001okey dokey well seeing that we are live and are officially recording i'd like to call the meeting of the south san francisco school unified school district board of trustees to order um beginning with a roll call please trustee baker frozen trustee murray here vice president richardson president lujan president okay oh vice president richardson perfect good to see you vice president richardson okay this brings us to the pledge of allegiance um trustee baker would you like to lead us in the pledge this evening oh i'd be happy to please join me i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all uh president lujan you're muted thank you dr moore i was having a great
002conversation with myself so first trustee baker thank you for leading the pledge and that now brings us to the communications portion of this evening public comments may be submitted in advance with the link that is on the website beginning last thursday and ended today at 3 p.m um the comments that are submitted in advance are currently on the website and available for anyone who is interested under the board meetings if the meeting is recorded individuals who are attending as attendees may address the board concerning school business not on the agenda but public comment cannot be acted upon or discussed by the board unless placed on the agenda at a subsequent meeting in accordance with the law of the brown act the board may request staff to respond orally at the meeting or in writing at
003a future time so at this time siam i'm going to turn it over to your expertise thank you president good evening i'll be calling on speakers doing public comment in random order to our attendees if you would like to speak please use the race hand feature on the zoom meeting platform now attendees that have called in can dial star 9 to raise your hand speakers will have three minutes to give their remarks you will hear a tone when your time begins when 30 seconds remain and when time has expired once time is expired we will move on to the next speaker apologies in advance if i mispronounce your name okay so ray's hand has been enabled but i do not see anyone that okay here we go the first speakers samantha avila please go ahead
004oh i'm sorry give me a moment for the timer okay please go ahead i bored um i just uh this one's gonna be short couple remarks because i know it's a monday and that we're all pretty tired already um so i would just like to say that um you know i'm just kind of interested on where our money is being spent um looking at nicole anderson's website there's just it seems like there's kind of like a there's um the counseling is provided through many counties and i'm just you know they've been showing up to a lot of school board meetings i'm kind of just as a student i'm kind of interested in you know knowing where like this money is being spent and how much is it because i know counseling is can be pretty
005expensive so that's just one of my concerns and also one of my other concerns is as a student meeting with counselors this pandemic has been like it's kind of if you catch them you catch them and if you don't you don't and it's not their fault because i go to south city high school we have like a thousand two hundred plus students and there's only three counselors so well only three academic counselors and then with miss um we have a wellness counselor and that would be for it but she's not in charge of that workload and just comparing to some of my other high school friends it's kind of sad when they're like oh yeah well we have like we have like a whole wellness department and we just have one wellness counselor although i'm
006appreciative that we have one it's just not fair to our students that we have one wellness counselor compared to schools that have like many for their multiple students and i just really want that to be one of the main focuses when we're talking about like removing cops out of schools especially because you know one of the main focuses is that when you remove cops out of schools you implement restorative justice and i would also like to call for school-wide um well school school district-wide uh restorative justice training i feel like it's only being offered to those that like really want it and it's only like seats um but i think that's what we need we need to push um we need to push for restorative justice training and practices for all our teachers and all
007our like staff members because if we're going to work in a school and we want to raise children that you know have the power to be and um to do something and we preach about equity it's only fair that we have those things and also i just call for i the main thing i call for is just more counselors it's just unfair to us that we only have that the elementary schools don't have any counselors that we only have like 14 academic counselors across our whole district for like 8 000 plus students and i guess that's just my whole thing a restorative justice and to get cops out of schools and more counselors thank you next speaker is marcela rivera please go ahead hi there um yeah i'm just interested to hear more about what
008you guys have found since your last meeting um i think it was kind of concerning last time i came and some of the consultants were like so far behind on where our school district is specifically um that's referring to the fact that they didn't know that we didn't have an mou which i know is like a shocking point but i think that that's something that we had discovered a long time ago so i just think that looking at where we're spending our money as a school board and if we're spending it on consultants they better bring the information instead of being kind of far behind on the information with that said i think if we're looking at money i know that police and schools isn't a um expense that the school board takes on but
009i think as a school board you have to be brave enough to push the city to help reallocate those funds towards like counseling better books better facilities you know better sports equipment everything that kids actually need um and i think that does go along with training for teachers and i think if we're looking at equity i think yeah they need to see more training on equity for our educators because i had been through several conversations with my teachers um k through 12 who when it came to talk about academics they would question if i was even able to keep up with school work and be able to take ap classes when i was excelling as a student academically and i could see that they were not asking my asian and white peers the same questions
010and i think that there is a mindset that needs to be changed and i do understand that this is a systemic thing but i think if we're looking at points of ways to break down this systemic racism that we're facing that taking police out of schools is a huge step so that students can feel more comfortable in the classroom and you know at sport events at the dances whatever it may be um i think that that's ridiculous that there's only 14 counselors an entire district with like 8 400 students and there's none in elementary schools and i think that um you know at the elementary school age your mind is you know you're just a learning like human and are curious about the world and i think having more counselors in elementary schools would be
011a huge um benefit for our district so i think looking into that would be helpful um i yield my time thank you next speaker is uh danny yano oops sorry okay danny anna please go ahead i had done sorry i had done mute um hi good evening my name is danny yano i'm speaking tonight as a school teacher as a middle school teacher not as president of the union even though i am as a teacher at westborough middle school on the west side of our district i am always acutely aware of the privilege to teach at that school well of the privileged position of that school that is that that school um does not deal with very many low-income kids not as many special needs kids as the east side schools do we have a
012lot fewer english language learners we have a lot we have fewer special ed students and i just want to remind the board that equity means more money going to educate kids who need who need who are who have who are needier when you when you budget for our district you need to look at parkway you need to look at los cerritos you need to look at the underserved schools and the unders under under served students and make sure that they're getting everything that they need because um that's that's true equity thank you next speaker is liliana rivera please go ahead hi board um i just had a couple of comments i wanted to make regarding uh the issue of police in schools and then what the money should be spent on instead uh i was
013made aware that the case load for the counselors right now is like really beyond the scope of like what any human should be reasonably expected to do so i would like to see the board consider the fact that instead of investing in um cumulative measures such as having police and schools that they should reallocate that funding for other programs or staff that are trained and have gone to school for like so many years to understand how to support kids um i never like talked to my counselor that much when i was at school like i definitely had kind of bad experiences where like they would kind of brush you off or act like you're not like smart enough to go to college or whatever but um it wasn't until i went to like a predominantly
014white college um that i had really easy access to talk to a counselor and a therapist like at my school it was like really easy and like i just don't think that that's right that like that was something that was kind of like a given and like uh predominantly white institution but like then you look at other schools in south city who like they need it the most like they go through so much um and they don't have that kind of access and then like obviously the kids are acting up because they're dealing with all this stuff at home and then the teachers are like oh this kid is like out of control like done then they just get written off but it's really doing a disservice and it's really like um not being cognizant
015of these kids futures when you don't give them the opportunity to kind of better themselves and instead you just punish them at every chance that you get or act like they're quote unquote bad kids when they really just need um to be supported in the way that like students in white bridge school districts are supported um that was all that i had to say uh thank you thank you next speaker is andrew top please go ahead oh hi my name is andrew shaw i'm a south san francisco high school student um and just hearing about that other thing one other speaker said about how there's only 14 counselors within the entire school district um i think it's kind of concerning because i know that especially during this pandemic it can be really stressful for students
016i myself been stressed and i'm an ap case i'm an ap student and i know kids who aren't even an ap are probably 1000 times more stressed as i am sometimes too and just earlier this week i think i saw my sister got some art supplies and i saw a bunch of other students because art supplies and i see how happy they are to receive all these um funding and resources just for being an art student and i'm like really glad that they're getting these resources and tools so that they can like be more um access to these art programs and get more help but kind of sad to hear how it took a global pandemic for them to get these things and i think the school board and the city needs to make sure
017that they're investing in the students more and that students are able to get the counseling they need it's like hard to reach out to them it feels very distant to talk to them sometimes especially because there's so little compared to the amount of students in the entire district and i think that this should be a normal thing that more students should be getting these like programs more invested programs and more resources and every day schooling it doesn't have to be just because of pandemic that we get these things but moving on i think the school district needs to focus on the students more thank you a muhan i don't see any more speakers oh two more hands okay see two more speakers okay yeah so thank you okay next speaker is christina bonita please go
018ahead can you hear me yes okay my name is christina boniti and i am speaking on behalf of myself as a first grade teacher from martin school i do want to start off by thanking dr moore for taking the time to really think of the teachers this year it has been a tough year for her as well as all of us and she's really worked through it i also want to add that i was really bummed that i waited online when the board made the decision two weeks ago for us to go back to school i was to allow only 45 minutes for communications show that the board did not want to hear our concerns and they already had their mind made up since august i have worked very hard to get my first graders
019reading levels up and i am succeeding i do small groups four days a week three times three groups a day they are all leveled groups so it is their instructional reading level so that i can support them more it is my favorite time of the day it is a time where i can i am really able to see what they are struggling on and i can support them with whatever they need my love that time of the day some kids wish they could meet with me more but i only have so much time my students are showing so much growth because of this time to take that time in the afternoon and just say whoever wants to come in and is able to get to school would be a total disservice for this time of
020the year we are making so much growth daily the students are in a routine and to stop and not be able to give them that small group support that is leveled for these kids would be so sad i feel like right now where we are at i miss seeing the kids in person of course we all do but i feel that we are not anywhere near prepared to be in person my concern now is that i only have 13 kids who want to come in person but that means i have 10 students who will not get any extra small group small reading group support in the afternoons now in the afternoon now what happens to the equity part for those kids whose parents are at work and cannot come in from 1 30 to 3
02130 because they can't leave work how is it equitable for those students who aren't able to get that support i know there is no perfect fix i get it i know we need to go in person eventually but please think of all the teachers who have created a routine and are rocking online teaching like the rockstars that we are before you before you can think of taking that what we have created and put us back where we started in the beginning of the year trying to scrounge and think of how to reinvent the wheel at this time of the year in the afternoon seems like the teachers will have to figure it out again for the last six weeks of school thank you next speaker is deborah carlino please go ahead dear south san francisco
