4/23/21 BOE DEI Workshop

001all right everyone we're live okay great um we have a quorum um this is a special meeting of the board of education it's a workshop um it's 9 30. we'll get started it's a workshop on diversity equity and inclusion this is scheduled to be two hour workshop um i think we do have a hard hard stop uh at 11 30 um some people have other meetings to go to if we don't uh really get to everything on the agenda we'll just schedule it this is not meant to be this is meant to be the first in a series of of workshops on diversity equity and inclusion um if you could bring someone to share the agenda first off let me just go through that briefly who wants to handle sharing june do you want to

002do that or dan june do you mind sharing that it's posted on the cave website yeah i can if someone gives me sharing access has been enabled for everybody oh okay so okay well here's here's the agenda if you're seeing it yep there it is okay so um you know we have a two-hour workshop what do we want to accomplish i think this is the april workshop here and what we want this is really to be a planning session to set the stage for further workshops down the road this is more about level setting and also trying to start getting um a honing in on a diversity equity and inclusion statement for the board a statement of values and commitment to diversity equity and inclusion what we want to do as well is over the

003summer in terms of goal setting and setting accountability around our dei goals for for the for the next year and beyond i think we need to set aside uh some time in the regular goal setting calendar to to be able to deal with our diversity equity and inclusion goals and how they how we actually thread them in with our overall goals for the district and then i suspect that we will have a couple of workshops next year probably one in the late fall one in the late spring to review our goals and how we've done with respect to our goals and and so forth um i want to spend a minute talking about the board of ed roles and expectations around dei and the administration's role and then spend probably um most of the time

004reviewing the current set and go gurnen state and and start getting our hands around a bit of goal setting around curriculum policy staffing professional development and so forth how do we incorporate diversity equity inclusion goals into our overall district goals and accountability we have an exercise that lisa sent out some materials around trying to uh really start honing in on a board dei statement that guides our actions um i'd like to talk we have a bit of time at the end i'd like to talk about how we work with the community how we work with team the town dei committee parent groups and so forth and then adjourn if we don't get to all of this today in the two hours we'll just have another meeting and and we'll continue where we uh where we

005left off um that's that's fine bill if you want to you know um the the the second you know agenda number three before we get into reviewing the current state and setting goals um you know one of the things that there there's you know this is a public meeting there's a lot of people who are or either watching this meeting today will be watching in the future that doesn't understand the role of the board and the role of the administration as it relates to diversity and equity inclusion the board really plays a very critical role in creating an organization that prioritizes and supports and invests in diversity equity and inclusion our role is really to make sure we make those statements of values and live by those statements we work with the administration in terms

006of setting goals and setting accountability but the it's the administration who really breeds life into this and who really operationalizes uh all of our goal setting around diversity equity and inclusion with the support of the board there's a belief that the board actually does all the work the board doesn't do all the work it's really honestly it's the administration and the staff who really does all of the heavy lifting around all of the initiatives around diversity equity and inclusion and weaving that into everything that we do in in this district sometimes it isn't clear so i want to make sure that whoever is watching who really doesn't understand the role of the board really does understand that there's a difference between the board's role and the administration's role although we work together um the the

007board isn't the the group that actually does all the work as it relates to you know any any of the initiatives really that that go on uh in the district um so uh with that maybe uh bill lisa we could kind of remove to the move to kind of the heart of the meeting which is reviewing the current state and and setting goals i don't know how you want to handle that well i can say a few things and lisa why don't you pick this up i mean and i've talked a lot lisa ken and i've talked a lot uh tony ruby melissa and i in the chair meeting monday had talked a lot so there is an approach to what i would view and i really want to underscore what tony has said here

008just i am transitioning out this is an issue i've worked on a lot i'm very pleased as i've said to a couple parents i've been talking to individually who are rightly so very concerned about this issue i'm very pleased that weston's positioning itself now to really be digging deeply into what has to be a core issue for this district any district any educational entity going forward i think what you as a board received about five six weeks ago at your board meeting is a comprehensive update i think that's an important touchstone for this conversation because that's a public document it's been shared out with other uh educators others who are advocates on this issue and by and large people are very very impressed with that what's captured in that comprehensive update it's a a to

009z soup to nuts very comprehensive approach but what's critical here and tony and i talked several weeks ago is that this meeting is about process this meeting is about really embracing this as a top commitment moving forward and knowing this is one step in a marathon one step in a marathon and to do this right many of us i've worked on this issue for some 30 years and i'm not i'm honestly proud of how i have handled it here what i'm proud about is weston is now positioned to move ahead lisa is embracing this this is core to who lisa wollack is this is core to who so many of your administrators are so the time is right one thing i would say very tangibly now is for this year in the goals that are

010on the website in a couple very specific places is a definite set of goals and action steps related to dei you see that in the academic area academic excellence under curriculum you also see it in the healthy learning environment area so at least in terms of where you currently are with goal setting you have those in there so i would suggest you can take it or leave it that going into the future years you build on what's there uh and final comment on that very tangible piece that largely emanated out of the high school and the good high school work on dei and indeed some of the exact wording we used to go district-wide had started at the high school started lisa's work with her faculty staff and administrators so in summary whether weston's been

011in the right place on this as from the administration standpoint the last several years in complete confidence it is now in the right place you're also in the right place as it relates to the board and the administration and teachers digging deeply into what has to be a long-term marathon process and third very tangibly you have in this year's goals for this year this academic year you have some very definite clear goals related to dei that then gives you something to build on going forward so let me stop there i don't know lisa if you want to pick it up from here because my view is this this is a building forward meeting so it's really about lisa's superintendent-elect working with you as a board on on on where this district and community will go

012thank you bill um yeah this is is really a very exciting time um for our district especially in this area um i am extremely proud as i know bill is that over the course of the past year despite the challenges of the pandemic that we as a district have continued to try to move this forward because it is um very very important when we talk about global citizenship as an outcome you can't talk about creating global citizens unless you have the appropriate culture within a district that fosters the whole idea of the importance of multiculturalism and diversity so we um it it it's really i i personally it it's a very exciting time for me i mean uh when i think back to um when my first master's degree was in multiculturalism and you never

013know where where your path is going to lead you so i'm very excited um what we would like to do is take some time right now to kind of review the current state of certain areas um under this umbrella if you will we have um basically um we have curriculum um and professional development we have the policies area we have the hiring and the staffing area and there is then um work that um we want to uh share with you again this is all um in draft form well some of it what we've done uh clearly isn't but but what we're moving forward to look through is so where are we and where do we do we want to be um so i'd like um if i may to turn it over to uh dr

014cross so he can um talk a little bit about um what what we've accomplished this year as far as specifically the curriculum um an instruction piece and the next level of work for that we'll start there again and then you can go into the um specific uh professional development that's been done thank you lisa good morning everyone thanks for having this meeting so we could uh discuss this important topic with you and you know our curriculum instruction team is really committed to this work uh i will start with the professional development piece because when we um approach this work we're doing so from an equity lens and in that at the last i think the last presentation that we had was at a board meeting and we had a full presentation i think over an

015hour on dei had some really good presentations from administrators and good questions from the board we do have that that powerpoint that will be posted along with this meeting which is a really good summary so i'm not gonna i'm not gonna give along uh overview here but i do want to highlight that the professional development piece is really critical in all of this work so building awareness building capacity is where we start and with a lot of initiatives we we have to start with the staff and we're very fortunate that we have done a lot of work in healthy learning environment and emotional intelligence areas previously because diversity and inclusion really is a healthy learning issue to be creating an inclusive environment and ensuring that we are responsive to all students in taking a look

016at our practices so um again taking a lead with the with the high school there's been a tremendous amount of professional development there at the middle school as well and we have more recently started at the elementary schools and on top of that we've done a great deal of work with our leadership team and there have been a series of workshops and we've leveraged um you know both external capacity and internal capacity with this work we have consultants that lisa has brought in we've brought in from the district standpoint as well we've brought the connecticut center for school change into our work uh we've a total of four sessions with our leadership team which is our curriculum leaders cabinet and our administrators we've also uh had five sessions with the connecticut center school change with

017the middle school staff and you know we we know actually our staff you know since the the the george floyd murder last spring uh many were jumping at the bit to uh get into this work so uh the professional development was very timely can you please pull up the document that we created just the drafts you can kind of go through so i know the board saw it but anybody that's also watching can get a flavor of some of the um the specific goals and the topics just kind of an overview as well as the people that we are working with i was just going to ask that i think it would be more beneficial not to give us the number of trainings you've had but rather the depth of content which i think lisa's

