001okay good evening everybody we are going to start the jefferson elementary school district special governing board meeting today july 12 at 6 32 p.m superintendent vidalia's could i get members present please clayton coo marie viswela here andrea jordan here okay thank you so much and do you mind also leading us in the pledge of allegiance please yeah not a problem let me uh share the screen here um put your right hand over your heart ready pledge i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you great thank you and uh at this time we the governance team members will review the governance team meeting guidelines and if no questions or discussions we'll
002move to item five approval of the agenda i'll make a motion so oops okay you go ahead you want me to go yeah okay i'll make a motion that we approve the agenda as presented second ocean in a second all those in favor say aye aye all right perfect that was unanimous thank you uh do we have any speaker cards this evening um we do not so then we'll move on to general functions our equity network study session governance team will reflect on effective governance practices and build deeper content awareness of educational equity thank you again ladies for joining us this evening thank you good to be here so are you turning it over to us now huh okay great um so yes we are pleased to to be with you it is our fourth
003session can you believe that um unfortunately good things come to an end you know but we're we're not leaving you and so um we're really pleased to have gone on this journey with you thus far focusing on equity and tying it in with your governance um responsibilities of course every time you're looking at something and making decisions through the lens of equity it's from also your governance lens because it will look a little bit different from the superintendent and his staff but doing this equity work is so important and again commending you for um agreeing to be on this journey that i've said before is um it's not a cul-de-sac road that we're on there's no turning around you can't pull off and kind of slow it down a little bit but um you you've
004embarked upon this um on this journey so we really appreciate that um a lot of districts want to do this work but not really the readiness isn't there yet and you guys are definitely well on your way and very committed that you've shown us the last several sessions we've been with you so we definitely see that so um nicole jump in and say your your words before we really start um finishing this work this evening yeah i just kind of ditto to what debra said i think i'm always really excited about governance teams engaging in this work with their superintendent because ultimately this results in a better experience um an equitable experience for every kid right and it starts at the top and so it's always kind of surreal to be with governance teams because
005you know you're the power players right so what you do and the vision you set for years to come generations to come will ultimately happen and so just um today i always you know have that bittersweet moment of okay it's our last session and you know we're gonna roll up our sleeves do a lot of working today to look at our equity statement or equity policy but ultimately leave you with um like a stepping off point you know to really take this work to the next level and and believe that you all have the the bandwidth and the capacity to to do this work you know as a team moving forward and that equity will never leave right you know i think that's always something that deborah and i always worry about is when we
006leave will equity leave right uh well effective governance practices leave and it's like no you know you all have the tools you have the the vision you have the passion for this work and you are locking arms with your superintendent that's a big deal and every board does not have that trust us um i mean it is not happening everywhere and to be able to do this type of work you do have to be a united team so really excited today um so i'll be brief so that um deborah can actually get us started and then we're gonna um kind of tag team as usual um so get ready you know sit back relax i know it's an evening but we're going to get a lot done tonight so excited to hang out with you
007again yeah well great thank thanks um nicole and and and you know it is um it's tough for governance teams today um especially with a lot of pushback on doing this work and so if you haven't um felt any of it it's not if it's probably when it's going to occur and that's okay because we're going to prepare you um you know this whole thing with about the critical race theory a lot of boards are being attacked with that and my um what i share with boards is are you doing critical race theory they're like no i say we'll say that because you can't argue with somebody over something that you're not doing but it just seems to be a topic that people are just taking it and running with it but it will give
008you an opportunity to engage with your community to let them know what you are actually doing so it's nothing to be fearful of it um but just know what you're what you're teaching and and be able to have that kind of discussion it doesn't have to become an argument and so um so how is everyone doing it's been a month since we've been together right june 2nd i believe and so i'm just checking in with everyone um how you doing you look good but we know how we can camouflage things so how is clayton doing uh i'm good um a little tired from work but um it's the summer so i can't complain yeah okay okay what about you andrea i guess i'm just like clayton work is exhausting but i'm going on vacation soon
009so i feel a little better now when you think about what's coming down the road that's always a good inspirational thing what about you mcdowell oh likewise um and i did a silly thing and enrolled in cornell this summer so i thought i could kind of scathe by actually expect a lot because it's cornell um but uh so it's been it's it's i've been doing a lot of work but um good work and it's good for me and my career so yeah i'll surprise kind of situation but um kind of jealous of andrea taking vacation because i don't think i'm gonna be able to do that this summer but it's okay i i i hope you enjoy yourself though tell her to send you lots of pictures you can imagine yourself there that'll be your