022family thank you for your thoughtful consideration about returning to school i see each of you being reflective and caring for our south san francisco family i wanted to share my concerns about the in-person afternoon time slots for elementary as a few of our young high school scholars at the last board meeting mentioned they helped their parents fill out the survey because their parents either couldn't understand it or read it their surveys are long and can be confusing as some of the scholars expressed they didn't know exactly what they were voting for when they helped their parents with the survey the numbers in the initial survey if i recall showed that nearly 50 percent of the elementary families wanted their children to return and yet the numbers at least at martin in fifth grade don't seem
023to reflect the broader survey my understanding is less than 20 percent of martin's fifth grade families want their children to return to in-person instruction my parents work and can't drop everything to bring their children to school for two hours in the last clown in my classroom alone only six out of 30 students are able to return what happens to the other 24 children who need support in the afternoon i know that these are complicated issues i want to return in person i will be vaccinated in time and ready but i also want to be able to support all of my students or at least more than one-fifth of them as well end of year testing including literally testing will need to be done during class time taking up even more of our synchronous learning time
024i know this is complicated i am not sure what the answer is but i wanted to be sure to share this concern thank you so much for listening and again thank you for all that you have done we appreciate you thank you okay at this time i don't see any more speakers thank you mr siam um dr moore i'm not sure that you are in a good position to answer two thing two threads that i heard coming up through the the public comments but if you are able um that would be amazing and if not um circling back with just um information later to some of the speakers would be great um i heard mention of the number of counselors that we have on campus and i'm not about to disagree with the number of
025counselors on campus can you speak briefly to the additional supports that we have in place to supplement the fact that we don't have a ton of counselors well as the board knows we have also contracted with ysb for additional mental health services so we know that originally it was at the secondary level and i believe two years ago the board enhanced that contract so that there would be support at all of our campuses elementary middle and high school and the intent behind that was to provide additional support and services directly to students recognizing that there was a need that was there and so over the years the board has put in approximately five hundred thousand dollars to support mental health across our campuses thank you for that um and then also um from what i
026understand granted i had 102 fever last thursday so i was not as engaged last thursday as i would have hoped um but there was some comments this evening about the need for students who will not be returning in person and from what i understand there was some discussion last week would you be able to provide a brief update on that absolutely so last week what um what the board discussed and gave direction to me was to work on identifying ways to provide support to those who are in distance learning recognizing that 100 of our teachers may not be coming back due to various reasons and if that's the case then work on a way to create opportunities for those who might still be teaching virtually to provide virtual support to those students who are not
027going to be coming in and so that is something that we um started working on friday and continue to work on today as we're trying to figure out what are the best ways we might be able to mitigate this so that students still receive the needed support during that flex time or office hour time thank you dr moore i really appreciate it okay so moving on to the next portion of our meeting brings us to administration equity network 2.0 the board of trustees and superintendent will have a quarter will have quarterly meetings this year with a focus on leading through the lens of equity the board governance team will discuss and take action upon action on local board policies through the lens of educational equity in south san francisco unified school district so i don't
028know who is actually starting us off tonight but we have our wonderful nicole anderson and consulting team that's here uh deborah key's right as well as dr shelly holt and so i don't know who's going to be kicking us off but i will turn it over to one of them to start us off this evening thank you appreciate it good evening uh fearless trustees of south san francisco unified school district always an honor to lock arms with you and hang out for a few hours um on a weeknight um just appreciate all the hard work in recognizing uh reopening schools i know that's been a task for boards all over the nation so i just want to acknowledge how hard that's been and i know also um how hard it's been for everyone parents students
029teachers you name it it's just been a hard process all together so i just want to acknowledge that but thankful that you're all here you're healthy and that you're able to continue the great work of equity leadership um so i'm going to jump right in dr hall and dr um uh miss debra keys um we're what i rename people all the time on deborah uh we are all um here excited tonight to continue we're on kind of our part three of four um of our equity network um work that we started last year um i know there were a few public comments we typically do not respond to public comments but i want to make sure contextually for the community understanding that this is an equity network that uh many borders not only across the
030county but also across the state um are engaging in and this uh service actually is one that is one that's very much much less than what we often charge for districts around the nation so i want to acknowledge that um you're um being fiscally responsible and you know providing time for your professional learnings absolutely um to be commended but also that this work um we we definitely have provided in a space where um in comparison to some of your heavy lifts um definitely i think it doesn't compare um and i won't even go into details but i want to always make sure that i can acknowledge especially our young folks who may not always understand the process but have great questions i want to acknowledge that we want to make sure it's very clear um
031and if they want to check public records they're always welcome to look at contracts and you name it as you all know but the equity network a couple of exciting things one is um across the state there are more uh boards who are now going to engage in this work through csba and i just want to acknowledge the work you already started um in san mateo county um because there are more boards who want to engage in this work around what equity is and so we just are honored to be able to be a part of that and just appreciate you being pioneers right as part of this work because this is very historical for many who don't know you know this is historical work for boards to engage more intentionally around equity and really
032addressing some of the issues in the system which is a long process um so um before i jump in i want to make sure both my colleagues can say any few opening comments they would like but i want to just do a quick time check i know that we had a two hour kind of time allotted so before we start and have to make adjustments um i know we spent about 20 minutes on public comment which is absolutely fine but i just want to check um do a time check president lujan on dewey add an additional 20 minutes to make sure you all get the full two hours just want to do a quick check i defer in many ways i want to defer to your expertise because i don't know if you're able to
033like shave off 20 minutes so um but i also want to honor that you know not all of us are in this it might not be in the same time zone so it gets later and later and later so if we want to split the difference and see if we can like you know do 10 minutes extra that also works got it that's fair we can we can acknowledge uh deborah and doctor don't worry about me michigan and tennessee they all they have starbucks and red bull and all day beer do not worry we did because what we do this is what we do don't worry about us we're good cool so yeah we'll work it out and we'll do a little time check as well just to see how you all are doing because
034it's really your training right this is your professional learning opportunity so it's really about your discussion the depth that you want to um go with this particular work so we don't want to rush it but we also know that um you know there can be some exhaustion in this work we want to have your best thinking right um late at night as well so um real quick deborah did you have any opening comments before i jump in no just excited to work with the team and looking forward to really rolling up our sleeves and looking at that equity policy so thank you again for your commitment i really appreciate it yeah powerful dr ho do you have any opening thoughts comments no ma'am i defer any time that was going to be spent with me
035to the students from before they had some very powerful things to say and i appreciate them being here and the work our board is doing thank you awesome thank you all right so here's what we're going to do um first just logistically you all have your board packet that you got and um hopefully you all had a chance to read the article the racial equity detours just wanna uh there you go trustee breaking you got it i see all the highlights yes um if any of you didn't get to read through it completely do not stress i always say our grading policies here is we don't give uh we only do a b c we don't do d's or s we do a b c i right so the i is incomplete meaning you can
036come back to it later but we're gonna have a discussion tonight so no stress okay but i see some of you got tabs and sticky notes and i got you all fired up evidently so we can talk about dr paul gorski's article in a moment um but before we do that i want to do a quick kind of recap and there's a couple things i'm actually going to adjust on that i'm not going to cover tonight which is really like some simple things so i'm going to you may feel like i'm rushing through it but there's just some things we won't go in depth to um as we get ready to start our time tonight so um with that i believe i have the ability to share screen is that correct let's see let's try
037and see yep all right perfect all right so real quick just a quick um context to get us started again we're on session three of four which means we are kind of moving along um slowly but surely and really unpacking what it means to be an effective governance team with an equity lens and so today i want you to stay really excited and focused on you know the context of this work um always inspir inspired by frederick douglass quote about why educators really need to be engaged in this type of work is that it's easier to raise strong um you know and build strong children than to repair broken men women people right and so as you continue to deal with equity work you will find that brokenness that pain from oppression and all the
038different ways that we've had division you name it that's typically with our adults but our babies are broken right and so they are strong they're resilient so we want to continue to build that because they are our future so i think it's really important to recognize why it's so important to do this work as a governance team um real quick want to remind us of our four agreements i show these every time i don't skip this step again always want to remember for us to have a safe space this is your learning space okay i know the community gets to engage i know cabinet kind of watched from a distance but this is your learning space and so we always want you to just remember that it should be a safe space for you all
039to engage speak your truth um really understand that you know it may be uncomfortable at times some of the concepts we're gonna read the article has a little bit of discomfort and emotions that come with it but always recognizing discomfort creates growth opportunities so that's a good thing um and also speaking to the fact that you're going to have a lot of non-closure continuously doing this work you know the community understanding that that non-closure is something that we all have to embrace when we're doing equity work because you're talking about interrupting a system that is hundreds of years old and they're going to be some things that are going to be hard to turn um over overnight right so we want to keep that in mind that non-closure is part of this work and it's
040okay and that discomfort some of that emotional space that as public officials we experience as people it's our right to be able to work through that um and so we will always want to think about the four agreements as we continue to grow together as a governance team okay um so just want to make sure we're still good with these because that's facilitators are going to push you right we're going to push you in all of these areas but just really always want to do this in a safe space where each of you know that you are acknowledged that your perspective is valued and that everyone has a place on this journey no matter what um but also that we have to recognize safety is different from comfort so it will be uncomfortable at times
041for us to grow and that's always you're going to be tugging at that as an equity leader so just know that um just a quick recap in kind of re-centering what deborah and i really um have collaborated on for this session is to help you continue to re-center your work um simon sinek often has a great reminder about going back to our why when we're getting kind of caught in the middle of the how and the what but go back to your why what is your purpose what is your goals what's your kind of you know common values core values beliefs and often that shows up in your equity statement so we're going to make connections to that tonight um your norms your protocols your roles your practices that's all the how of the work
042right like how you do this work how you govern together the culture of the board often we have to revisit sometimes our handbook right it's just let's recenter like what are our protocols and norms like how do we address certain things that happen always important to re-center with things that you've already established as a team within your culture right what is the role of superintendent role of the board right those are all things we always go back to and i know we're going to cover some of those tonight but the other piece that deborah had shared like kind of the excitement of this work is that governance teams again operate at the 30 000 foot level so it's important that you recognize like equity policy and any policies guide your work and so we're excited
043to unpack that tonight and just kind of continue to mold it and revise it so it becomes yours um and also to do that coupled with priorities right so equity work requires us to really prioritize our work so we're not trying to do everything but also recognizing that there has to be a plan on how to get this work done and that plan is kind of the what of the work so we'll talk a little bit about all three of those um but tonight just again want to just think about let's recenter right a lot been going on just pause sacred time for us to learn together and just recenter it's all right to do that okay so real quick i'm not going to go deep into this but i do want to um to