018that's what i'm getting to i think this will help pathy i appreciate that so i will i'll pull that up just give me one second here cause i didn't have it queued up um thanks and if you could do the curriculum council piece and i'll do the um high school piece and then you can do the uh the middle school piece and the other schools sure thank you okay are you able to see that document now yeah great so um you know the training for school leaders began you know in december with connecticut center for school change kerry lord and patrice nelson our facilitators uh we've looked at um you know in the very first session how what's our role as leaders in this work and how do we create the conditions for a more

019inclusive environment and certainly we had to look inward and think about our own racial identities reflect on that think about practices within the system where might there be you know unconscious bias in the system and start to uh really have those conversations and i think having the leadership team and getting together in breakout rooms and having uh some experts come in and work with us has been really critical and so through the use of texts uh videos we've we've used a lot of that for the foundation for conversations so that that work um has continued as a thread throughout the year and typically there's pre-work that we do leading up to a meeting so for example uh reading some chapters in uh the book uh unconscious bias by tracy benson uh that was one of

020the the key texts but but other things that we are uh you know looking at are things that carrie and patrice will bring in and have us read so in the subsequent workshops in in february march very very interactive we look through uh you know an equity lens at um at our work and what can get in the way of that work so you see here um particularly in workshop three we we get into that and how um and how we can be um you know better able to recognize what's called um you know an equity detour something to get us off of uh our focus on diversity equity and inclusion uh and just you know we want to we want to be able to move forward and make the changes we need to so

021we have a fourth workshop that will be coming up which i think is going to be very interesting where each person on the team has been asked to bring um an artifact something that is an artifact of either racial inequity disparity within the system and it could be a piece of data could be it could be a picture of something a book a poster something that they have seen in their work and they're going to bring it to the table for for discussion and that will prompt a lot of that um work and we use protocols in this work where you know within it within a discussion uh you know we will we will essentially you know go around the table with a specific protocol in mind so that's from a district standpoint lisa you

022want to highlight the high school from here can't hear you lisa sure thank you kent so what um we did at the high school was we began our work actually um this summer was um someone that that had reached out to us dr david nirenberg who i think i've waved this book around enough but it talks about what does injustice have to do with me engaging privileged white students with social justice and so we begin and we work with david over four sessions um i um this is a draft i need to go back and add what the first session was but the whole idea was to get the faculty in a place where they could acknowledge that there is a problem to be addressed to create a sense of urgency around um a mission

023of anti-racism work and to recognize and validate that this is very uncomfortable work and that we need to um first make um quite frankly the adults to feel um comfortable uh with it then we focused on what is a working definition of culturally responsive teaching which is something we have to do with scale next year um but more on that later and to really understand that what is culturally responsive teaching it talks about inclusion but it also talks about on things like anti-racism and to recognize that race is a social construct um in our country and to understand the concept of diverse perspectives um we looked at the final aspect we looked at was the idea of privilege and the idea of understanding um our privilege clearly but also to be able to then understand

024it's all about understanding where our students are coming from and to create a safe and comfortable environment so that then when they leave weston again we talk about global citizens they can um lead very productive global lives um and through the lens of understanding multiple perspectives the english department also worked with dr newenberg because with curriculum and instruction we had a big effort to embed more diverse literature in the um english classes and we thank the support of the western education foundation the pgo for partnering with the district on those funds and in that we really he really helped the english department talk about the english department read this book so you want to talk about race you really need to know how to do a literacy circle um with these kinds of themes ancing

025it to the literature and so he um helped them understand how to do that because um it can be messy work and we want to do it in an appropriate way that it is linked to the instruction and learning in the text and then finally our social justice advocacy faculty has been doing work with um dr elizabeth bishop who um goes by bishop she is the director of curriculum and outcomes at global kids and she has been working with both our social justice students as well as our social justice advocacy faculty and she um is an amazing person because she her big thing is is on youth leadership and training youth to um be empowered to do this work work such as conducting action research on how we can be a better and stronger community

026and how we can you know create some tangible action steps to move things forward um in a uh positive way so we um hope to continue that work next year ken do you want to talk about the other schools please sure so the middle school i mean many of the same themes you know in the first couple of sessions really it was focused on looking at the assumptions uh you know that staff members may bring into the classroom based on their socialization around their identity and um and so really beginning there um you know the third session one of the the key questions is looking at you know how how do we recognize bias understand its impact in schools and how you know how do we respond to that so those are good conversations at

027the middle school there um and in their last actually they've had a full you know five sessions fourth one they were looking at implicit and unconscious bias and what's the impact on students and staff and that you know that's one of the one of the things that you know you want to look at how is this affecting students we're first starting with with staff and their own social identity but then how how does this affect students with the ultimate goal of being more responsive and inclusive uh in the classroom and and i think that that um when you hear dan talk he is um you know he's always indicating that these are important conversations they are not always the easiest conversations um but he feels that his faculty really dug into these uh discussions and

028uh gained a lot from it again it was uh the connecticut center for school change was helping us with this as you know they are helping several districts um improve their diversity equity and inclusion uh through their efforts and then can i ask a question about it sure how is this taught at a middle school level just so i understand well this is uh this is with staff we can we can get into maybe we finish hillary the professional development then go into curriculum would that make sense okay um yeah i mean because again i think you know it starts with the staff but then also yeah you want to see once we as we're building awareness and capacity we want to see the changes in curriculum we want to see the changes in the

029system at the you know individual level at the school level and at the district level so um with the elementary we have had a smaller series of of workshops we began really at the most recent session uh on march 22nd and then we have another one upcoming in may which patti laura and i will be planning with the facilitators but again going back to real really where we've all started with all of these uh groups of these sessions have been you know really looking at your own i social identity and uh how that informs your perspective uh in your role as an educator and so um you know that's that's where we started we're really then now figuring out you know next steps with the elementary which um you know i wouldn't say is is

030necessarily behind but that we started later with them because as you recall we had a lot of the pd time being used for uh vdl um meetings with students so but now that we've had more a little more flexibility we've been able to start that work with them if i may just a quick ad i just want to have for the board no tracy edwards is part of this session i think for all of you understand a lot of her staff and personnel work on these issues and we also know nationally uh over identification of students of color is an issue within the pps and sped realm it is a wee bit of an issue for us as well so i just want to explain for the board who is your cast of administrators here

031today but it is important that tracy is one she's a great thinker as you all know but two her core work is is critical to what we're talking about here going forward okay are we done with the pg at this point ken yep maybe um maybe we can stop here if there's any questions um uh just on the pd before we we move to the other or can i just make a few comments before the questions because they might clarify what we're talking about so um hey like my wordle so it kind of gets to hillary's point you know we have all of these themes and all of these words and and when i was looking at all of the goals and things that have been accomplished this year um they you know um it

032has been um what i would say you know it's messy work there are themes of inclusion there's themes of what is bias there seems of you know what is the single story the multiple perspectives you know how do you teach this what's culturally responsive teaching all of that and so one of the goals that you're going to hear about a little bit later on that we're we're drafting for us to consider is how do we bring all of this together at scale k-12 how do we because professional development is so critical it's the first step to then working with the children and so because some work has been done at some levels the work um can take place faster than in other levels but we have to have at the district level common understanding and

033vocabulary common focus you know what does culturally responsive teaching mean across the board so then we will be able to embed it and then where the kind of the rubber hits the road next year is is to to um work to making it a part at scale in our overall uh curriculum and instruction i guess what i'm saying is is right now a lot of good work has been done in pd but now it's our responsibility um as the administrative team to kind of bring it all together and come up with a coherent at scale pd that we can work at next year to ensure then that this can be transferred into the classroom i'm i hope that that's helpful but does anyone have any questions about that yeah i i guess you you probably

034answered my first question i had which is um you've done a lot of pd what are the things that you think are working what are not going to working what's informing you and how to you know how to kind of you know as you move forward um you know modifying it changing it doing things differently you know you know it just just and i guess your view is that you know you're going to take all of this um you're going to look at what's working what's not working and ultimately come up with sort of a you know a going forward plan for professional development am i putting words in your mouth no you're not ex that's exactly right um um tony some of this is really about um you know the the adults processing it

035all um but the the bottom line is is that that we are at a point now where um we can um go on to the next level dr um and i can look at the next level of work which is to sort of instill the passion around the work to co to um to create a sense of passion and urgency around the work k-12 and also to be able to support the teachers in that they can do this work we as a district really can make make some um strides at scale um this upcoming year in this work but the first thing we have to do is is is and i'm looking forward to this summer where ken and i can kind of take a a pause with the principles and um start up framing

036what the next steps look at at scale because um to some extent you know different things are being done at different levels which is all good we just want to ensure do we all have that common vocabulary and how is it again the through line to the classroom if for example there are going to be programs in the classroom on certain aspects of for example um you know being kind to people and celebrating cultures and things like that it has to be done with at an age appropriate way and um how we move that that forward is um we have to be very planful in that um a lot of good things were were done but now it's kind of time to bring it all together and and move forward with a more structured um