010getaway i love that well that's great congratulations on on your educational journey just think about the outcome what you're doing while you're doing this work yeah what about you marie well i'm doing a lot of things so i've been busy um have a lot of things to look back on to what i have accomplished or what i've seen our district accomplish and i'm proud of that so i'm ready to keep on going all right 40 years working on school board so four zero four yeah four zero i think i get an award for the longest serving board member i don't know i didn't try to do that it just happened that's not how you what you intended when you took your first oath of office on i think my whole focus in my life has
011been working with children yeah no matter what i did all these years it's always involved children far above and beyond school board that's what really keeps me going is children and how well so legacy of that that i can look back and say i made a difference in the lives of many children absolutely that's why that's not i'm not bragging i'm just saying that's my focus absolutely yeah you don't just get on the school board because you want to be a politician you better be there for kids absolutely and make sure that every child is successful and that's why you can do it for 40 years because you get doing it for the right reasons and everyone everyone should and i would say in the last 40 years there probably were people that that weren't
012inclined for that maybe it was a stepping stone or maybe it was just something they wanted to try i think if you're really dedicated to children whatever you do you'll find some real pleasure and that's all i can say is i feel i just feel like i've i've done things for children all right great that is awesome and and you're yeah you have a great team who and i don't know if they plan on staying on for 40 years well they don't they don't have to but they're doing a great job too yes absolutely i'm proud of our board members and i'm happy that the ones that we have are there i hope that they just stay for a while and if whatever every time they're here they're they're gifted you know wonderful wonderful what
013about you bernie what's going on um i just got back from a week of vacation so i'm trying to readjust to work life and first day back have a have a board meeting so a gift how about that gift a welcome back from vacation gift you look very relaxed and like you i was wondering if you have been on vacations all that that and i'm glad you found the time because sometimes superintendents don't find the time to go on vacation and regroup and you know um you know you have to find time for yourself so i'm glad you were able to do that and so so you know normally and i'm not going to do this today i'm not going to put up that screen the the slide that talks about the four agreements by
014now you should have those memorized so tell me you know there are four agreements do you know what they are when we talk about um this moving from safe to brave space what are these agreements that we always begin talking about to have this conversation so mute yourself and just tell me what the agreements are you remember i know they engaged does that remind you of something experience discomfort right speaking your truth and expect and accept non-closure which we're going to feel a lot of that by the end of our session today um and so just remembering those four agreements again when we have the conversations with you but i always like to remind you it's also when you are engaging with other people kind of think about these conversations or these agreements when you
015are engaged in conversations that can be very difficult for um individuals really paying attention um that there is some discomfort in talking about um equity which uh usually always goes to race which is a part of it or it could just be about conversations that just people aren't ready to have and so we have to really be staying engaged in that and as you're doing this we're staying focused on the goal of this equity work okay and again the experiencing that discomfort it is okay to be uncomfortable and and as you probably realize by now with this being our fourth session if there isn't some discomfort there isn't really much change that will happen that's where the change happens when you're uncomfortable you kind of get out of your comfort zone and experience some things
016that um perhaps from a different perspective or something like that um but it's okay to experience um discomfort and engaging in these conversations because we've gone so many years especially in the education realm of not talking about systems that um perpetuate inequitable inequity and we just haven't talked about it we just kind of let it go so it should be some some discomfort it's that time to make everyone a little bit uncomfortable um and speaking your truth of course is is not just sharing what you think someone wants to hear is actually speaking from your perspective your lived experience and realizing when you um someone shares with you what their truth is that there's no judgment or anything like that it's just a way of engaging at a different on a different level with individuals
017when they share with you where they are speaking their truth based upon their experience we have to receive it that way and try to listen to um for understanding instead of responding and things of that nature and then again the um expecting accepting um non-closure uh it's been years decades of this work that you we are embarking upon that really needs to be right um it's not about addressing people it's a it's about addressing systems that have just not uh supported children in the way that all children in the way that it should and we're just having a laser focus on this um at this time when we're going down this equity journey so you know we we can't um change things immediately but the key thing is that you are put you're like throwing