044just give a little context to um the work that you're going to be doing and i used to ask this question this is now about what two weeks old or so when the governor um put out kind of the proposal and plan to and um really kind of incentivize reopening schools right i call it dangling dollars right to school districts to open by the first um and i used to ask this in a kind of a way to think about okay here's an initiative coming from the state level um i'm sure it has great intent but it doesn't have equitable kind of a lens to it most people have said no right no it's not equitable because it doesn't necessarily work for all districts all kids all communities there's a lot to unpack and obviously
045um the reason i bring it up is because it's fresh but what i also want to bring up is this is that as a as a board we always have to ask the question is it equitable no matter what the issue is no matter what the initiative is whether it comes from the state federal government or within our own space right is it equitable when we make decisions that's going to be the question and for the sake of time i'm not going to go deep into this discussion but i want to just kind of front load today with how do we re-center and thinking about what equity means to us okay and asking that question with the lens of what is equity so i always remind us you know equity is not inequality we know
046that right they're two different things but often we sometimes forget and this move to reopen schools with this plan from the governor is more of an equality kind of thing but we know that doesn't work right that's not going to be enough right because the reality is that every again school district every community is in a different tier you name it um and we just can't have the same approach for everyone it's not going to work so we have to rethink it or else what we'll do is really actually exacerbate the equity gaps and reality will continue right we already have districts who have resources and so you'll see that kind of as a compound issue and even though that was a legislative kind of process coming down the pipe we do have also as
047you heard like even in public comment right like comments about hey how do we rethink how we allocate our resources so equity happens so it's really important to ask that question and unpack that through multiple study sessions so you get that get to that place of yes this is equitable right so i just want to kind of throw that out there to get your minds kind of you know re uh energized based on the work that you've done already but keeping in mind asking that question is it equitable now you all remember your water system changes article it's been a minute y'all remember this article yes and the reason i bring it up is because with the governor's plan i'm going to give an example of any plan we implement is very much again that
04830 000 foot level and you remember in this article it talks about system change and it talks about policy and it talks about like structures that are in place right that top part of the inverted triangle but what we always have to remember is that it's not going to be sustainable if we don't start to unpack the bottom part of the system the mindsets right the relationships like the power dynamics we always have to wrestle with that because then it won't last so you're all going to have some great ideas as a board right you're going to have great policy changes you're going to have lots of different movements that are going to happen in these next couple of years but we do have to remember it's not enough just to pass a policy right
049this is where we work with our superintendent to work through all the other layers of well what is the mindset if we change practices like grading and we change homework cause we change you know graduate when you name it you can come up with all different things that are gonna be more equitable for kids right i even use the counselor piece that came up right reallocate resources so we have more counselors but remember we don't address the needs of the counselors to understand like what relationships need to be in place do we have the right counselors the best fit for kids is there a mindset to have more counseling versus punishment for kids when they have any kind of mental health crises like that's all things we have to work through beyond just let's pass
050the policy and a lot of equity happens so that's where we go is it equitable and let's go deeper and look at it from a systems approach versus just policy even though you're policy makers right and that's the complexity of this and this is where we work with our superintendent so always pull out your writer of system change article whenever you get stuck in a complex issue okay go back to that pull out your inverted triangle and go okay let me make sure we unpack all the forms of the system because if not whatever change we make and action steps we have won't last and we want equity work to last right we don't want that to go fly by all right so quick context okay we keep using the word equity so you all
051remember this conversation we've talked about equity right and we're looking at like how do we create an equity statement that really solidifies our collective lens right for what equity is so just want to remind you again equity is not equality we thought we had that conversation but remember as you do this work you're going to go through that elephant blind man process quite a bit just like the parable and poem right is that it's going to take some time for everyone to come to the same conclusion that it's an elephant it's equity remember and the different people are touching on the elephant are gonna have different perspectives that we have to honor and respect because the reality is that collectively we have to have common language but also respect that there are lots of different
052pieces to equity work and there's not just one way to do it right there's not just one monolithic way that our kids show up that equity has different there's different contexts for if i'm a kid who identifies with the same language right as another student but i may have different needs right so we have to really be mindful that this is going to take some time to unpack what equity is but we gotta all agree that it's an elephant right gotta start there it's an elephant now let's take little pieces of elephant let's figure out what the needs are now again here's an example i always like to remind people of this particular example this is national equity project great example of what equity is i'll let you take a peek and then i'm going
053to share a short video to have you hear a little bit of a context about what equity is in action just take a peek maybe write down a few words that are popping out to you all right and again this is just an example okay some boards have actually adopted this as their statement and then have made their own revisions to kind of call it their own so just sharing that with you as well but you see the key is that it's about you know each child getting what they need and it's calling out academic and social potential so it's very important to see two different things being called out whole child which i know you all are really interested in just not just academics but the whole child right so very important and i
054think your work is aligning with that already but just looking at it being called out okay so taking a peek at that um anything that resonates with you about this we're gonna get we're gonna come back to equity statement but i want to see if anything resonates with you any questions you have about this particular example before i uh share a little video and context for you nicole jump in yep one thing that i notice here is it talks about the predictability of success or failures to what extent are we discovering that these are actually predictable yeah ooh that's a good question so one of the things that um i know deborah will talk a little bit about in connection with your board assessment there was one um thing around like eight effective care characteristics
055of boards right and one of them was being data savvy so when we talk about being data savvy in order to make decisions we have to have some kind of information right so what you'll find is that there's some predictability that you'll find in the data every single year right you can kind of guess when dr moore comes up and says hey here's our achievement gap here's our discipline disproportionality gap you can pretty much predict who are going to be those students and that's not just like in the last five years like you start to see these from generation to generation and then go back to the history of public education there wasn't a design for all kids to be successful based on this definition right so what that means is that we have to
056be able to say look just because i see a student who identifies as i'm a student who um is considered in poverty right low associate economic status based on the box they mark and what their income qualifies them for does that mean that that student can be successful based on our metrics in our school system and the reality is like they're brilliant what does it have to do with how much money they have right but the reality is our system hasn't always served our students who have um economic needs so you can see a predictability but again it's not because the kids aren't brilliant it's that we have some probably in that bullet number two some biases that play a role right narratives that come into play that show up and that's where i think
057for you trustee baker like that's a great question is how do we really like know that predictability but i kid you not like i we we joke and say i can probably go to any district in california and pretty much guess i can go to the data dashboard because it's public right and guess like who am i going to see who's suspended more right referred more to the office i can probably correlate race right i can maybe correlate gender sometimes it doesn't always show it could be female male but also there's some things i can correlate with the achievement gap and that's the biggest one i'm concerned about is that we have chronically this narrative that we have groups of kids based on their social cultural racial factor that they show up at the bottom
058of the achievement gap and again i always go well gosh it can't be that they're not brilliant like look at bullet number three right so it's something about the system that has policies and practices that perpetuate that and you can directly correlate it back to the history right this is this is not new but when we interrupt the system we're interrupting the predictability does that help it does thank you okay good good great question because here's what's interesting what we don't want to do is miss this i'm glad you brought it up is as you're looking at the data we don't want to get numb to this right that we can always predict this we want to really ask well why why why what can we do different we don't want to just be okay
059with always saying the narrative is always about this same group of kids right so that's really important because also that message is also being given to the kids and that's that's what's really hard and it's given to kids generationally right so after a period of time you all could be advocating for kids who often aren't served as well in the system and they may not even buy into your equity work because they may have a belief that i'm not supposed to go to college my go back to counselors right the role of counselors is the narrative about okay so what you didn't do well last year in this class you can still take the ap honors course you'll have some kids to go i'm not smart enough to be in that class right that doesn't
060come from them not being smart enough it comes from a narrative about that this is how the system has always been that's for those kids right so that's the interrupting where bullet point uh the second bullet point comes in yeah great great question any other thoughts before i share another perspective all right all right all right you all are good okay so let me do this i'm going to stop sharing reshare so you can hear it so what we're going to do is we're going to hear a perspective from dr pedro nogueta i'm not sure how many of you are familiar with him but he's um does some amazing work um definitely one i look up to in this field and he has um currently he's been a practitioner so he's done lots of work
061lots of research but he's currently one of the uh professors at um the university of southern california um i should say dean i'm sorry um in usc and so does amazing work and so this is about a six minute clip so just kind of sit back relax but i want you to be taking notes on what you hear in terms of his perspective around what equity is in education and also he's going to give you an example right an actual example of a teacher and i want to see what connections you're making to how you're going to evolve your own statement around equity okay because we're evolving we're developing a statement that we can collectively say we have as a board all right so let me make sure i think you all can hear so
062i'm going to go ahead and just um president give me a wave if you cannot hear him um he's going to start in a second but let me know if you can hear it or if you cannot hear it or wave if you can hear it in the context of education the term equity has come to mean the need to focus more directly not simply on equal opportunity and that is making sure the kids have access to schools and the opportunity theoretically to learn but really focusing on outcomes and results and the analogy i often make is most parents practice equity with their kids that is we don't treat all kids the same because they have different needs and when in schools that that are really focused on equity they're trying to meet the different
063needs of kids and do so in ways with a focus on outcomes uh schools are set up to be the the equalizer opportunity that was the mandate early on was that we would use education to promote merit to promote talent and so theoretically you'd want to make sure that all kids regardless of background got similar educational opportunities but that's not what we do obviously if you go to school in the south bronx you get a very different education and go to schools in scarsdale but what's more even within schools we exacerbate inequity because in many schools there's a deliberate practice of assigning the best teachers to teach the highest achieving kids and the least effective and least experienced teachers to teach the high need kids this never works but schools consistently do it largely because
064it serves their political purposes of both appeasing the parents of the high achieving kids and appeasing teachers with seniority parents play a critical role in influencing what schools do uh and sometimes they can exacerbate the inequities and that's because the affluent parents who are highly educated and have lots of time on their hands can put pressure on the schools to get what they want you can never blame a parent for trying to get the best for their kids however sometimes what that means is that some kids are getting more because their parents are able to put the pressure on lobby the schools to get resources directed at their kids whereas other parents either don't have the time don't have the know-how or aren't treated in the same way when they engage schools and therefore their
