voice no not something that teachers and administrators appreciate so i think all of those things you know are good indicators you know of um a signs of improvement or change in a building you know and i not when i say improvement i mean i know buildings who have worked hard on that and you know the difference when you walk in the building it's just a vast difference and you

107know and that's when we can talk about at some other time but we have some buildings who haven't done a really good job of that thanks dr piccolo i appreciate that if i could i just want to take a second to thank you all so very much for this presentation uh it's just been so educational for me and you know for all of the work that that you guys are doing i i think i speak for the rest of the board when i say we're so very proud and i think dr bigelow i'll take you up on your office hours that is fine i look forward to meeting with you this is hard work and um it takes like it takes everybody's team and i so appreciate the guest that was here today because it

108takes all of us to make it work you know it can't be just one department it's got to be embedded throughout the entire district so i want to thank tally you know uh michael david [Music] thank you all for being here today i really appreciate it and dr jones as well yeah i'd just like to thank you so much for all this groundbreaking work really it's you're building such a great foundation and i like how you're doing it with it with i mean you're really building a foundation that stretches across all the parameters of need i think so it's very comprehensive and you're touching all the aspects of the district um you know from the top down and then out to the students so it's going to be very exciting to see how you build

109upon you know intentional programs in the school buildings and you know what our ethnic studies curriculum looks like i'm very excited to hear and learn more about that but thank you so much for all your time and efforts on this such important work as you know all right dr bigelow and team um and as director kogan on with us i am dr reed yeah any questions or comments for the team yeah i did have a couple questions that i wrote down that you know i'd like to share with you dr reed on the two by twos but just in you know echoing what my colleagues have said i'm so delighted to see all this work and so excited about the potential where this might be able to bring our students in our community i love

110the fact that we're focusing on getting students connected and together also providing resources for staff and training for staff i think it's really going to make a big difference the focus on hiring people of color within the district throughout the district is really going to put us in a much better place i'm really happy for our community and excited about this work to continue so thank you all okay with that any parting words dr reed no just really appreciate the work and the team and i think what you've seen this afternoon is a real growth in the work from even a year ago where um the work really sat within dr biglow's department and i think one of the big moves has been spreading that work out even though our racial and educational justice department

111leads the work it's not just their work it's all of our work and i think you'll see that um i think you have seen that across many different departments and all schools so really proud of the work that's going on great well thanks again everyone we really appreciate it look forward to talking with you sooner or sooner than later and we'll fill up the office hour schedule there dr bigelow and the rest of you soon so you'll see us soon enough um i guess that is our meeting today i'll call this being adjourned and we'll regroup again in about 20 minutes or so for our school board meeting thank you