037format i guess i would say ken i don't know if you have any yeah i would want to really add to that at least that um getting the input from the staff now through our professional growth committee in our next meeting on you know how the pd has gone uh how they can inform our planning this summer how they can be a part of that in some way because i think now you know having had this initial year it's really critical that we can tailor and shape that around their around their needs and our goals uh which you know i think will be critical uh to you know to what we've got to do can i just make a quick comment i mean i think this is just it's just great to see um you

038know what's in progress where we've come from and where we're headed and i think as lisa mentioned the biggest challenge and this has been in discussions with you know team weston and we've talked about it at northfield you talk about it around the community in any community the very first piece in professional development is not just how are we going to teach and infuse the curriculum with issues related to diversity equity inclusion but how do i understand it how do i as an educator internalize it understand the complexity of the issues and buy into it embrace it right so it's a it is a um a shared mindset as you said you said using you know we all need to use the same vocabulary which which i think gets at it but even deeper we

039all need to embrace you know a shared understanding of the issue and i need to as an educator internalize it embrace it and then communicate it in everything that i do so so the profes i just wanted to to note that the professional development is about having the skills to transfer a shared understanding but it begins with having the shared understanding right and i think that you've done a lot of work towards that i don't know whether you want to comment on that there's no question there you know at the very basic level and maybe i'm simplifying it too much it's how do we treat everyone with kindness and respect and along that line then how do we understand when some children some adults don't feel that way based on something that we might do

040or say that we never intended intended for um you know uh that's what i found with high school where people were like you know i never looked at it that way i never thought that perhaps i um hurt someone by asking him or her this this question or by engaging him in this conversation or anything like that so it's that kind of an awareness and and that's where it becomes really um i think personal and also knowing that that the expectation in this district is that yes that we are going to treat people that way conduct ourselves that way and also celebrate that about um about you know our society and and and potentially admit our tendency for unconscious bias and that that is a really really critical thing that we need to check ourselves

041about regularly whether it's about race or power or privilege or what right yeah like let me explain i mean to understand yourself so then that that you can you know it's that whole you know mirrors and windows thing yeah just a quick observation again i'm going to stay in the background but there's a lot of good thinking going on and dr goff out of yale right now doing a lot on policing a very renowned social psychologist is advocating don't just think attitudes think actions if you care about confronting racism and all the other issues not just attitudes but actions so i would just urge weston to dig into his work with policing because many of you may have i've been digging into the last week or so it's quite profound and that's because you can

042measure actions and understanding of social psychology is attitudes don't often lead to actions you can have an attitude in your actions and be in a different place so i would just urge us to think about actions moving forward in weston um i think melissa you had a question or comment yeah yeah i did um and this is maybe a couple steps backward um just understanding professional development generally i'm wondering how much how much time do our teachers um have in professional development and then of that time what percentage have we committed this year to dei and what percentage are we looking at committing next year to the eei ken why don't you talk about this i'll talk about how happy to do that and so um you know that's that percentage-wise not an easy answer

043but in terms of professional development as a whole um you know we have days that are set aside um you know throughout the year full days where we can schedule professional development we also this year was unique that we had other opportunities for staff to work and collaborate with the shortened wednesdays uh so we did have a we did have a lot of time you know built into the calendar this year whether it was for formal professional development or informal professional development around a lot of different topics and remember when we first started this year you know over the summer the big focus for pd was uh teaching in the hybrid and digital learning environments building off of last spring so a lot of time went to that early on and i'm actually amazed at

044how much time we were able to provide this year with you know 16 17 different formal sessions but then the informal work in time that is happening you know during the school day when teachers you know collaborate and the administrators you know talk in leadership team meetings so for example so professional development time next year depending on the number of goals and priorities we would then allocate the time you know accordingly for the for the diversity equity inclusion topic prime focus it's going to get that time within um the professional development plan lisa do you want to add yeah melissa i would say at this point that that um it would be very hard for me to speak we are going to you know say 15 hours next year i think that the most important

045thing is is that this has to be embedded in many different aspects of our work next year um and that it clearly is a focus until we kind of have that time to digest and come up with a planful approach i mean my ideas is to to make sure that we have a a planful approach of how to bring it to scale uh where um there's also a factor of the the teachers being able to be able to support them appropriately with the work so i can't give you a percentage right now just know that before school starts way before that this summer that's has to be the focus how do we take these goals that you're going to hear about some of them in a few minutes the draft that i have and how

046do we then articulate it into a plan that makes sense um for the district and as you'll hear when when jen ryan talks about our hiring plan that this isn't just a one year plan like these have to this this work is going to have to be multi-year goals um so what can we do this first year kind of the prioritized most important things and then um and as some schools are in other places they could continue with certain other things but to get everybody you know to level the playing field where everybody is at the same place and and comfortable with that understanding to move forward is our biggest focus this fall can i make an administrative comment i'm sorry to um interrupt i'm getting emails saying that participants can't join the zoom meeting

047which they're misunderstanding so i just wanted to announce that you can follow this meeting on youtube i they obviously won't hear me say that unless so if you could pass it along to friends and neighbors that if you're looking to actually join this please contact them and tell them to follow it on the youtube live stream sorry i have two questions um the first question is is professional development mandatory for all staff and the second question is how are we tracking attendance and or or holding staff accountable with not participating great question well it is mandatory i will say that um we will be relentless in our expectation that staff is there engaged and um participate and they're also we're talking about evidence indicators of you know so what they attended how do we know

048it's kind of like with the kids how do we know that they understand this and that speaks to um the what we expect to come out of the professional development quite frankly ken do you want to talk a little bit about this this year group with the curriculum council and and that accountability if you will and evidence well you know look part of the code of professional responsibilities is that you're continuously learning and growing as an educator and we expect that as part of the evaluation plan that they're reflecting and learning uh each year and applying that and participating actively and being engaged in the work now that doesn't mean we're always going to to agree or or we're going to have you know hopefully you know really good discussions and bring various perspectives to

049the work but from a curriculum leader standpoint our coaches what they're what they're doing is also meeting with staff on a regular basis and i'm talking generally now not just with with this work they're meeting during curriculum partner times department times administrators are going into to classrooms to look at initiatives whether it's ddi or math to see the application in the classroom that that that new learning is being applied and where it and where it's not where might be the barriers and challenges one thing i would say is is that during these sessions also people have to produce something so for example if we're using this unconscious bias book and one of the workshops says what is the paragraph that resonates with you and why and then that turns into a chat room right there

050the people in that group everyone has to produce something kind of like um what we asked you guys to work on today is like what would you think a dei statement is or i know like with the english department when they read this book they had specific meetings about um it was the same thing you know um there was a question posed people had to uh you know find a piece in the text that they could relate to and then how are you going to incorporate that into your classroom so there have to be specific things that they have to be able to show once they're done with that um one of the things that we do is you know you you pose a question at the end of each professional development that everybody needs

051to answer an exit question and then you take that and by that you can determine what are the next steps it's like good teaching but everyone has to do it and if someone doesn't come to a meeting and we see quite frankly there's a pattern of gee you're not attending professional development then that's where the administrators come in and um you know hello it's so um it's unfortunate that you missed that and the topic was to do this um and you weren't there to share i would so much like to be uh know your thoughts on the quote that you picked you know you you have to really show that this matters and frankly um have one-on-one conversations where needed because like i said you have to be relentless in our expectation you're gonna do

052this work there's there's get on the bus um and we have been you know you have to help and do it and i've had conversations with staff that said you know i didn't really like this this made me so uncomfortable and to have that kind of a trust trusting relationship with the staff and i said okay tell me why you were so uncomfortable and you're you're dreading not dreading but you don't want to go to the next session and it was clearly it was an uncomfortability around um someone's feeling about um you know his or her own self with regards to this work but that's important to know so then it causes us a pause and then to talk because we don't want people to you know we want people to um be excited about

053the work and if that means pausing and and helping people individually or in smaller groups in the building then that's what we need to do so this pd you have we have to be very in tune with how the comfortability level and how we can push people out of their comfort zone but support them and the the way that you find out is by continually talking and checking in and having them write reflections and sharing the best practices or coming with a problem of practice following up at department and team meetings just keeping it all embedded and when you can do that and have it on every agenda item for a meeting that all right we gotta look at this one piece again people you know understand what the expectation is you want to move