065kids don't get served as well well the only way to really create equitable schools is to really focus on that as your goal and making sure that first of all you have good leaders who have a vision that combines a commitment to academic excellence to a commitment to equity and that's important because in this country we tend to see the two as being conflicting goals we tend to think that the more we do for excellence the less we'll be able to do for equity because in our mind ex there's only a small number of elite kids who are excellent and we're going to give more to them and that's what for example we're doing gifted programs we give them the best and then we forget about the rest of the kids so we build in
066inequity when we combine excellence and and equity what we're focused on is how do we make sure that all kids are exposed to high standards quality teachers how do we make sure that even the kids who come in who are further behind who need more help get that help what we really should be aiming for are kids who are learning uh ideas knowledge and skills that they can apply to their own situation so they can understand the utility of what they learned and how it's relevant to their life circumstances so i'll give you one example a teacher i was working with in oakland california uh she had to teach environmental history or environmental science rather and she was interested in making connections between the students lives that she was teaching and and the subject and
067so what she did she asked me how she should approach it i said why don't you spend some time exploring this neighborhood and you might get some ideas about the most critical environmental issues in this neighborhood and the neighborhood was west oakland it's a neighborhood that has a lot of heavy industry a lot of traffic it's an area with a lot of toxic sites and as she drove the community she saw that she also saw that there were a lot of families in that in that community that had gardens in the backyard and uh she imagined that many of those families were eating fruits and vegetables from those gardens and not aware of the fact that the soil was probably contaminated with lead lead that was coming into the soil from the atmosphere so what
068she did was she designed a whole unit with her students for students on the effects of lead in the environment and it started by showing how lead goes from the industry or from the cars into the atmosphere how it goes from the atmosphere into the soil through the rain uh what happens when you inject how it goes from the soil into the plants and then what happens when you ingest those plants particularly in small children whose brains are first developing and lead contamination really can have a very damaging effect on the development of children's brains she then taught her kids how to do soil testing and they went out into the community to test the soil for lead content and they mapped where the lead contamination was greatest and they produced these very intricate charts
069showing what was causing this contamination that is its proximity to a freeway or to a foundry or some other kind of heavy industry after they produced a report the kids were very concerned because of what they'd learned and they said to the teacher they felt they had to do more than merely produce a report that they need to do something with information now and she agreed and they contacted the county health commissioner and approached the county health commissioner about doing something about this problem and after reading the report hearing them speak very uh intelligently and passionately about this problem what the county health commission agreed to do was first of all send out a letter to all the residents in this neighborhood west oakland warning them of the effects of toxics lead and lead contamination
070in the soil but also offering free topsoil for any family that wanted gardens but didn't have the ability to get clean topsoil and i often point that as an example because my bet is that those kids will know about the effects of lead in the environment forever and that's because they were able to see how what they were learning could be used in a way that could really improve their lives and their community all right so as you um just pause for a moment i want you to just take a second to do a little bit of a written reflection and just write down like what's coming up for you with regards to the definition of equity okay so it's gonna take a second just write your thoughts that come to mind and then we're
071going to actually take a peek at our own kind of equity statement draft and start to unpack it so you heard dr nogetta you saw the national equity project saw the kids on the baseball field on the boxes then you have your own experiences thus far as the board is is reflecting for a moment i'm also inviting the community in your own space to um reflect and think about what equity means to you as well because ultimately we're gonna have to get to a space of common understanding of what this word means there's a lot to unpack just give you another 30 seconds or so just to write down your thoughts it's coming to mind about definition of equity all right so as you're concluding your thoughts i'm gonna um just open it up for
072just a second um and let's see i'm gonna actually um i'm gonna pull up your um kind of drafted that's okay um but before i do that i just want to just see what what's popping up for you as you think about what equity is specifically in education what is equity it's coming up for you just jump right in uh one thing that i was thinking was i really liked dr peter naguera saying that it's not simply about equal opportunity it's equal access for better outcomes and i think that's really important to um to remember because so many people they keep wanting to make it equal and think that it's okay but if it's not i mean we have to we have to give all the kids um that opportunity for for better outcomes yeah
073a good outcome good point okay thank you anybody else want to add i just really you know after the story that dr naderos said and you know looking at our definition i think it really kind of boils down to we need to meet the kids where they are give them all make sure they have a similar starting point as possible yeah yep good point good point i think related to trustee baker um meeting kids where they're at is that engagement of all students for academic which results in academic excellence for all and is evident in the outcomes that we should always be monitoring [Music] all onto something you're onto something keep going other thoughts this is powerful vice president richardson you are muted um i just wanted to say that equity hasn't come into focus
074more than it has now in during this pandemic and the fact that uh we were instructed by our county leadership that we should be mindful of this and that um the uh you know the poorer districts will get the vaccines first and everybody was saying what about us what about us and we have to come back and remind them that this was a focus we were doing this for equity purpose and that we would take the under uh the marginalized children area and focus on their learning the special education kids who are struggling even in zoom so to me um i think this this whole uh system of equity has become really focused on the pandemic and if we've had to really look at ourselves under that that prism so or through that prism so
075i read this and this is just like we're in a lab right now of this experiment that we we really haven't got an outcome yet but we're trying we're conducting it and we're in the middle of it and we don't know how far we got left to go so those are the thoughts that i have when you're reading when i'm hearing dr nogetta and uh so that's where i'm at it's just a lot that it's like a process and you're not there yet you're just going through it and that's where i feel we're at right now yeah thank you appreciate that perspective um also um it's not good enough just to um not to say okay they're in school and so they all have an equal opportunity as john and dana were saying but also
076like within the system within the school they're not getting an equal opportunity and that's our job is to make sure that they're getting that equal opportunity and um one of the things that dr negara said was um oftentimes the best teachers or the most experienced teachers are um educating the highest achievers because they have parents that are advocating for them and not all parents can advocate and give time they don't have the ability or they don't have the time to advocate advocate for their children and so their children end up with the least experienced um teachers now i know that's not always and but you know that's something to look at um certainly yeah i think the thing that stood out for me was this whole idea and concept of excellence and equity can't be
077separated and that if we are really trying to move toward an excellent system and an equitable system that we have to keep pushing to make sure that access is there for all of our our kids particularly those who are disenfranchised the other thing that really stood out for me was this whole concept of rigor and relevance so he talked about high expectations right not assigning more work but high expectations and then he gave this example of this teacher that recognized a problem and said how then can i make a connection to my students that's the relationship aspect and then how do i help them so that they can learn about it in a way that is relevant and meaningful for them with a teacher that obviously really cared and really planned for her students to
078understand the impact of the environmental science sciences that she was teaching them and so that really stood out giving kids what they need right they needed to understand environmental science so she used this example and then designed a creative way to ensure that they could deeply understand the issue not surface not i'm just going to talk at you but i'm actually going to connect to you in life beyond the four walls and then that that changed their community so that was very cool yeah powerful i'm glad it resonated and she noticed she had his perspective and you kind of saw the national equity project one kind of on paper right and sometimes we see it on paper and it's like what does that look like so i love that he gave a real life example
079um and like you said it changed the community right it wasn't just we go to school we learned something but actually it was for like like when we go back to that concept of interrupting generational poverty for example right like school systems i think have the obligation to do that but how sometimes we don't know so his example was a really good one but it also required some level of i believe beyond that teacher is some vision from leadership to say like hey this is a type of culturally relevant and rigorous instruction we expect so i'm sure that there um you know are many examples of that but i just really appreciate it resonating with you so here's what i want to do i'm going to share your kind of draft um equity statement that
080you're beginning to develop and again for the community to understand like what this means is often deborah and i talk about how there's three things that boards should have right effective governance teams who want to do equity work and one is just common language like what does equity mean through the form of an equity statement okay so again this is always a work in progress this is not a let's decide overnight make a decision and voila we have a statement it's really working through it so we own it and then also we get feedback from our community to make sure we have the lens of everyone kind of like the elephant blind man process right like we have to make sure we recognize we could think equity is one thing but then we talk to
081those who have less power in the system right who have different experiences then we'll find like oh maybe equity wasn't that and it's really important when you go back to remember that governor's plan and i said is this equitable we got to know what does equitable mean and so we don't continue to create that lens and we even we ask the question we could be misguided and say hey we're allocating resources and we're doing all this great work and we could be misguided in it if we don't have a real clear lens and a collective shared belief as a governance team so what i did um in this slide is not going to show up in your powerpoint um because i literally just to make it so you could see it i took it right
082out of your uh policy and i just blew it up okay so if you see it um it's not going to be in your slide deck but it's just coming right out of the draft policy that deborah's going to walk you through um and kind of review with you but i just want to pull this out and as you're thinking about how you see equity i want you to take a look and again this is a rough draft okay so i want to say that several times it's a rough draft but i think it's pretty has some power in it so i want to convince you but just take a look and think about are you capturing what equity is in your kind of view as the policy makers and the leaders of the districts
083i'll let you take a peek and wordsmithing all that stuff absolutely we can do but i want you to just make sure we capture the essence of it right the word smithing and all those things aren't as necessary but there could be some words that are more impactful and some that are not that we do need to unpack jump in trustee baker i'm just saying i already see a typo that we did further no worries no worries yep and that's again this is what the roughness of this work looks like right so it i literally copied and pasted it from the rough draft you have a lot of different words in the policy that we're going to unpack today so no stress but we'll we'll um make sure we'll make revisions um as we hear
084you tonight um so further um instead of future so caught it the thing that sticks out to you is you think about does this capture like what we feel equity is maybe there's questions you have thoughts you have we've been working at this for a while right this is not new but it definitely as we revisit it like is it capturing what we're thinking about and again i'll make revisions as you all um you know kind of speak out loud what you're seeing so anything that comes to mind let me know matter of fact i'll start making them now too because i'm gonna um we're gonna bring this back to you in session four by the way so that you all can continue to um make revisions thoughts questions about your draft so far you
085feel comfortable with it you feel like it captures what you feel equity is i like that it has both first the simple definition and then the the details about it got it okay all right i am wondering and i know this is the board's definition i'm just wondering if there is any room to capture um what am i trying to say like dismantling um systems or [Music] so that it's clear that and i like the eliminating the impact of disparities i'm really thinking of creating like dismantling barriers we want to eliminate barriers that are negatively impacting our students i'm just throwing out stuff here on on the national equity project um one of the things that i liked was interrupting inequitable practices examining biases and creative creating inclusive multicultural school environments for adults and children