018that pebble in the water where you're going to see it's going to be a ripple effect it's not going to be huge waves but it definitely will be changed will happen you were you were changing the foundation so that it will be able to be sustained either when you're off the board or whatever um you want to this to be your legacy that you're creating um the the role that's going to lead to an exceptional education journey for all of your students who come through your um your school system and so focusing on equity uh it's it's a marathon it's not a sprint of course it takes time and but i know you're up to this journey so just as a reminder of those four agreements it always kind of centers us and help us
019be prepared to have have conversations and as we get ready to talk about your equity statement um and your equity policy how the statement flows into your policy and really is guiding the work of your policy it will help you stay focused on your why um uh why are you doing this work and and the purpose and things of that nature but before we get to your equity policy we did ask you to um read an article so called the curb effect so did you have a chance to read that article yes great because i would like to have just a discussion about that um i thought it was very a very interesting uh i love reading articles so every time nicole finds it i'm like oh my gosh and i gotta read this article
020and i just stop what i'm doing i absolutely love reading and then i make the connection it's like what does this have to do with this and and what what kind of takeaways do i have so it was a really good you know the curb effect the curb cut effect like what what does that have to do with equity what does that have to do with governing what have to do with schools what's the connection here and so but you know as you you read is basically when decisions too are are made and we say that it's for one group actually other people um reap the benefits as well and that's a good thing so there are a lot of things in this country today or policies or practices that decisions are being made that
021we think is specifically for one group but others will reap the benefits and that's a good a way to really think about how are we impacting all of our students but it is okay to zero in on one specific group and that's what this article uh really focused on so let's just have a discussion about your takeaways from this article what did you glean from it and how did you make the connection to the the work you're doing either some decisions you guys have to make or have already made that fall into what this article was trying to to um really carve out for you so let's just have a discussion about this so anyone just can jump right on in and give us your thoughts who would like to go i know we're tired
022we can't be tired already now come on you guys come on and come on it's not almost nine o'clock here i'm staying up almost at midnight with you all right clayton you're in the middle of my screen so you know what i'm looking right at you what you got for me clayton sure um i know in the article there was a section about um transportation and transit and sort of its impact on central city and how even though a decision sort of like helping people within certain parts of a metro area um aren't meant to help other people in many ways it could actually have a ripple effect um across a lot of other people for example um i mean even in this article probably talking about mix about big cities um impacts on different
023types of communities whether they're lower income upper income sort of understanding that you're trying to make the benefit for a certain people been a process that actually uh is intended to help everybody else in the process but there's a lot of factors um that go beyond just even that one little position that you're gonna make absolutely absolutely do you think they went through design you know um off the top of your head what do you think a process they went through to really think about focusing on that transportation issue and and who they were trying to address pros just process these because this is the same thing that has a governing body that you guys will have to go through i think it's a mix of just understanding who can potentially get the most benefit
024out of it um like um who also has the most to get out of it there's political power in any uh city or government that you run figure out how best you can sort of support those who may necessarily have the greatest voice um but be able to sort of help help them out whether it's economically or like in terms of so social like um growth in terms of um this and that there's a bunch of other stuff that goes beyond just in that thing absolutely perfect spot on thank you for that see it wasn't that bad now you're off the hot seat right now thanks anyone else who's next who wants to just chime in there what did you pick up i can go um so when i read the article the words that
025came to me most is investment investing in the right resources and things that are going to help things move forward there's a part in the article that talks about how the gi bill um benefited specific people how uh there were black veterans that got it but their subsidy was much lower than others and that was a way for a lot of people to come back and rebuild and have homes and and that was not afforded to people of color and so i think it goes both ways in the sense that if you don't make those investments up front and make it equal across the board we're going to continue to see these inequities because we're picking and choosing who gets to benefit the most rather than saying everyone gets the same benefit which will obviously