054to oh uh victor yeah okay no um i just wanted to say i mean i i completely understand and and support the sense of urgency on this but for those who know me i am a stickler for process and i i just want to understand a little bit um so we're you know in in we're not in a perfect world so we can't do everything secrecy in the way we we would want to i mean ideally we want to establish our mission statement based on that we would establish our our goals based on that we would establish our professional development based on that we would roll it out to the students so it i just want to take a step back because it just feels to me like we made some good progress in creating

055this professional development that's been shared here um now we want to we sort of need to backtrack a little bit with with our overarching goals that include the transparency to the community which we represent and we wanted to be inclusive of that input as well but i don't quite understand the stage gate between you know the professional development and and whether how how we pivoted and felt comfortable that that teachers had internalized the program so that it could be rolled into the classroom so how do we make the how do we how do we take that next step is that what you're saying yeah i mean there may be a clarification here for victor i i we haven't well a step back is more than people realize and you can see when you engage with

056our administrators and our faculty this topic and these this core topic's too small a word for this this core work has been on underway in western for for a long time so so it's a bit of a spiral you know you move in terms of developmentally you sort of you take a step you're going to spiral back to set goals you modify so some of the process concern victor which is spot on it's going to be as opposed to linear it's going to be more of a spiral where you're moving ahead checking back in so a lot of the work's already been underway we already do a whole lot instructionally curricular-wise in this whole realm so this year it's been sort of looking at that building on that and still moving forward um but i

057think some of the work he worked this year with the connecticut center et cetera et cetera that itself hasn't yet moved directly into schools and classrooms here in in weston but there is all but then the paradox is there's already a lot of this work underway um some of it's good some is not so good and that's what we're looking at um so i don't know lisa if you wanna because i hear victor saying hey you've been doing it this year and you're already now moving into classrooms but are we ready to move into classrooms in the paradox areas we've already been in classrooms on this for years and now we're trying to make it that much more systematic that much more effective that much more the quality you need but i don't know lisa

058kenny if you want to pick up from there ken you want to go first yeah i think i think to that point you know you know i might have given the impression at the k5 level with only a couple of pd sessions scheduled this spring that maybe the work hasn't been going on there but i think to bill's point what we have seen is over the years in terms of looking at our curriculum that our curriculum leaders have worked with with me and their teachers to see whose voices are prioritized in the curriculum which voices are not prioritized in the and the and the resources that we used and how we teach to ensure um that we're being inclusive has really changed so you look at the book collections and so i'd say you know

059k5 has really been out in front of this in this work for for a long time now and and this is now a great opportunity for them to look again through an equity lens which i'm asking uh and we're going to be you know working with curriculum leaders on how to facilitate using an equity lens with our curriculum renewal process which we have a schedule for each curriculum area and so using that to look at how we're teaching uh what we're teaching how we may be um you know prioritizing certain voices or or or not um as we as we go through that and that is you know that is a stepwise process that this year's work right now that's the foundation for that and so you've heard also this year building the two new

060courses at the high school to have some very specific electives but the core curriculum you know is is really as we go through the renewal process that's that's a really key critical tool for this district now because we've always had a renewal cycle and you know research and development and evaluation of how things are going after we implement but now putting in a phase where you're really looking at it from an equity standpoint um so from district level that's what that's one thing we're looking for so so ken i guess maybe uh victor it's a really good question because out of that question comes where where where does where does the intersection with the board then come again as we move into the classroom right and i think that um it has to be ultimately

061through you know looking at um the dei lens when we do our curriculum renewal through the curriculum committee and making sure that as we move into the classroom we're true to our values and missions right i i think that's that's really where the board re-engages right i think it it's um i you know correct me if i'm wrong but i think that's that's a natural engagement point with the board again to make sure that as we move to the classroom we're holding true to our values and and mission so just to take a concrete example of that tony i i think you know recently we had a presentation on the world language curriculum in the curriculum committee meeting and so with these you know regular updates on curricular areas within that i think that would

062be you know critical to look at well what work has been done from a dei perspective where you know are we with that work um and you know tafia's curriculum chair you know we will regularly continue to have updates in particular areas that you know we need to share information the board wants you know information on so i think that yeah i i you know and i you know i think that's an important part of it because there is a you know we we have an entire community including our parent communities who who are weighing in on exactly how we are delivering uh this in our curriculum in the in the classrooms and i think that that's an important part of what we do as a board to make sure that we're representing everyone in

063our community um who who all have a real view in exactly how we are executing um in delivering all of this in our curriculum and i think as a as a board we do have an actual process for doing that through our committee process and i think we need to hold to it um and and i don't think we need to do any different but i think we um if we are whole through our committee process then i think we um then i think we we um all of those things can be captured and discussed right i i agree with you tony the only thing i would add is it's just get given the the topic i i i do think it's in uh of utmost importance to you know the i and dei is

064inclusiveness right to get that community engagement um on this topic right so uh it's operationally difficult to have you know uh you know so much participate participation in a subcommittee but but i think collectively all of us we need to find a way to to to reach out those tentacles outside of that committee to really get community engagement on this topic okay yeah and i agree i think that that's critical i also think um that we need to the the pd piece is critical in the staff because the staff is it it's not as cohesive k-12 as we would like it and you know part of that also is doing an assessment you know teachers confess themselves and we can assess the district they have you know adl different groups like that have checklists do

065we meet this do we do this to again have this sort of self-reflection process and then where we see we need help we're going to need the community support to be able to help us with this and there are people in our community that are very passionate and also have things that they can bring to you know their level of expertise to help us with this work because it is um it's very it is very challenging um i don't know at this point we would like to go through some of the work that um specifically in the areas of the policies and hiring things that yep i guess on on specific curriculum items um we went through pd but on specific curriculum items is there anything more you want to add before we move to

066policies um it's something we have to actually probably deal with during you know um we have you know we we will have that the several goal-setting exercises over the summer but is there anything else we want to add at this point on curriculum in terms of thoughts you know i i just think that um you know you've heard a lot of the work at the secondary level i did want to make sure that it was known that you know a lot of that work has also been you know started previously at the elementary and give a lot of credit to uh alex and andrea and uh you know nicole and laura patty on that because they you know they that that's been critically important it's part of our workshop process so i just did want

067to sort of drive that message home i guess i would ask is are we okay with um if jen can go through um what what we've been working on and then kind of then go back to where it says um you know incorporating dei goals overall district we could kind of just go back and review some of those things that include curriculum okay yeah that's perfect okay so you want me to start with the policies yeah that would be great i guess the one the one um uh thing i want to emphasize here is is that so we we have an area of pirate policies and then hiring this really is a multi-year goal there is no there is no way that all these action steps can get done the first year however um some

068things have already um in the works now they've there they've been tended to but um this is not gonna be um really uh you know oh i don't want anyone to see the goals and then think that it's they're all gonna be done first year because it's not possible we're gonna have to prioritize what we think that we can do the first year to really um you know leverage um the our dei work with regards to these areas jen okay so for policies there's three policies or collection of policies and regulations that really pertain to the recruitment and hiring of staff this first one um four one one one is the overarching umbrella of how we hire and recruitment selection this one we've had in place for many years since 2014 and it really just

069goes over that the final say it lies with the superintendent the non-discrimination is obviously one we've had for many years and actually an updated one is coming to you guys monday night with some new language that just talks about our hiring processes um our staffing processes personnel we also have one for student and community that's all ever changing every year so you're going to be seeing the new one on monday and then the one that came about due to connecticut state statute in 2018 is the plan for minority staff recruitment so that's when the state of connecticut said that every school district must have a plan for minority staff recruitment um and then you'll see later on too that the word minority is is not so good to use anymore but because the state statute

070still has it some of the things that we have in the plan still says minority staff recruitment as opposed to diverse or people of color so we could go to the recruitment plan so the recruitment plan has been in conjunction with ces minority recruitment planning consortium this actually went back to 2019 where um sorry jen what is the can you just describe in two sentences what that um consortium is about sure so what did i tell by who where is it who is it made up of sure so ces um out of trumbull and what it is is they you know they're the rest of fairfield county so the planning consortium is kind of two different things they reached out to all fairfield school districts to you know to help them with their minority recruitment

071plan diversity recruitment plan and they also gave a couple of grants out so in 2019 that's a grant that actually westin was awarded which would go down the background a little bit three thousand dollars for it and that actually came from the resc alliance mtr regional initiative funding that was to start in march of 2020 and as everyone knows that kind of got curtailed a little bit so they did extend it to us for this year and for this year the money will go towards professional development and for expanding our recruiting partnerships with diverse organizations and then along with that they've all ces and tremble has also been doing workshops to actually create this plan of diversity recruitment plan so specifically this year there's been about five or six workshops to create this exact plan