086and that kind of that kind of picks that up no chanter dr moore um kind of yes yeah i'm still processing i just i'm trying to think of a way so that it is really clear what the intent of the school board is in terms of how our governance team how we are going to operate and function as a result of what we believe equity is in our district and that may capture it can i throw something out to you all because i know that this is an ongoing like you'll wrestle with this for a while so don't feel like tonight you have to you know like solve this but one thing that i always ask um folks when they're creating a statement is in the end like this is your vision right like this
087is what equity is and this is how we do it but can you measure this and that's something to think about is it something you can measure right where you have evidence you have data you can see it and say like yeah we impacted disparities in a bit so so is there some data or evidence that correlates with even the words that you all see in here or do we need to be more specific or do we need to take it out or do we need to be more general because sometimes when you're talking about equity right you may put yourself in a position where you're like i don't know if i even can measure that like how do i know that's happening so i always like to throw that out there as you're thinking
088about your definition thank you nicole because that that's kind of where my head went because after you know some of the work that we have been doing one thing that i know is really important is that engagement component we have to engage all students um but then the other piece that is really sticking with me um and i know it's come up in other meetings is the monitoring of students and how are they doing um and i know that this closes with perform at optimum levels but performance may not necessarily be what we can measure but we can measure and actually look at what are the outcomes of all of these efforts if we're dismantling barriers and systems that produce inequitable results how are we measuring that yep good point and you know giving you
089feedback what i love is it you don't put yourself in a position where you're narrowly focused either right what i love when you say like cultural differences right so you can speak to a lot of different ways that kids identify that show up in the data right and then when you talk about resources it's very general but it's very specific when you call out eliminating or minimizing right and i think um dr moore was onto something about do we wanted to say eliminating disrupting you know um but ultimately um the word performance right um all levels like do you want to call those out specifically um or do you want to keep a very big picture so that whatever you do you can say is this equitable and when we say what does equity mean
090this is our lens to look at everything we do from that policy lens right so i think you want to think about that and again deborah's going to go back to this in your policy conversation but this is a big piece of it to start off so tell me tell me your thoughts let me ask you this do you feel comfortable with this so far again it's a draft it's a draft it's not designed for you all to make a decision tonight it's designed for you to say here's kind of a space we're thinking we want to go we may need some more context building learning right about equity and we want to make sure this is something we'll eventually ask our community to weigh in on but ultimately it's like your vision as a
091board sure if i may um i i understand what dr moore is trying to say about dismantling systems i think trying to stress that we're being you know where i taking after means to take those down i i think in our heads we were kind of doing that by minimizing or eliminating the impact of disparities but if we think we need to make it stronger we can do that okay so i'm just going to put i'm going to add in dismantling and again um we don't have to um we don't have to um stay with the place of um of leaving this here like i'm just kind of adding words in because sometimes it helps you see it so dismantling i think you said systems correct okay so i'm just going to place that there's
092just um and i'll put even a comma because maybe that adds to it and a second thought the next uh the next um segment where it says level of uh of uh preparation that kind of sounds like we're trying to put it on the kids now um i try maybe if we say ability to prepare or something along those lines because levels of preparation kind of sounds like we're saying that the student didn't prepare but we're really talking about the ability to prepare okay so help me help me with what that sounds like eliminating the impact of disparities in abilities um i hate using ability right after abilities right yeah cause i think the intent is to look at that and say we shouldn't see disparities in which students are well prepared and which students
093are not right we shouldn't be able to say okay we know if we can predict which ones if we look at their whatever however we're defining what prepared is it looks like that we shouldn't be able to we want to minimize that they'd be able to predict which kids will be well prepared and which ones won't um [Music] means to prepare okay is it to be prepared um i think we need to go after the comma in the building oh okay let me go back again disparities in abilities comma okay abilities comma i'm pointing at my screen which you can't see right means to prepare or and i'm going to work on my other device okay and i also think we need an adjective between dismantling and systems in the red got it dismantling um
094okay and where did i just go back uh okay tell me one more tell me one more time where it says dismantling systems i think we need to have a adjective between dismantling and systems like um oh so we're not trying to destroy all systems just the ones that oh maybe inequitable would that be a word dispatching inequitable systems sure okay all right cool all right and again i'm working from my device another device so i'm just making sure this works for you all so you can see it okay all right perfect okay now um again i just want to pause for a second for the sake of time because here's what i want you to do i want you to feel like you um are doing this on an ongoing basis right like they're
095constantly going back to this place of you are going to um evolve your definition through feedback through hearing from your community listening to your students this is where student forums surveys you name it of asking folks like not only what's their definition of equity but actually pulling this up as a draft and say hey give us feedback on the definition of equity so that's an ongoing process that eventually we want you to say with your policy you adopt adopted within your policy right but you can see how this can be really interesting where you can literally do a study session just on your equity statement to unpack it because there are so many like what does dismantling mean what is preparing me like there's a lot you can unpack and so because we're doing a
096shorter version of our study session tonight i don't want to go too deep but you kind of see where we're going that you want to keep unpacking this and so as each as members of the governance team i encourage you that as you continue your work together that you find ways to continue this dialogue through your governance process but also remember that this is going to require additional feedback from your community right that you don't want to just create the statement without feedback okay now one thing i do want to give you a little context to and i kind of heard this earlier and i think dr moore you were on to something around what dr nogueira said is as you continue to do your work you're going to also be pushed to kind of
097what we call redefine what equity actually means in terms of success for kids so one of the things when i say can you measure it right like one is like how do we even look at providing this so there's just ways that you're gonna think about and this is where you're learning we're not going to go deep into this tonight at all just giving you kind of a visual of okay well how do i see this happen well one is you're gonna have to redefine what success means so when we talked about like abilities to do what right to achieve on a test to achieve i mean what does that mean and that's where your metrics come in so we always have to redefine our metrics and if our metrics are only centered around academics
098then we kind of miss the social piece and we also miss like what are those resources we need to allocate so maslow's is always a good reminder right and then the four indicators i always like to share around equity is again knowing our kids who they are it's hard to give to meet someone based on their needs we don't know their identity we don't know who they are right we don't know their story it's hard to make it relevant for them we don't know their story but relevance is important right how do we connect school to who our kids are and dr nogueira gave a great example right i'm sure those kids were much more successful than the normal if they hadn't had a relevant um lesson um relationships kind of a no-brainer right in
099the middle of maslow's okay very important to think about and that's where professional learning for your staff across the district is going to be important as you talk about allocating resources to teach and help people be supported and how do we build strong relationships with kids who historically have not done as well in the system because it's again not that they're broke not brilliant it's just that relationships somehow sometimes are not strong and it's hard to learn from someone when you don't have a good relationship with them and then lastly is that that big word that rigor word right important high academic expectations for all babies right not some right all that's the excellence piece that dr noughto talks about too so just want to give you that visual and um and i want to
100just make sure we get like a little bit go back to our four agreements we're okay with a little bit of what we call non-closure because we're going to pause on our equity statement okay we're going to make a quick bridge into the work that deborah's going to walk you into is your policy okay and so i'm just going to pause and when i say quick bridge i want you to do me a favor and just pull out your um racial equity detour article just real quick pull that out and here's here's why i want to make the connection for you so as you develop your equity statement and your lens right and the language we're going to constantly be using right you also have to recognize that there are going to be some barriers
101to that very statement you're going to adopt right and so the article really gives you a sense of why it's important to create common language like having a statement because often there can be some detours to getting to that statement and the detours as you read in the article show up in ways where we see educators having a really hard time getting to that place but also how we can perpetuate inequities in the name of equity so i want to just take a few moments before deborah jumps in because i know we have less time tonight so i want to make sure that we just um gave a few moments to make a connection and a bridge when we talk about equity statement here's what it means but then there's some barriers to that detours
102so just wanna um see who has some thoughts and specifically maybe there's one thing that really pops out to you about this particular article isn't anyone just want to jump in and just share like what's one thing that really resonates with you about the article racial equity detours by dr paul gorski for the community i'll um i'll just share the at least the cover um so that they at least know what document we're referring to so let me do that real quick just to make sure for the community we have some context so again just a quick quick article connection just for the sake of time to shorten this piece but just any connections things that are resonating with you about just how easy it is to get distracted from the goal very easy yep
103and when i add to trustee murray's it's easy to get distracted i love that word there's lots of distractions right detours distractions i'm sorry i didn't read that no no go ahead um when it talks under bullet point to you about the poverty of culture detour you know it talks about how the racism is is a tangled structural mess of power oppression and unjust distributions of access and opportunity it's not a you know we have this deficit ideology because we don't see the whole picture sometimes i think you talk about it sometimes with the old elephant and the blind people thing you know you see a problem but it's very hard to see the whole problem and you know that's what a lot about this article talks about when it talks about more about the
104direct con confrontations the redistribution the prioritization aspect yeah that's kind of the point good point yeah powerful good point that same sentence along with the one after that this mess cannot be resolved with greater cultural awareness alone has been underlined circled and highlighted because that like stuck out so powerfully um you know that there is the misconception that if we value every culture then then we've addressed equity and that is a misnomer because it doesn't address the root of the problem yeah i mean you know going on that you know i i highlighted a you know we've talked about we hear it a lot we talked about it here about especially going back to our talk about uh police officers on campus about cultural competence and here it really is explicit cultural sorry cultural competence
105is important but by itself it's no threat to racism you know okay you know what you know it's there yeah what do you do then you need to act on it yeah and that's powerful yeah keep going you're on to something you're fired up this one always fires everybody up i really liked um they talked about we can't fix a problem we refuse to name and it talked about look at your policy and you know if you don't see racism mentioned at all but yet you want you're on this journey to call out racism and address it then you have more work to do the other thing that stood out for me was under um this deficit ideology was when it talked about equity initiatives should focus on eliminating conditions that marginalize students never never
106focus on fixing students of color it's not about the students we if we can't describe how our efforts are eliminating those conditions it's time for an equity overhaul um yeah yeah you stole mine that's when i always read a lot you know pick mine yeah i wrote that down as well yeah okay okay equity understandings and equity intentions my little note was it's not me it's them and it's really not yeah big yeah i appreciate y'all sharing um it's almost like a mirror right it puts up a mirror to us as educators on some of the things we go back to the water system change right it's sometimes the things in the water we don't recognize right those conditions that don't exist and so without pausing i give this article for that reason so that