026in turn have the same effect um positively in the sense that everyone will have access to opportunities regardless of what they look like their disabilities their sexuality um and that plays in so many different scenarios that we've seen um and policies that have been made um in this country absolutely and what do you think they could have done um with the gi bill is perfect one we they said well we had it it was a policy it was it was there it was available and but what what what is what happens when that's all you do is say is there access is there if they don't get it that's we're not checking what do you think they could have done differently to make sure who was actually taking advantage of it i think they could
027have done um they should have used their data because obviously they know where the money is going they know how they're breaking down the fact that they have the data on you know the less subsidy going to uh you know the black veterans it's obviously they knew what was going on and so it's it's now it's a matter of morality it's like are you being what are you doing and why are you doing that i guess my question i know that's very blunt and just out there but that's how i felt i'm like how who came up with that specific um difference when they were giving out those those subsidies and and if we didn't think of that and if we just said these substances are needed regardless these people serve their country and they
028need to come back and rebuild they all get the same thing um so absolutely you're spot on and and you know it always so it makes you pose a question intentionality you know this is where it gets uncomfortable where you have to have these conversations well whether it was intentional or not this is a um this is what's happening unintentional consequences because we didn't check the data to say who was really benefiting and it's not benefiting everyone we should have done something else so this is just to the same type of mindset when you're putting policies in place to really continue to dig in and look at that data and say okay it's there but who's taking advantage of it and are there some obstacles there that's hindering others whether it's they don't know well
029are we not reaching them you know all of these things this isn't the mindset of what needs to take place so whether it was intentional or not we see what the outcome was and again who are the individuals who are at the bottom who do not get take it you know who do not get an opportunity to advance in some free opportunity to to have the american dream again these are things that are continuing to happen in different areas you know in the housing in the medical education you see all of these are connected so in education is just not isolated so absolutely so thank you for that who else would like to go um there was so much to this article so i could you know have a response for every little thing that
030they talked about i found it funny that they only called out politicians um because there are so many other players involved that drive these policies right like pax and other economic players like central banks and people like that um and like just with the gi bill there was redlining asians couldn't buy houses so even though there's equity now um it's been a staggered start so there's a legacy effect uh when it comes to that we have to also be mindful of we can't just be like we did it and it's done and so everybody's equitable now it's like we started from way back here so now it's it's a catch-up game um that's that's kind of why what i took out of it it's so much more but i don't want to i know i
031know but you know and i think we shared with you a couple sessions ago that the um the video on the race the the um what is it called um what is that called nicole the the actual race i believe we share that video the unequal opportunity race right remember that yes and where you when you said maybe the starting point well yeah we all were on the track we all hear the same gun go off the run but you know we're waiting because we and then we're constantly trying to catch up and you're right it was so many players involved and this is where accountability is so important so once you see you know bring it always connecting it back to the school system too when you're having policies or regulations practices in place
032you know you know accountability is so important it's not just one group we're going to hold everyone accountable what role did you play in this and and you're right they could have listed or a litany of individuals who play and continue to today if we we know these things continue to happen um and and and so absolutely so thank you for bringing that one on that that was key as well what about you bernie or marie me okay yes ma'am okay so um there's a whole lot to this whole thing okay that i can see number one is um for equity we have to in first of all invest in our students make sure that every child is important which they are and we have to give them the resources available to them so that
033they can't succeed so we need community to come come with us we need to um our district has been fortunate that we've had a lot of programs uh we had to learn not to burn program that helped students help save their family's life uh but we brought in i mean i remember asking our school district to for the teachers to agree to have the program put into the schools and they find they did agree to it and thank goodness because it did save the life of a family so we need to look at those programs that we can bring to our district through our families through the community that will make more of an education than just going to reading a book so there's i can go on and on about the different things we've
034had we have that we had a program that said don't laugh at me that was what peter paul mary it started then um i have all of their materials and stuff because we that was a big thing in our district at one time and it made a difference and we've had different programs that meant that uh we were teaching our students that you don't make fun of people you don't you know and so the kids themselves would get up and surround somebody who was not not doing the right thing to say you know don't do this though i think that the more we engage in that point of view it doesn't matter about race does not doesn't matter about religion it doesn't matter about what ethnic background you are it's about that every child is