072for all the fairfield schools that have gotten the the funding for this as you're going to hear in a second they've also brought in legal counsel to provide all the districts uh shared information so the the shipment piece which jessica jen's going to speak to come out of this consortium so what um you know they gave all the fairfield county schools that are participating a template to kind of build upon and then through working with our administration here in weston again it's a draft but this is our first attempt to get this up and running for 22 school year coming up so we laid out kind of a little bit of the background our district intent which is to recruit more diverse candidates western public schools and all openings across every category part of that

073is really important the retention of staff once we do are able to hire people which is to create and sustain a more inclusive school climate and then obviously provide regular professional development we go down the mentions the policies that directly relate to this so we've set it up for obviously annual goals and then as lisa and bill were saying you know a one year one of a three year plan to kind of focus on certain actions and all of our goals so our annual goals is just to ensure our policies and goals are kept up to date which would just be an annual review of it it's a very dynamic recruitment plan so it is important to look at it every year and to update it as needed um goal one to create recruitment partnerships

074with organization and candidates kind of lay out some of their actions um as you'll see some of them are expand and continue because you know we have already been doing these for the last few years but definitely we need to expand and to to grow our partnerships i don't know if you want me to go you know i'm gonna go action by action that's probably too detailed so i'll just go down to the goals evidence indicators of success to be determined we kind of let that to be determined because of the next idea which is to develop and implement consistent and equitable hiring processes and to do that we would like to set up a district committee and what the district committee will do we'll make sure that we're aligned with all of wps dei

075missions so i think that this will kind of help us guide us in our future hiring processes and in this district recruitment plan let me see where i am sorry jen i just want to note for for people who are going to be reviewing this you know it's we should talk about um the new things that we're doing and i know that you didn't go through in detail in terms of your um action steps for this year but just for the purposes of the record there are four new action steps that you're taking out of the seven in terms of our current seven in terms of recruiting um diverse candidates i think it's just something to note and to highlight that it's not just continuing and the same old same old the fact that you

076guys are making being proactive about new strategies to put into the into the mix um i think is commendable so i just wanted to put that out there okay um so for the district committee to uh review all of our practices from resume review to the actual interview process um you know our goal is to kind of get it uniform across all four schools also to look back at our job postings our job descriptions any kind of expanded advertising to also participate in job fairs and expand that of course increase participation in professional development which is always the important piece and then goal three is to develop social and media promotional tools to attract a more diverse workforce kind of goes over the actions but it's very important to um to show the work we're

077doing and that this will kind of show that to let people know how important this is to westin so these kind of actions will help us do that and i think i think this is amazing um oh i should let you finish i can see that was the end um uh i think this is great you know and push back to me but um when at what point do you as an administration um put quantifiable benchmarks or milestones to each of these so if you could scroll up a little bit um you know when you say you can stop there when you say um you know some of these strategies how many of these you know or you can scroll down a little bit please to goal three right so participating in in job fairs

078participating that kind of thing you know we're going to need numbers we don't but we as a community will need to put some goals so is it one thing we're participating in it or we're going to participate in you know a minimum number of events and the only reason i say that is because otherwise it does you know you don't want to race to the minimum you want to race to the maximum so you don't want to say well we went to one job fair so that we can check that box right so i'm just saying at what point do we put some measures or milestones against all of these goals and i recognize this is complete draft but i just want to mark it as something that will need to be done down the

079road yeah so why don't i um yeah a little bit on that because jen and i talked about it and that's really like i keep saying what are what are the evidence indicators of success like how do we know and and jen and i um you know spent time talking about the idea like like for example if you look at goal one and it says develop contacts with strain state training institutions scholars universities blah blah blah what we'll need to do this summer is yeah set a target what are the specific targets here you know when it says contacts with minority diverse community organizations said okay what do we do now what is the target to do next right um connect with alumni groups what alumni groups you know again what is the the the

080the target level where we're actually we're very aware of that you know when you again what is the so we're doing these things what's the evidence that we did them you know where as far as even just the questioning to ensure that at the interview process there is a question that speaks specifically to that theme of dei for every candidate depending on the position that was perfect you know that's the goal that will serve as the evidence how many affairs do we go to i think it was and maybe it's not how many and maybe it's not how many fairs do we go to but how many is enough to meet our goal like it's not about okay we want to go to 100 fairs well 100 is a waste of time maybe three is

081enough but i'm just saying how many is enough well and and jenna had shared with me because i was asking the questions when i was looking at some of the things we did and she said you know i post all the time at this or i post that or i do this and that that's great but then one thing we've learned from uh miss green the college and career counselor person that we can hopefully also leverage her area of expertise is how do you then establish the relationships with these schools i don't know was it ruby they said you know you or maybe it was tony that said you can't just oh we have an opening now let's go down to this school in the region you know down outside of dc i'm making this

082up show up and be like okay we're looking for this teacher it takes cultivating of uh the relationship with that school and so it's also the depth and that's what we do need to track as far as you know blogs how have we reached out who are what substantial conversations have we had how have we networked all of that has to be really um we have to be held accountable for that yeah um should i go into the shipment in goodwin piece next yeah so we were given the charge by the state obviously um to have a recruitment plan as well as the policy and sometimes um you know a little legal advice is good so shipment and goodwin did share this with ces who we have permission to share it and it kind of

083goes over the guidelines of what we can and cannot be doing when it comes to this and basically what it comes down to is just a fair and equitable process of hiring you know we can do so much to attract applicants but we can only go so far so really um it's laid out pretty well you know what a school district can and cannot do in relation to recruitment and hiring processes and and there's only so much you can do because of affirmative action restrictions yeah actually it may just quickly jump in it really relates to your earlier question taffy and i think this this is a great critical juncture just in metrics because for the last couple years lewis and i jen grappled with what what are our targets what are our numerics in

084this area and uh we've had some success in this district uh with diversity we've had also not success so i go to your point exactly taffy you don't want to set the bar too low we also want to stretch but get you know so numerics your matter so we've been grappling with that this is a good time for the board in the administration to answer the exact question you asked now legally and i was part of one of these workshops for a while ago this consortium was saying set a definite numeric target for the number of staff and and faculty of color you want to hire this guidance says you can't set a specific number or do specifics in that regard you have to be very cautious so i think this is a very important

085memo for the board to understand the community to understand we can still set stretch goals we can still push ourselves but we in fairness to uh applicants and people of color we have to do it in line with the law all right which is which is explained here i think quite clearly so so so the two ends of the continuum then as we know over histories of affirmative action debate the two ends of the continuum are well one we're not going to put on the continuum which is no you're not allowed to teach here which of course we you know but the let's call the continuum this on one end it's look our doors open you can come work here if if you apply okay and the other content end of the continuum is affirmative

086action where we actually go out and select based on you know dei and and and shut out others in lieu of right which is that's the continuum we don't want to be at either end right we cannot be by law at this end and this end is too low a bar right bill where we're saying look the door is open you can apply if you like we are going to be proactive in our recruitment we're going to fall somewhere in the middle we're going to be proactive in our recruitment but the law tells us there's limits right right yeah i think and on page four the document it's almost in one sentence let's hear it what you can't do which is you can't designate jobs you can't designate positions you can't designate searches you can't

087designate your energy for any population but in general we can say dei matters that's core to who we are we want the most diverse faculty we can get we want the most diverse set of administrators we can get and we're going to go after that and and i think those process pieces you can put all kinds of metrics too right but it's you can't narrowly say hey uh this position is only for a certain type of person that's right only looking for that type of person and on page four there's the however even under these circumstances the district cannot set aside a specific position and again they're you know old language but a minority candidate position saying we can't set aside the white position but we're saying hey we want diversity we just aren't gonna

088i think the point is clear but i i have to say because i was in the meeting when it when tom mooney showed up and for a number of districts they were like oh i can't set that spiff and jen's nodding all right so that's why this is important we can do all do all the great work we need to do we just have to do it in line with what's in this document yep thank you for that clarification um can i have a can i just ask a question on overall policies uh you know and melissa you know weigh in on that as well do we need a uh embark on a just a legal review of all of our policies um and just to make sure that they all are you know we

089we look at all of our policies through that um dei lens just to make sure that you know a lot of policies haven't been looked at for a long long time um is this is this is something that's going to require shipment and goodman to work with us on um so i think we need to probably just you know make sure that we um that we uh we we need to do that work and it's a question of how and when we do it yeah that's uh that's also included in the draft of the goals i want to share with you like the one that the policies jen's talking about are specific to that but overall there there just has to be a review and i think that um some some there's been some help

090in that area as to what ones would um merit looking at so yes yeah okay i i might underscore as you've and melissa you can speak to this uh it the pos committee's been very very active looking at those policies that i think carry the most significant and most significant weight for us being a community that by action remember i said earlier not just attitude but by action will not tolerate uh racism discrimination so those are those they're almost the entry level foundational pieces and the police committee's been active on that so that that is good news and and thank you policy committee for taking a lead on that yeah well thank you thank you bill for your your your help with that um you know i think the way we framed it in our