107we can pause and be aware and so as you think about like you know reading this article from the lens of a board member right really important right as a governance team member from that power structure it's important to think about okay so what do i do as a team to address it and so the guiding questions i want to just share at the end and then i want um to allow debra to jump in because i i heard the word policies i think this is a perfect segue but the very last page on page 61 there were some guiding questions and it was you know the one is like do you think your school or district engages in any equity detours right so it's calling that out right is a good reflection and then
108how i mean how might we re-examine such initiatives in light of gorski's equity literacy principles so this is really important to think about and this is why study session time is so critical because you can't just even create the statement and the policy and just leave it as is you gotta have like some some um understanding of what will get in the way of that work and then have some responses right on how we're going to address them and so i think that's really critical so i want to i want to appreciate that moment and i hate i hate cutting this particular conversation off because this article i say gets people fired up but we're going to continue this and i want to always just remind you those two articles the water system change um
109as well as the racial equity detours like these are the two that you have to see correlate you should see a lot of connections to like the mental models right and power dynamics i hope you see those and this is where now we go into okay what do we do now right so deborah is going to help you kind of see how we make connections through our kind of governance lens and how that kind of folds into where you operate which is at the policy level okay so i know normally we'd like to do a quick stretch break but i know it's also like gotta we gotta move so are you good with keeping it pushing through um so that we can continue okay perfect so maybe grab your water you know at least stretch
110while we're listening but deborah i'm going to pass a virtual mic over because i think they're on to something they're fired up and i want to keep that fire going absolutely just just you know looking at your though the work that you're doing on your your equity statement like nicole said you will continue to go back and and look at that because what's going to drive you to do that is when you start looking at what you said you're going to do which is in the policy that will make you go back and tweak it because it's like well when we said we were going to do x y z is that it reflective in that statement but yes you want that statement to be broad enough because if not you're going to have six
111paragraphs of a statement and so you want it broad enough but where the key thing is where the key thing you that i see that you you capture is the what what does it look like what are we going to do at the board table and you know when i had shared before about um you know there are equity policies that um that exist and they're really good you don't have to recreate the will but one that i always like to highlight is the cincinnati one which says we made it clear three different areas what the board will do what the superintendent will do and what the district will do and that makes sure it encompasses everybody in in there you know and i actually would want to bring up the um the policy because
112i have that um if i know i think i'm able to share but i want you to also remember when you did the out um the outline of it and i kind of went through to say yeah they did this you know you describe what your background is about the equity policy your definition which you did that what are your guiding principles your purpose why are you doing this uh what are some of your equity goals and it's usually always disciplined making sure that we have the resources that are teaching staff things things of that nature you know curriculum um and of course your statement but something else i believe i heard is about monitoring and evaluating you you have to put in there how are you going to monitor this and evaluate is it
113yearly is it quarterly whatever and again thinking about the smart test i always say you don't do anything unless it passes the smart test you know very specific measurable attainable relevant and timely can we do this because you can put a lot of things on paper but how are you going to prove that it's successful and so whenever we you know when you're looking at the content of your equity statement it must be able to be measured because it is a living document so you're not going to just put this together and put it on the shelf it is going to continue to to move every district every year reviews their equity policy and at the end you put a date where it was revised or it's something you know that you're looking at because
114things will change you will discover new things and and then you know another key thing is to have um uh some probably some type of handbook or something that can be on your your website where your community has easy access to understanding this whole process you know printing something we don't print anymore everything's digital but kind of think about that but that's the that's the framework of even putting an equity policy together and i like how you guys did really hit the the areas in here and and thinking about the characteristics i pulled out you know we've looked at the characteristics of an effective board three areas too to really stay focused on when you're doing the uh your equity policy of course data data is going to drive you the data's going to make
115you do it you have to be able to prove that this is why we're focusing on this area because our data is saying certain kids are always at the bottom their data is telling us that we are our curriculum is not relevant our students are telling us you know through surveys or whatever it's not relevant um accountability everyone on every level should be held accountable that's not negotiable you know at all and at the governance level you have one staff person okay so what you say to your superintendent what do you have in progress uh progress or what's your process in ensuring that every one of your staff individual will be uh evaluated and if she says i got that covered here it is then you just move on but knowing that every year every
116once a year or something there is a report out on how we're doing in this area and when you staff know that they're being evaluated that also gives them a chance to to kind of say look i need additional help you know we focus a lot about on the children which we should just as important to or you know another important piece what does your staff need in order to do this work because you can have the best policy in place and this is the directive that the board is giving the superintendent to implement this and no one thought about okay we need to slow this down a little bit because staff isn't prepared and you know and if you noticed in that article it talked about language that we always say which isn't bad
117meet people where they are meet children where they are but remember when you meet them they are you're going to be ready for what you're going to get where they are the biases all of these things that they're struggling with we're going to meet you there but you you should be prepared to give them the the support that they need no one's being blamed is nothing no punitive it's just that this is the direction of what this district is going going in and we want everyone on board that's the vision of the school board to set that vision this is what we want and then allow the superintendent to say okay this is how we're going to implement this is what it's going to look like and so um so yeah this is this is
118so important work so i'm going to pull up let me make sure i could um uh share and i okie dokie your lovely policy all right and everybody can see that right policy um so with my question before i go into this everyone i know you all have it yep make sure that was the right one give give me an idea on give tell me if i did see all the notes and of course all the red line the striking out and all that means you guys did a lot of work tell me what was your process did everyone get a chance to participate in editing this um draft of the policy did everyone excuse me so i i will jump in and then my last committee can certainly take it from there so we
119had a completely different policy previously that the board had approved and um at that point the board members saw it gave feedback adopted it and then i'd say maybe a year year and a half ago um realizing you know there's more to this it was just kind of a one-pager it was a good very good start and so then um we started looking at what are uh policies that we can create that really have a lot of conviction and and in what we strive to do as a school district so um one of the first steps i took was to see what california school boards association had put out and really thinking about okay what are some things that we could be committed to and so i made recommendations to the board bylaws committee and
120within that school district office leaders had a chance to look at it school principals had a chance to look at it and um and and that's really where it sat and so when i originally shared it it was hey we got started and then covet happened and we didn't take it to teachers and let them weigh in and so we wanted to share and we went to the board violence committee and we thought well let's share it now you know to get it in even better shape and then we can go through our process iterative process to see what other feedback we can get and then i i'll turn it over to president lujan or trustee baker if i missed anything okay okay i pulled that back only because i'm like i have a different
121one in front of me i want the the policy with all the red with all and i don't i thought i had that do you have that um superintendent i might it may have been just marked as um you know you can edit it and then you mark it so let me try to find it okay okay i have it in my outgoing email from when i sent it out to the superintendent so let me find that perfect okay thank you because i'm like oh no that's not the right one i want the one with already so go ahead president i'm sorry interrupt no no no absolutely this is actually um i can expand upon so dr moore shared what staff did and kind of where it was at and then it came to the
122bylaws committee which is trustee baker and i and we spent some time on a sunday well we read it independently made notes and recommendations and then he and i came together on a sunday um virtually and edited it and so i think what you saw was all of our tracked changes kind of really looking at how do we organize it so it has a flow make sense and are we hitting everything that we want to um hit and then our typical process is after it goes to the bylaws committee it then comes to the full board for an open public discussion so i think that's where we're at with this uh process good and and so everyone has that document with the one that you um you two actually went through and and made all
123the edited edits right you're saying they have a clean copy of it what we sent to we sent the edited version to dr moore with um yep that there's a lot of tracked changes so we did an edited version to dr moore um and what came to the to my fellow trustees um in the packet is a clean copy where okay yeah so the changes have been accepted okay they've been accepted okay i'm just and so well good because i just wanted to um so this is the opportunity for the additional two board members to kind of talk through this i just want to make sure okay great great a lot like i said really good really uh really good thought was put into this i really i want to hear what your fellow trustees
124are saying about this as well um so my question too even even though here at the beginning what are you going to call this first section is it your um background i mean it's a that's not your estate that's not your equity statement right so what is this first section called there's no heading on it's right what are you going to call it production than anything else i think okay okay and yeah okay that would be the introduction the big picture of it so so two trustees vice president and um richardson and and uh murray what are your comments about um you know this first section that is going to be the introduction i think it's great i feel like captured yeah i think they did an excellent job just looking at it right now
125um i don't believe we weren't given this because they you know they just uh got finished with it the committee the services so is this your first time seeing or was it previously given to you guys i haven't seen it this is my first time okay i love this the line that the governing board reaffirms its commitment to provide an environment that's uh culturally sensitive and free from bias and discrimination that protects students from physical and emotional harm that's amazing yes and so is there anything you would add to that because that's very that's broad and it's very inclusive of all groups because when you make an introduction of course you want to make sure that it's personalized for your district too because of course there's a lot of language that you can pull from
126samples but the key thing is that now you make it personalized so would your students read this and see themselves in this my thought is yes yeah and vice president do you have anything you want to uh offer right now well um i i i believe a lot of this is i'm agreeing with some of the uh red item things uh lines that i see and i think that's you know that really does start to answer some of the issues that we are um facing and and i'm you know i agree with that now the the term that you used earlier was the detour how many of these are we gonna detour and i'm i'm uh in my time here i've noticed that there's been a few detours but uh we haven't had uh that
127you know a comprehensive statement like that that includes a lot so um once we get this through then then they'll have to be the accountability portion that comes around so i'm looking forward to uh all of this actually which which includes some of the comments we heard earlier about um equity to treating myself included uh the the issue with uh um police on campus and this was brought up uh throughout our or in our first talk so when i hear that and i see this i'm hopeful that we'll get there because it is a work in progress i'm sorry i was looking at the vision but yeah i think that the um the introduction is is very good including yeah you're right because you know providing that safe learning and supportive environment uh for all
128students um yeah and and it has always been the district's goal or responsibility so this isn't anything new it has always been the district's responsibility to ensure a safe learning environment um for all of your students um and and even though we have been so consumed with covet we think that this is just right now but it can be coveted it can be a fire it could be a shooting it could be it it's still a safe learning environment so so yeah and this is good so the vision of course um it looks like a really this is a good statement the governing board reaffirms its commitment to provide an environment that is culturally sensitive and free from the biases and discrimination discrimination that protects students from physical and emotional harm the board commits to