035equal and we bring everyone together and i think our district has been good about that not that we're perfect i think we're very close to it and so that the more we can engage on making everybody feel that they are special and especially even with our students that are handicapped in any way that they are um i have a friend of the family that son was born without arms and legs how he went through a lot of things to be who he is today and got to go and play an instrument and do all the things that the children do we don't turn our back on somebody no matter what it is right nothing that will stop a child to be able to be successful and learn and go on and be successful be a
036great person but it takes all of us to work together and set those goals and i think i kind of say some of that stuff once in a while not in the same way i'm telling you to let every child know that each one of them will be successful yeah absolutely and it is okay to um make policies or decisions about a subgroup of children some children that you're not serving um just with the with the example of even what this article was talking about the the cut out and i remember that too when you know it was four wheelchairs but then what about the ladies in the strollers you know by people who are on skateboards who wants to jump down the curb i mean sometimes you want to jump off the curb because
037that's fun but if you couldn't or i know ladies like like me if i'm walking in the high heels i'm going to look for that cut you know so again making some decisions for us but one specific group but you see how um others benefit and that's okay but yes for you guys your focus is on educating your children your resources your programs um sometimes a program is really designed for one specific subgroup and that's okay but that doesn't mean that you're saying no other kids can participate but it's just doing that curb cut effect as it as this article is talking about how to you know weaving that into the mindset of from where you guys are viewing things from the governance lens and and that equates to all of this work with equity
038making sure that there's access and that there's fairness and making sure that people are helped being held accountable we're not putting obstacles in the way so i absolutely absolutely appreciate you sharing that what about you bernie yeah this um article resonated with me because it's it's an illustration that we use quite a bit in our school district when we talk about making modifications to instruction or to the classroom business is the class of one student and that often that modification supports many students like two examples are we have some some students who have difficulty with hearing so one modification that is made is to provide teachers with an um audio system where their voice is amplified um and so when their voice is amplified in the classroom certainly the student with the hearing issue is
039able to hear the teacher much more clearly and it it it gets rid of some of the distortion um that they get when they hear the natural sound the natural world um but oftentimes you know and then that system passes on from year to year to a different teacher as the student passes through the classroom we've had teachers say can i keep it because i find that i don't have to strain my voice to get to the back of the room um the student in the back of the room so it helps me and i know that it helps a lot of students also in my classroom um who can hear me more clearly and are you know they you know though even though they're normal hearing children you know having the sound be clear
040and amplified supports them and their understanding so that's one example where where i've seen an adaptation made for one student be supportive for others and you know and another application of that was with um you know coming back um into school during kovid you know teachers who had those systems and teachers around them said we would like those because it would help us if we have to teach with their mask on because we can have the microphone inside our mask and our students can hear us and they're like can we get one for each student because we can't hear them either but oh my gosh brilliant yeah great you know so i think you know things like that just remind us of the curb cut and so the other one is you know just with
041our lesson design you know if we have students who need um sometimes we make modifications because the student needs to have more of a hands-on approach more active approach to the lesson content and teachers make those modifications they realize that many more students um actually appreciate that so you know they're the joggers or you know the bicyclists or skateboarders that are fully able but can you know um access the content in a different way in a way that fits more who they are when you make modifications we have students who have attention difficulty um if you sometimes make modifications like i'm going to keep my lessons shorter so that students don't have to pay attention for 25 30 minutes i'm going to try to keep my lessons for 15 and then have some movement um
042or allow a student initially one student to have some flexible seating options throughout the classroom like rather than me having to yell at the kid every five minutes because they're up and around it's okay johnny or joanne you can sit here or you can sit here or you can sit here you can sit here and it's up to you to decide when you need to move um find that other students when you open it up to everybody else and say we have lots of seating options we have desk seating options we have pillows in the back of the room we have pokeballs we have different places where you can sit and you find where you where you fit the best you know those are um you know all examples of modifications that were made with