091last policy meeting you know there's really two tracks to look at one is you know policies that substantively need to be examined for their content and then i think there's just all of our policies in terms of are we using to someone's point earlier are we using consistent language that um across all of our policies that is reflective of the current state of of um you know whether it's how people want to be identified or you're using the most inclusive language you know it could be a policy about you know school buses but if it mentions um you know how we identify students or staff we want to make sure that we're using the current um most inclusive language so that's a different type of review and analysis but probably equally important great um where

092do we want to go from here um jen are you all done good oh um tony do you want me really quickly to kind of go through some of the drafts of the things just take another yeah minutes and then we can move into the statement if everyone's okay with that this document is just it it's a it's a very messy draft we can give you the copy afterwards and i'm going to ask people to comment on it along the way mainly dr craw but i'll sort of share with you sort of uh some of our preliminary thoughts that this will then take us into the next workshop okay um okay let me see if i can share my screen okay i don't know if i'm sharing it right am i i'm really not good

093at this how can i get to the beginning help okay wait just a minute okay all right why can't i see what they can say i know but i don't understand i'm so confused i i'll just go okay so this is kind of um sort of what we put together right uh this is the first district goal that as dr mccurry said it's on the original um uh you know if you go to the website is what we've been working on right and so then i kind of um broke it down to different categories and we have policies we are hiring pd curriculum instruction so along those lines um tony if you look at what's kind of what you were just talking about there has to be any review process specifically about policies through the

094laws of dei and which are the substantive policies that need to be addressed first um in some kind of a timeline with that and then the other one is specifically related to what jen talked about to make sure that those policies are all aligned to the the district diversity recruitment plan so i guess they would be the first substantive policies then we have the hiring ones that jen went through they're right there and there's all action steps under that and then we have kind of the pd which is sort of what um dr craw and i spoke to the whole idea of developing and executing a pre-k 12 pd plan that does come in language that embeds this pd at scale that we have a shared understanding and that we are then we'll be able

095to start working on embedding things in the area of curriculum um i'll talk about the first one and then ken can talk about the the other ones in the the more specific curriculum areas but we also really need to review all of these programs that we currently have in the district to see um to ensure that there's an articulated appropriate approach to dei in things as far as responsive classroom wingman dbt advisory school counseling seminars all of that great things are going on um across the district in all of that but there are places that perhaps certain themes can be brought out more and we certainly don't want redundancies but how can we interweave some of the dei themes in that work um we think will be important and then ken do you want to

096speak to the next two about specifically the reading skills the culturally responsive um any of the the sort of the curriculum review piece probably has to go in here this is obviously um you know evolving it's a good place that we're we're starting from and we're getting a i think a much earlier start on this uh now heading into the summer and next year so um yeah and so again i think some of this is going to come out of you know our work with our professional growth committee in terms of some of the things that we may you know want to do next year but looking at our critical reading skills is going to be important in relation to the dei um and but you know i also just want as you can kind

097of see at the bottom there we also have other goals we're going to need to be working on as well concurrently and for example we talked a lot about math at the last curriculum committee meeting and uh you know some of the things that um you know i think we highlighted a six point plan in terms of math and how we're going to be making improvements next year and these bullets uh these bullet points relate to that as well and so that's a that's a key key focus yeah i think it is really important i mean clearly we want we need math achievement how we how we spell that out and ensure again accountability with with goals at the district level and uh um to write down the through line with the teachers will be

098our responsibility another goal that i i sort of put out there which has become sort of a an interesting um i think important theme is the whole idea of a culture of sustainability um and the idea of the green efforts and um all of that i think there are things that can be done curricularly again there's a lot of great things going on but we have to kind of organize it and um our environmental science teacher mike aiken has been instrumental with that work um and how to sort of do that work both at the district and school level but then also at the administrative level to make sure that that we're operating with in the sustainability framework which a lot of that also is dictated by law but that that was another sort of

099third area i was thinking of these are clearly you know sort of the first three categories if you will and then we have to um as a board if is there something major that we're missing is there something that we need to to look at um that would be important um but again i think there's a lot of great things going on we just have to figure out a way to how to do it at scale and along the lines with this this green initiative we've already been working on um thanks to mike aiken and monthly themes across the district and what are we doing now under those themes of for example um you know recycling or um uh pollinators and eliminators i don't know he has all these titles by theme and people that

100are the science cells the social studies stills have already been putting in what are we currently doing and how can we kind of make this a more systematic um process like just the other um night big shout out to maddie robco who might not know if you didn't look on instagram she is a senior that her poster on recycling is going to appear on 10 regional public buses they're going to be driving around the region um and that's you know she won the grand prize in this contest by the the housatonic um the the housatonic resource uh organization which is very powerful how can we kind of become more involved with that um as a district to kind of again bring it up to scale the whole sustainability issue and i was i was just

101uh i was just going to say if you could scroll up a little bit lisa i was just going to say that um you know as part of the goals i didn't er sorry down i mean uh yeah that's right um you know how do we engage uh where's the youth piece on this um so where are the goals around youth engagement and i know that the um you know social justice advocacy group um is is is probably central to it but can you comment on youth engagement as part of goal-setting around youth engagement sure one of the things and one of the particular areas here where we talk about current programs and things like that one of the things that we have been looking at specifically in the area of youth engagement is that

102um uh and i should say youth engagement and leadership sorry yeah we had so we've had some preliminary discussions actually with one of the consultants that we've been working with at the high school who is she's fascinating and how she has been able to leverage the themes of action research and sort of auditing things um through youth in that you um uh work with students you know that students uh literally um apply to be part of this team to conduct action research in in certain areas one of them could be to what extent uh is the diverse perspectives noted in the curriculum at the high school i'm making this up and they actually um work on that it sort of empowers them to do the work and find out um what the results would be

103through the research gather the data and then work on planning for them to address that so that's kind of that's one example of one of the things i haven't included it in here yet because the conversations are very preliminary but yes we have to see how can we empower the students to um to own some of these work and also to make sure that at scale these opportunities um are done whether it be through through some of these organizations that i've listed here the programs that we have but um other programming there are many opportunities that um we can get our kids involved with at different levels right um and that's what we have to try to do um in the area of sustainability that's very prevalent as well you know we had people that

104won um in the contest if you will the other night and god bless chris spaulding for the 90 minutes we sat there on the zoom call watching these people win and weston w is last um and the winners were in fourth grade sixth grade uh 11th and 12th and so why wasn't it any winners in k2 for example how can we do this more at scale to develop certain and empower students by providing them with these opportunities so we do have to address that in this so lisa what um i guess you know just dovetailing into the to the next workshop i think the next workshop will be part of the goal setting that we're going to do as a district and in addition to our starting to hone in our broad overall goals and

105and measurable goals um we need to weave our dei goals into that as well and so that's kind of the i know this is very draft but i think that as we get to kind of the first workshop in the summer we have to start then honing in on specific measurable goals across a number of different dimensions but we have to be you know uh intentional about what we're doing on the dei side exactly i mean it it shouldn't be a standalone it needs to be when we see all of this work right how is that that embedded in the work um i i totally agree so this is our first sort of blush at what we what we're thinking and then we can certainly um um you know talk through some other ideas things

106that we might be missing whatever at the next uh workshop if that's helpful um so so that that kind of leads we have about a half hour left and what i like to do lisa said sent around some homework um and one of the things that um i think we should i think is going to be a useful exercise is you know how you know what every board member thinks the dei statement um looks like right and and so um i don't think we're gonna you know uh end today with the uh you know a combined ei statement but i think we should start taking the pieces together and kind of start with the next workshop of pulling all the pieces together and see if we can come up with a kind of a combined

107uh uh dei statement that reflects our value in missions as a as a as a district um that we all we all agreed to be proud of um so lisa i don't know how you want to do it but well i think that you know we we i asked everyone to reflect on what is our mission what is the vision it talks about empowered citizens what does it mean to be a global citizen what does it mean to create this kind of a climate um we also had a sample that the um that um tony sent around that had been shared um a diversity statement that i actually um that would that was shared it was a suggestion from the dei committee um with the town and we actually pulled a lot of those words

108out of there for our wordle of inspiration thank you jody saketa perhaps what we do is start by just if anybody wants to share a read like a stab at it or say that this is important or not um then we can kind of collect those thoughts or jody can thank you jody and and then that can be a starting point for the next workshop to sort of see how we can bring them together to uh finalize a statement if that works anybody want to go first okay i feel like i'm in school now do i have to do the non-volunteers where everybody oh quick look down that's good let me i'll get mine i'll get my i'll get mine i'll go first okay and if you don't have one just throw out a few