129ensuring that all stakeholders uphold educational equity as an essential principle of our school system that is integrated into all policies practices operations and processes in order to yield equitable educational outcomes for our students and so when you have a vision like that as the board of education you know you this is a good vision so now you just have to remember when you are making decisions you know you equate this back to to your vision of what you said the big picture is going to be um and are you getting stakeholders input um do they feel that they are being listened to do they have the opportunity to um engage at any point so you just have and then you look at your the key thing we we focus a lot about policies because yes
130you will also have to look at your other policies to see if there are any policies on the books that perpetuate inequitable practices and so you simultaneously you're creating this one well you have to make sure that there are no other policies in place that will um you know not support this work and then you think about practices um there's be there are behaviors and practices that occur in school systems and they just stay under the radar no one challenges and this is what you're talking about dismantling is what your superintendent talked about when you have that mindset of dismantling is not only policies because you can go and pull policies but what about things that aren't written you know behaviors and practices that people just do because we've always done this we've always um
131engaged with students this way we've always assumed that um parents you know if they don't come to the parent-teacher conference they don't care about their children i mean these are just things that we we do but if we don't call those out to say we have to think differently goes all the way back goes back to that mindset that mental model we have to change the way we have been uh how we look at students how we do we put labels on them and so these practices and behaviors this is what your superintendent will be uh really looking at because and if the board is making this decision to really focus on uh do all the things that you're stating in this policy then your superintendent the next layer because again we're talking about accountability
132the superintendent is is making sure that some practicing practices and behaviors are dismantled or eliminated brought to the attention on we need to do it a different way because yes many of these things are not intentional not at all uh but we still have to address them okay and so we're pretty comfortable with the vision right and so yes i think and you can just jump in let's kind of go down to yeah the guiding principles on why are you um you know your guiding principles you know is it student-centered why are you doing this so the future of the community and the country depends on students possessing the skills to be contributing members of a democratic system okay this is your your guiding philosophy all students can learn and succeed to become college career
133and life ready the diversity of the school's population and staff enriches students learning experiences and here in a safe welcoming and culturally responsive school climate is necessary for learning so these are your guiding principles it's almost saying okay this is we we are making these uh these are the principles and the philosophy in which we are going to follow our decision-making processes will align with this you know um continuing to uh engage in your community and and student voice are we sure that when we hand that child that um diploma a graduation day that you are have prepared them did you put you know so what is your your philosophy so this is a really really good statement here for statements to to really uh follow but you have to make sure they align with
134if you look at your agenda would i know that that's your philosophy so as a board of education you still connect this again this is not an add-on type of thing to do a policy this is is is pretty much saying it's not the on the agenda it is the agenda and so if your philosophy is this does it equate to the practices does it equate to the type of discussions that you are having at the table does it connect with um presentations that are given to you so all of this as a board of education you continuously will be connecting all of this as you are governing okay so any questions here you can see the um just just a minor editing i'm seeing on the on the side but um your guiding philosophy
135does this pretty much is it are you guys in agreement with this or would you want to add anything i just want to fix a apostrophe after in the third bullet point in which the student's apostrophe s apostrophe learning learning okay okay there you go thank you absolutely anyone else what are you what are you thinking i like it i mean i don't know about life ready i don't know what that means it's a number two mm-hmm learn and succeed to become college career and let's see what other kind of work could we use um life skills ready um we're trying to keep up a theme of college ready life ready and but why freddie i trust vice president richardson really basically means you know ready to be an adult and operate independently career and
136career uh i don't know i just seem to think that uh life ready could be used in another context when you're trying to say well the kids are already life i mean full of life that's just my uh no i i hear what you're saying uh vice president richardson because this you know i have seen boys you say life skills because you're talking about their skills they're not going to college we're not talking about a career but are they able are they are they literate are they prepared to be in society contribute to contributors could life contribute to society that's what i honestly i would just say i would like to a college career and become a taxpayer okay that's just me cutting through the chase because this is really what we do i always
137have these this idea that we are you know 12 years we get these children and we have to produce a product and i call them products because we have to have them ready to go and when they're out there out the door uh they have to be ready for whatever happens you know i just i just ready to do something maybe go into the military or something like that um i i would probably just end it in career career and ready that's just my point become college career and i don't i think we have to we have to include life skills life ready however you want to phrase it life ready seems as good as any to me um but um you have to keep that because we don't just want them to succeed in
138college and career we want them to succeed in life we want them to to to possess those skills which is going to help them to live a successful life and we're part of that equation the parents are part of that equation you know maybe maybe success ready maybe that would be better i don't i i need a thesaurus yeah what are the others thinking uh just about that last we agree with the college career and what what's that other component that you're trying because we're looking at the whole child here okay for me i feel very comfortable with the term life because there is so much more than college and career it's building healthy sustainable relationships figuring out how to get car insurance um like how do you even get quotes and and just there
139are a myriad of things that come just with becoming an independent adult and i definitely want any graduate to be successful if they decide to go to college um and later in whatever career they decide upon but that's only a small piece of who each individual is mm-hmm we're trying to say that they're ready for life and you know ready for life you know and independent citizens you know and we're trying to get good outcomes you know we're not doing the outputs of turning out diplomas we're trying to get a good outcome in life so i mean i i i really think independent citizens calling that product doesn't work i know it's i but i do that because i figured you know everything's broken down nowadays i i notice that and nothing's left to chance
140so everything's uh when there's a some data that we get uh as the board it's broken down so that we could you know that's how i see this and that's why i call peop i mean in no time as all the things that we're presented here all the the terms and they mean something and um that is just how i view that we should um lead or lead our our students to so i thought independent citizens that sound like anything anybody likes career and independent citizens citizens i like that word citizens better i just don't um i don't know what what life i know i was going to say you know of course being at the governance level you you want to think the big picture is something that's inclusive so i think you guys
141can all agree that it is something in addition to the college and career so um maybe we'll you can have time to revisit because we know it is about their life so whether we add one where other another word in their life skills ready i think we you know everyone's in agreement so perhaps we can just you guys have a chance to circle back in that space be oh yeah let me think about it go ahead and think about it right but again i want you guys to always just think about big picture uh what the philosophy is and so um and so we're good for the other the other one so let's go down to purpose because i just want to at least have a chance to go through this do a first run
142through because there is some good stuff in here um so the purpose um the board recognizes that achievement and opportunity gaps and despair this discipline actions exist among student groups so you recognize that you establish this board policy to ensure so you're saying their purpose and i believe um you guys have demonstrated that you believe this so just looking at that purpose are you in agreement with uh making sure you you you have identified every section ethnicity gender gender expression gender identity immigration status you've encompassed everything um and that is your purpose would you agree with this yes i will okay yeah i don't know anybody else but i think that was that's pretty good i like that a lot of yeah words uh just pretty much cross you know covers a lot yeah and
143you know and again once your community look at this there could be some word smithing but that's okay but i think you guys are trying to make sure you encompass everyone okay so let's go down a little bit further and uh kind of look at some of the other changes who's driving because i'm not driving there you go thank you uh we did the definition um yeah we did the definition so we're good there the key thing is and i think i'm trustee baker you had mentioned that too um when you had the definition and then it was the what when you talk about you know making the statement that you are strongly committed to maintaining a high expectation for all your students this language here is so important that even the staff can understand
144what you're what you're trying to do you know um always saying all kids i'm eliminating historical barriers which the board has to identify what those are you can't address them if you don't know what they are um the disparities in achievement your data will give you the support there different data points of course not just your data dashboard but other data um and then you start disaggregating that now we have the data with subgroups then you go you know based by race ethnicity language and that's how you really will determine where the need is and then educational equity is a means of ensuring the decisions policies and practices in our system are culturally sensitive and provide all students with access opportunity resources and support it meets students individual needs to learn grow and develop in
145the safe and healthy environment and here we go with college and college career and life ready and so um so let's look at this next one the board understands that make sure that you can say yes to this generalizing and stereotyping any group of people devalues their contributions to the district and community as a whole that's a very strong statement and you make a statement like this the board understands so will how your superintendent will have to ensure that her staff understands this as well right so any feedback on this first um statement which is a very strong statement amazing yep it's gonna yeah and this is going to be easily determine if you're doing this or not okay um people will know if you are if you are stereotyping you know so this is
146a statement that you obviously you put some thought into it and you are definitely able to adhere to it so the second one achievement and opportunity gaps and disparate discipline that exists among student groups construct barriers that prevent students from realizing their fullest potential and is unacceptable another very strong statement um again barriers you have to ensure that those are dismantled so that they children have every potential to be successful in what they're trying to do if you remove those and and it's not acceptable for anyone to allow the barriers which could be the practices the biases all those to cons to continue because if it's unacceptable then that means what what's our process going to be on addressing this so that you again having those conversations on the superintendent will really help the board
147be clear on what is being done and or and how it's being done so because you made these two statements therefore the board shall make decisions with a deliberate awareness of impediments to learning faced um by students of color and diverse cultural linguistics socioeconomic backgrounds um this is action for the board which remember the three policies that i uh really um like to give examples on it says what the board is doing and then and you guys highlighted this here so the board shall make decisions so all of your decisions you you know need to support this okay um all policies and practices will reflect the goals of eliminating gaps in access um to educational opportunities for all let's go down a little bit for all students to ensure that they achieve so again any
148future policies um that you will put in place you have to make sure they don't contradict what you're stating in this equity policy because there will be additional policies too that you will create but this is going to be your guiding work policy this is what's going to really guide the work that you do okay so as far as what the board says it's going to um operate as far as with this equity policy in place any comments on that your agreement with it um anything you would add or clarify where i mean i i i see your blue but i don't see it in front of me uh do we do we get that or are we just making it up as we no i believe you have a clean copy that's what president