109things that you think are important well i i threw out some i put some sentences i don't know if it's a statement together but i i put some things together that i i don't know maybe you know let's see however whatever this is the equity piece where we're all equal we're all going to give our thoughts to as to what you think okay let me let me read this out oh wow you got fancy at the westin public schools we honor and value the uniqueness of each individual we strongly believe that a diverse equitable and inclusive community is essential for developing global citizens who will make a positive contribution in a complex and multicultural society we strive to be a safe community for all students their family and staff regardless of race religion disability gender

110identity and sexual orientation we believe that empowering students to be innovative thinkers and inspired leaders is best achieved to a curriculum that embraces diverse perspectives and experiences and we commit to constantly changing challenging ourselves to evaluate and refine curricular policies and practices into setting goals expecting accountability and allocating the appropriate resources to ensure that we embody these beliefs each and every day wow okay okay we're done no no no that's really good that's really really good tony and funny it's funny i was reading it and um as i was going as i was as i was seeing that we strongly believe we strive we believe i was like if we don't get to we commit to and at the bottom there it was we commit to so what we're actually going to do um and

111i think that last part is is really is really critical um so that was my uh bunch of sentences that i tried to what i tried to do is look at um you know what we went through curriculum staffing policy uh overall mission as a you know and and value as a district and just try to hit on each one of those points um with a statement um so i don't know that that was mine um let me let me i'm going to ask a provocative question can you put it back up there tony for a second if you don't mind i'd like to hear others okay all right yeah let's let's get let everybody share that wants to first okay so i'm ready to share okay um you know as being global citizens and

112i can't i don't have a sentence to read to you but as global citizens we are advocates for dismantling um systems that are oppressive that's a is a it is a small p political um role of ours as global citizens is to watch out for our neighbors to be respectful but also to advocate on behalf of those who are disenfra disempowered or marginalized can we introduce some language um under the heading of global citizenship around good advocacy and i don't i don't think that what i don't want to do is is is shutter the windows and turn the lights off and say yeah we don't we don't do that i think i think i think it's important to have some strong language around that it doesn't have to be partisan it doesn't have to be

113you know which i i completely embrace and recognize that it should not be but it should be about um you know speaking truth to power so i just you know or at least advocacy on behalf of those who are disenfranchised and marginalized okay so we some of these things we'll put down and that could be a good part for our next leadership right we don't need to resolve it today it is okay and all i would say is let me put in a plug right now for hillary's book because when you're talking about the chapter of um we don't you know we don't really do that here if you haven't read this book yet we're all gonna um i i would highly recommend it thank you hillary because it has a way of helping you

114see the other perspectives really great read think again by adam grant thank you who would like to go next oh why thank you ruby [Laughter] i knew i was going to be next um so again i don't have a sentence to read either but when i reviewed um jillian's forward by tony and kind of what she wrote down i think the one thing and i know i part i've isolated or i focused on this word before in a public meeting is just to make sure that we are standing for the word anti-racist and in her first in her fourth sentence um she put we believe that the pursuit we believe in the pursuit of anti-racism and i just think for a district to stand behind that we will we we are anti-racist and we will

115and we will continue to support anti-racism and and i just think that that's a big word to to show like just how much we believe in everything so i know it's just one word but it's the one word that i'm going to be looking for in our mission statement well and what's interesting is when you look at that word and this is things i've learned this year is when you look at on the whole um the racism in the whole idea of the intersectionality of that concept with other themes i think is is still something i'm trying to to understand at a deeper level so thank you next volunteer yay gina way to go sorry um i i just love that we're having these conversations and we're trying to figure out how to move this

116work forward i mean i just i just want to say that but i think another key word to use um as it relates to everything associated with this topic is acceptance um and you know it's accepting people for who they are um it may be accepting that we have to have these challenging conversations because i think the way for this to work and really to become something um where we can do that that deep thinking is there has to be an openness to having those difficult conversations lisa that you've talked about and so i i just think that we have to figure out a way to say it's acceptable to have to have the conversation that like not everybody's going to be coming to the table at the same level of thought or the same

117level of progressiveness with their thinking and we just have to figure out a way to accept everyone for who they are and include them in the process of moving them forward and i i in no way mean that we we accept ideas that are against our dei mo motives but just a way of making sure that we are opening ourselves up to those challenging conversations to move people forward can i can i i agree with you gina i i think maybe and correct me if i'm wrong how we create safe space that we promote a culture of safe space to have difficult discussions which means no matter where i come from in my understanding i am safe to express it here when i hear you say acceptance you know we accept everyone where they are

118we don't accept racism as a premise right but we accept where you are and we create a safe space for the journey i is that what you were saying okay and and there's a very great uh terrific poem i was just looking for it that jennifer klein shared with me from facing history and ourselves we actually read it the other day to the sjack kids and it talks about not only safe space but it talks about brave space because this is courageous work and to be able to acknowledge that you know this isn't easy and um and there's it's messy work but if we can bravely go forward and try to create that brave space that and and respect everyone as we're doing it and ensure that that all voices are heard it's it's just

119that alone talk about an incredible process um it's very exciting i'm not happy to go next um well i i did write down a statement because if i don't write it down um it'll slip my mind but but one concept before i read my statement that to me is fundamental core to all of this is is education not indoctrination right so to me to me that's a very very important concept so what i wrote let's see if i can read my own writing it says the western public schools will be committed to instill culture a culture that values and defines students by their character sense of exploration global awareness inclusiveness kindness empathy and merit independent of race skin color gender or sexual preference we shall avoid confusing contemplative silence or debate with aggression that can

120lead to groupthink and a loss of individuality nice so the sense of it i think the sense of individual is important and we shouldn't you know fall into these default modes where where that may be lost i i love i love putting groupthink in there too you know the resistance to groupthink i think that's really really important what i think is if you're exactly right victor is is the the basis of all the work is education um not indoctrination and the other thing is is the idea of the individual that goes to why is western so great because of the personalized level of instruction we work to provide to our students and that you know each one of us counts or no one counts and um to be able to really practice that and everything

121we do is so important that that idea of developing the individual student to go on to do great things armed with all of the the necessary skills is really what we're about thank you i can go next i wrote mine down but um should i share it or just read it read it is easier um i was coming from a place of you know when i think about weston i think that you know we have more in common than we have differences and i think it's important to recognize the difference between you know helping people see the world beyond their own perspective which is really important versus especially when you're dealing with children you know telling them that they're doing something wrong or they're coming from a bad place so i really wanted to try

122and focus on the positive and this is what i wrote the weston public schools recognize accept and respect that students and staff come from different backgrounds with different perspectives diversity values these individual differences while also valuing the commonalities we all share the western public schools are committed to providing access opportunities and supports needed to help students families and staff reach their full potential by removing barriers to success that individuals face the western public schools seek to make sure all individuals are engaged participants in the learning environment and community removing barriers that's huge yes yep i'll go everyone's done such a great job i i guess i'll read you what i wrote but for me what was important at the end of the day was the creation of a safe space the issue of transparency and

123really the issue of community engagement so what i wrote and again it's drafty but as a board of education we are passionate about the westin school district and our students achieving academic excellence in a safe and supportive environment we are always working to create a community where differences are valued and all students feel supported and inspired diversity equity and inclusion is critical to our pursuit of creating global citizens our commitment values transparency we are always learning an environment where students learn to value differences community engagement making our curriculum instruction and school a reflection of these goals we strive to foster a culture that emphasizes the value of equality belonging and diversity we hold ourselves accountable to this endeavor and are grateful for the community support together we can make western at western education authentically equitable

124i noticed the use of value and it reminded me of in the book you told shared with me like we believe versus we value and the power of that like you can believe many things but what do you you know saying that we value it makes it even more um important okay so i didn't write one because i thought that all of you should have gone to exercise i was the instructor no so um so what do you you know i think these i think these are all great um so what's the best way lisa of of kind of starting the next what do you think the best way of starting the next meeting is with respect to trying to get all of these kind of moving into some sort of uh statement that kind

125of encompasses the you know um the collective values that that we all think need to be in a uh in a statement well what we would do i love this kind of stuff this is when we worked on like the mission for the high school and stuff i think that we take all of these thoughts yeah and we share them again you know so everybody has it's it's easier to see them in writing and then again people you know um start like uh prioritizing like what are the things that this has to be in there you know what i mean like these are really important to kind of just go through that um both individually or a way to share it and then then we just have to start you have to start flushing out