149john said okay yeah all right i can send you guys the redline version when nalani sent it to you guys she marked she just cleaned it up and sent it and so i can resend this version of it right now oh yeah i feel like that uh board decisions shall not rely on bias assumptions about any particular groups of students i like that actually yeah and so and again just i always throw in there even i know we're doing this equity policy but always connected to your practices at the governing table so when this if it does occur as a governing body how are you going to have this conversation with each other and so just think about that because you may not all be on the same page on the same page when it
150comes to our well is it are we really doing this so you know just be prepared to have um sometimes spirited conversations about it but that's okay um because your goal is to adhere to what you're saying okay um the go ahead okay i thought someone wanted to say um the second one is the superintendent uh or the district will the district will advance okay let's go oh let me see the district will advance now the board now is with the district will advance these goals by creating culturally competent staff maintaining uniformly high expectations for all promoting rigorous curriculum promoting systems of curriculum instruction and assessments and professional learning opportunities differentiating instructions and maximizing access for all students to high-level education opportunities given the urgency i love this of this mission the district is committed
151to emphasizing culturally responsive service delivery and consistently examining and monitoring policies programs practices and written documents to ensure that all that they are consistent with these goals that's a mouthful but it is so powerful that is a major commitment by the district to say we're doing all of this and yes many balls are going to be in the air juggling and so if they're in the air you know the superintendent is it trying to juggle them as well and so just remember what the district as a whole is going to to focus on and how are you monitoring that boards of education you know what type of this is where you think about what type of um uh presentations are going to be given to us to let us know that yes we are spot
152on we're we're right on track doing this because this is a lot of work as you know just doing this equity policy this is a heavy lift once it's in in in place and you've approved it now rolling up the sleeves getting the work done is huge and so what are your thoughts would you add anything to the district as a whole did it encompass all the teachers principles anyone who's engaging with students um does this capture it policies programs and procedures i love it i this is to me this is a a great umbrella to all the situations that may come up on the district now there might be something else but uh this is a great start as far as i can see and i like how you said that vice president richard
153it is an umbrella um there is there are many other areas that you can focus on where inequities may um may reside but they will event they will end up falling in a bucket under the big umbrella so i i you're absolutely correct it it it is a big umbrella that captures the work that you're going to be focused on so let's look at therefore the superintendent or designee and here is where your superintendent really has to pay attention to you know the policies and programs and procedures that are that are in place so um that they will be fair consistent and prohibitive of actual or perceived and equitable or discriminatory discriminatory acts based on disability ethnicity gender um so on um yeah aligned with a long-term plans for implementing reviewing and revising the policies
154and procedures that promote equity in the district with the superintendent focusing on all the policies that are played the programs and procedures against practices procedures all of these things and as you go through it there are several of course we have eight of them the financial piece because remember where the inequities you know you want to make sure that your resources make sure there's human capital as well as finance are aligned with with this work so with the superintendent um being responsible for increa uh creating the budget um and for board approval um making sure that the financial piece is um the finances are aligned with the work of equity and human resources are provided staffing getting support um that they need to do this work technology on your facilities um community resources and partnerships
155the third one um an active approach to recruit this uh this addresses the the teacher and in in um do you have a good representation um of teachers for your student body um you know the and what um pedro nogueira had mentioned about um and this happens in a lot of districts where when you're doing this equity work you really find out the data to support this if the question that i always say how what questions would board members ask about the teaching staff um where are you know of the superintendent are you the most senior or tenured to um teachers instructing the the students who need the most or is it vice versa and and so in a lot of districts it is um the newer teachers are with the the babies who need
156the most instruction so that's just something to kind of look at and move you know make the adjustments um that you can but definitely pay attention to that area um district discipline of course disproportionality of who are the children who are always being disciplined and for what infraction compared to others um this is definitely an area to focus on you will get the data to support where how you are doing in this area okay district stakeholders are provided with fair and effective processes for resolving concerns on an opportunity to challenge alleged and equitable practices with the exception of remedy without fear of retribution so yes getting input to allowing that input did someone have any questions so far i i'm gonna go through this and then we can kind of go back if you haven't
157had a chance to look at this but you are actually hitting every area um if you talk about four buckets of um you know the focus of where inequities reside um thinking about the previous uh item number three i mean we use a stronger uh do we want to use a sorry that's number four do we want to use a stronger word than mitigate do we want to actually just straight out say eliminate i mean it's it's probably impossible but i mean to do it completely but you know we should try i would be what good very good question what are your other other thoughts that's a good question i'd be in favor of a stronger word and so but you're what's the end goal you want to eliminate right yeah i mean we can
158put a lemonade i mean so that's something you can work toward right something we can work toward that's your goal yep that's strong and and that's showing that you're not just saying well maybe maybe not um yeah eliminate because if you're truly going to try to um support kids and give them what they need to be successful we know that this is uh an obstacle for children because if if they're being disciplined or expelled or whatever they can't learn if they're not in school and we know that right so i like that it'll levitate and so jump in real quick absolutely time check because i know that there's a lot still to um to unpack and so because we're getting close to then i'm wondering about how we want to um think about continuing this
159but also deborah you just mentioned about they're hitting all the key points which i agree so i'm wondering about additional time in our next study session to go deeper into the priorities and how to uh maybe come back to this and they have some time between now and then too to review it a little bit more what do you think about that yeah because i was actually looking at just get to number eight and and then that would be a good place to stop perfect perfect yeah yeah because i think going back to look at this base especially read this again and then go back to your equity statement and see if you want to make some adjustments there so any any any um ideas about um the last six seven or eight enabling and
160encouraging students to enroll and participate in a complete curriculum extracurricular cr extracurricular courses and this addresses access which is such a big part of equity making sure that you remove any barriers yeah and then of course the staffing professional learning um because you have to give your staff what they need as well so that they are fully prepared to address the needs of the students so would you make any changes um or have a chance to kind of look those over again um we have some policy already under student services and i'm not sure that this isn't covered i don't have that copy in front of me um so that would probably trigger their having to rewrite their policies because i believe we have some of this already on the books but i think it
161would have to be compared i i i defer to dr moore to give us that perspective because i believe that we may have some of this already written as a result of state guided uh reduction in uh suspensions and and that's why uh to eliminate uh keep the kids you know not in the future well how should i say so that um it's already been established that we need to do this um and it's already been been written in the uh uh what what is that um district expectations for student success yeah handbook so yeah so i think don't remember that with this is really our policy that's guiding what the board would want us to do so it's great that we already have it but i think fresh eyes to go back and look
162to make sure that what we have in the handbook which i believe it is um fairly aligned is actually getting to the intent of what the board has in their policy i just wouldn't want it to be conflict in any way and i thought i just wanted to align in some way so i mean i appreciate that uh background dr moore because i was wondering about that we do we want to be we want to be on the same level so and our our work with this is to once we develop and finalize this this is the anchor document that we then get to the how right then regs how is all this going to happen so right now it's just what is it that the board would like to see happen and we are
163going to have to re-evaluate some of our practices in our hand yeah yeah okay and so so yeah so we will definitely in our next session so we can bring everyone back to the group uh we can unshit um stop sharing um yeah and bring everyone back but this again you can see it is what's going to anchor this work you know and be the foundation of this work and as you know you have other policies in place um you can also just in parentheses list what that policy number is so that if anyone want a quick reference you can do that um and then that would always make sure that you would know it so and you can look at it like okay it is in alignment so if you have it all in
164one place that's very helpful just by putting those um your other um policy numbers in parentheses so um so good you're still well on your way you're hitting all the places this is going to be a great document to just say the big picture the what then you got to see the plan that the superintendent and her team is going to show this is how we're going to do it and then then you start the monitoring so but we're almost in our next session we'll be able to to go so revisit this again um and like i said read through this and then go back to your equity statement and just see if you would tweet that okay so so nicole i'm gonna turn it back over to you for uh many closing thoughts and
165sure yeah no i just want to thank you for uh walking the group through i think um it's always really important to take the time right to just go through your policy you don't have a lot of time to do that often and with equity focused work you got to have a guide right like we we have to have a guide to do this work and your equity policy kind of helps guide everything you do even though you have lots of policies but i think for this one um so powerful and so what we'll do kind of put it moving forward is we have one more study session on april 26th okay that's calendar and um what we want to do is continue this process okay so continue with your policy between now and then
166you can review it and kind of just unpack it because the goal is that you internalize this as your guy that it's not just a policy you placed on the shelf and never come back to right like you really want to have this as a guide because it includes your statement right it includes the policy itself but then also i think what you're going to find is that we still have some work around prioritizing the work right because there's going to be a lot of things that bubble up to the top to say okay oh this should be equity so we'll also walk you through how to prioritize the work and we'll show you the four buckets um and deborah talked about how you're kind of aligning with a lot of those already but we'll
167go more deeply into the four areas that you should consider so that you don't try to do everything because you just can't but your policy is already calling a lot of those out and that's what she was referring to so what we'll do is that'll also help with okay the superintendent shall right that's that piece that aligns with the priority so that the superintendent and staff can also get direction clear direction on what you expect that you'll be monitoring and then also be able to establish some clear kind of metrics and goals around what that looks like so that's going to be our last study session in april and then you will have plenty to work on throughout the year including how you'll leverage your task force right you talked about possibly having a task
168force or work groups right voices that will give you more insight to help support the work as well so i wanted to share that as kind of the big picture and so your brain should be hurting right now just a little bit yeah it's only monday right but this is some of the most important work you could ever do um on behalf of kids is to focus on equity which really your your uh statement really just just it illustrates the essence of it so i just appreciate it it's going to be hard work though um as you know um and so we stand in you know very much um solidarity with you as a board to continue this work even in the midst of all the storms that are happening this work helps you stay
169really grounded and focused so that in the end when your stakeholders start to buy in in terms of understanding where you're coming from as you're growing then also they'll lock arms with you too so this takes time um but you're doing the right work and you're you're interrupting the system so it's going to create a little bit of a ripple but in the end who wins right the kids right that's it's always going to be like who wins it has to be the kids and so that's the part we're all wrestling with and so with that um i will pass a virtual mic back over to you uh president lujan because it is past that time you're going to start turning the pumpkins pretty soon right nicole and deborah i just want to extend a
170heartfelt thank you on behalf of the board and staff for your work and and your leadership in this area um i also want to extend a thank you to our fellow trust my fellow trustees and dr moore for engaging in this important but hard work um it's definitely not easy and i'm grateful for the conversations that we've had this evening yeah um seeing that it is becoming the pumpkin hour for for some um i would like to adjourn this evening thank you everybody thank you good night