126at the workshop like okay we're going to design this now based on all of these pieces there are certain themes that have reoccurred and certain what i would say is sometimes you say like what's non-negotiable what's really important that has to be included and to to build consensus around is this uh something non-negotiable that needs to be included in it um and then it just you know it might take a couple more retreats to get there quite frankly but i think i'm so excited listening to everyone i really am i think that that's how i would see the next step is is that we we can compile it all and um jody can do that um and then we can send out another you know yeah for whatever day yeah so you know my um

127i think this has been great um the um we still have a few more minutes um i don't know if anyone has any other comments or things um and then we can talk about what we want to accomplish at the next at the next workshop i just i just wondered whether it would be worth running um this question which is a really great one lisa that you put this homework that you put to us and just sort of keyword search and key concept search whether it would be worth putting it to anyone else maybe outside of this group and the reason i'm saying that is you know do would team weston weigh in on that or uh or anyone else just and not not that they're you know doing any writing but that they may

128you know have some feedback and can we you know should we should we think about that my suggestion would be um we um everyone did receive the the diversity statement that julian wrote correct yes and and that's where um when jody and i were frankly working on the wordle um we took a lot of those words and i keep going i circled and marked it all up and everything so i feel like that this has been really helpful i i would um wait until can we get through the next step yeah before we do that yeah what you think tony yeah i think we should hone in on a little bit more um before we get feedback i think feedback is important but i think another we should take another shot great i do too

129and i also would love to be able to share it with um you know the high school students that are in the social justice advocacy group what do you think of this you know you just you just want to know do we capture the right words here um yeah are are we missing anything critical that we just exactly um is there anything else we should consider um so i um i i i will just say to that comment that you just said lisa when i was sort of researching all of this i love the idea of asking the students what do you want to talk about what do you want to learn about like exactly that and especially you know at the high school level is like i'm sure that they have you know thoughts

130on this that they want to share and i'd love to you know be able to get them engaged and empower them in this conversation yeah i like it yeah you know i think there's an important yeah and i think that as a um you know as you were saying this lisa and and um hillary you know one of the things that occurred to me is that this is a great you know the the the exercise reforming forming the statement is also a great um it's great it's a great teaching moment for both the board as well as engaging some students in this is you know i think it's it's it could be a great teaching moment all the way around for everyone you know well i think we have to look out get the faculty

131input to the people that are pretending this is kind of what the board is thinking what what do you think um you know do do you have any um comments on it just just to sort of get a broad perspective um because ultimately they are the ones in the classrooms that are going to have to um be doing um this work and from those comments you can also see how we might the level of support that they're going to need yeah also just a last comment i think that maybe somewhere in this statement and you can note this as a bullet also to be discussed next time lisa is how this work that we do in the district connects and flows to families around the district families in the community in other words how this

132work continues at home yeah and i think that's that's that's taffy that's great and i think that's that leads kind of to the final item that i want to discuss a little bit is engagement community engagement engagement with team engagement with dei committee engagement with parents and parent groups right right um you know how do we do that as a board in in a an effective and efficient way because um while we do and have had with various board members and various members of the communities ad hoc meetings right i still don't think we have a good you know a good way of connecting in in a in in a way that um you know where we're really connecting you know district and community um on on this topic and so i think that's something

133that we need to actually talk about as well it might be to have a board you know one or two people on the board who are liaisons with the community on this topic right or i i don't know i mean that's something that maybe we can talk about also at the next workshop which is what is the most effective way of connecting with the community because this doesn't begin an end at schools it it it's it's it's this thread throughout throughout the entire community and at home as well right yeah i also think that the statement and kind of the goals that we're setting then provide outside groups with an understanding of sort of what our work is and that if they wish to do something along the same theme they know what the common

134languages that we are using so if a group wants to do something outside of that we would hope that it would complement the work that we're doing uh you know for people if we have i'm using a kind of a bizarre example but we now have a college and career counselor so when we have speakers come to the pto we want parents to use our college and career counselor we don't want to have another group supporting private counseling services necessarily you know we want to kind of try to align everything with with if this is what we're standing for if you're choosing a speaker if you're choosing in a partnership with it for a program with the with the westport team it's important that that everyone knows what the district is doing and what the

135district stands for so it could complement it yeah hey tony is i mean as far as community engagement i mean you know the library does book clubs is this the thing where like the friends of the the library could have you know one of the various books that our staff's reading for development and have a facilitator come in so that the public you know has their own outlet to engage in this type of work or if the senior center is doing something i mean just partnering with you know the other western community services to provide outlets for the non-school families as well i guess yeah yeah absolutely and that's what would be helpful with the outside groups to be able to do because we can't possibly coordinate that too with us we have to really

136focus on you know yeah the other the other topic i want to throw out and this is something the westport district is doing and i really don't know a lot about it and i i touched on it with with you lisa is yeah they're embarking on an equity audit and i'm not quite sure what that what that entails and you know it's probably a longer conversation but that's a that's another that's another thing to potentially explore on how you know the the value of doing that um how it's done um that might be another topic for for the next workshop as well um i don't know if you know much about what westport is doing at all on that i i actually emailed the principal of staples over there but you're right i mean and

137we have all kinds of you know we've you know a lot of different versions of self-assessment school assessments all of that kind of stuff the piece with um this this uh dr bishop about you know having the students involved in action research so i don't know how well that would be fleshed out but it could provide a framework for which the town could also use or the districts could use um you just have to um again make sure that everything is manageable this first year yeah sure no one kind of prioritizes what we need to do but yep um i agree okay um i think uh victor yeah just just as a as a closing comment um i i i don't want to belabor the point but i i think without losing the sense of

138urgency with without losing the sense of urgency um i i think it's important to when necessary you know take a step back and and make sure that we you know well there's a lot of momentum going on that it's the right momentum for western right so um complex issue age-appropriateness you know just a lot of questions that need to be uh evaluated and uh you know just because a consultant comes in and advocates something we really have to be reflective of what we do so just don't don't be afraid of slowing it down you know i i think you're actually uh very right one of the things that we learned from dr nurenberg was he said you know the first year as we're kind of coming together with the secrets there's a lot of low

139he called it low-hanging fruit that you can work on just very basic simple things that fall under the like how to be kind quite frankly um because you don't want to move too fast because if you move too fast and the people aren't on board or again is it um what the community we want to do it we wanted to be successful and so you we need to really take a planful approach to that and if there's some things that are very you know kind of like no-brainers that we can do then we should do them but as we move through the different levels of work i think we do have to uh be have a planful approach all right thanks um sorry one other thing lisa i encourage you to reach out to ludlow

140and their district because i know that they have an active parent diversity group that actually will have a calendar and will do things in the school whether it be billboards or whether it be presentations or et cetera and this is all parent-led in in a partnership with the superintendent um so yeah i mean even like you know presentations on the volley or presentations on you know just different other cultural activities um on a monthly basis so i encourage you to reach out to that district yeah that sounds familiar one of the i'm on the board of directors for builders and one of the other board members is a ludlow parent this sounds familiar because it's sort of the same theme and that's another thing we didn't put in but we certainly want to reinvigorate our

141builders beyond borders um partnership especially at the six eight level with that whole idea of um you know um builders junior i think it was called about local um uh work so thank you i did have one quick thing you're i've never brought it up but i don't know why not um we could have like a western day of service through the school i mean because when i look at your goals you have sustainability in there you have all of this like i mean i i'm not looking to like create more work for everybody but it did make me think you're talking about b3 probably a good idea to get everybody engaged if we if the more community engagement we have on on all of this the better so yeah i know you're right the

142kids really have wanted to do that and covet actually uh stood in the way of a lot of that getting together i know the green team did some things but you're exactly right hillary every grade level here does something at the high school how can we do that how can we do more of a 612 continuum with something like that and even with the the little children in the sustainability plan by months how can we create that kind of um spirit of community service um throughout the district under you know weaving in these things like dei sustainability um multiculturalism it it it's something that we can't lose sight of because that's what the kids want right so we're we're at the 11 30 i think people have a heart stop at 11 30. um this

143has been a great two hours um and uh we'll we'll we'll plan the the follow-on very soon um can i just ask for one could you please send if you had any like some people read really good paragraphs and jody couldn't get them down quickly enough so if you could email them to me that would be great so then we can compile them and i i'll get them back to you dr pesco the summary of all of the the great perfect all right thank you we'll look for we'll look for our great empower school from yeah yeah well i felt you know it's like you know it when you get an assignment from lisa like i i felt like really pressured to have to like yeah i felt something you know let me let me

144clarify even though in powerschool it says that it's due at midnight tonight victor you can turn it in by monday morning i want you to have family time this weekend everyone okay all right all right can i have a motion to adjourn so moved second second all right thanks everyone have a great weekend have a nice day thanks every