043one student in mind to support them and a particular challenge they were facing but as those modifications were put in place the benefits of that when it's made available more broadly supports for students and there's very few and if i can think of any i'll try you know modifications made for one student that only supports that one student right right questions that we make end up supporting um multiple students yeah those are fantastic examples and i am going to use those i'll give you credit though uh those are brilliant absolutely and again make it so relevant with the mast on there there's a challenge you know and then you think about kids who really it hasn't been um they've been diagnosed as having uh hearing difficulties or something but what if they're just looking at
044your lips move you know um all of those things now with this modification so i really like that about letting the students having it having it as well and then the seating modification because every child like well i might be feeling some kind of way one day i come in i might just want to curl up in on a little pillow but i'm still going to be engaged so that all is really um really supporting students being able to still learn and no matter what they're physically going through and so those modifications are extremely important um to be able to do that even changing your voice you know so that they don't feel like it's monotone and just lecturing being creative all of that is finding different ways to engage students um and maybe walk
045you know in so many different ways i'm so glad you brought it up i was visualizing this as as you were talking and those again you you were thinking about that um curb um cut effect for doing modifying for one but all the kids now and so that really takes a little takes away from that one child feeling like oh you may you really make me feel like um i'm so different in a negative way different and so that eliminated that because that that is just a brilliant way and i'm just so pleased to hear that um you're already doing that i'm hoping that that happens in a lot of other schools but i'm so pleased that you're very much aware and you just talked about like oh this is just who we are it
046just goes back to say what marie said that you guys are almost perfect you know and that's brilliant i i love that and so i wouldn't say we're perfect i would say almost continuously driving striking continuously improving there you go absolutely you know absolutely one of the initiatives that that we started recently and sort of based again on this principle is and nicole you might be familiar with it is the idea um of universal design so you know things like the curb cut is a universal design principle right that impacts lots of different populations um the you know the the zigzags the ramps to for uh going up the stairs is also another universal design principle that some architects have taken that and have made really beautiful sort of ramps um going up these like
047majestic like you know you think about going up to the us capital or something and you know they probably have some kind of ugly ramp on the side but now people who are designing build stately buildings like that ramp into this the staircase and and it just becomes a beautiful piece of architecture that allows people access and so we're utilizing that principle and trying to build it in our classrooms called universal design for learning like how do we design our lessons um so that all students get access to it not just one one way of teaching it you know there might be a variety of ways of teaching something um and there might be some ways of teaching that that allow for more access than others so absolutely go ahead go ahead and add one
048is bernie it's funny you mentioned that when i was thinking about an experience um when i was an elementary principal and how this was my like really big aha moment of implementing glad training for our teachers and this was all centered around our english learners and my particular school had a large number of english learners so you know it really applied to a lot of kids but what was powerful is when you watched it in action um and it's like a whole cycle of strategies that teachers use but you talk about the curb effect it's like oh my god yes we're focused on english learners right the budget was for english learners for this program to have our teachers trained but ultimately when you watched it in action it was good for every single kid
049like you know because it's all about like the students being able to produce like oral language because you know our english learners often are kind of silenced in classrooms right and so you can't learn a language if you don't get to talk right so oral language production like that's great for english learners and it's also great for all kids because then there's the academic piece of it right so we want them to use academic language well if you don't apply that to all kids like you're really kind of missing it and so kind of long story short i saw that that was a great investment that i often use as an example for school districts who want to invest in professional learning specifically for your teachers yes it's focused on english learners but it was
050good for all kids i mean you talk about just phenomenal transformation of classrooms um where kids were allowed to be like facilitators of their own learning right and i mean just visuals right so there's a lot of visuals and charts you name it and it's like that's good for everybody because you know what i may not be an english learner but i'm a visual learner right so that works for me right i may not be an english learner but i may be that quiet student who you don't ever hear my voice right so there's strategies built in where all kids voices are included because remember english learners have to talk right so it's a great example of where there are some things i think you all can consider down the road of looking at this
051concept of this article to think about how we also can convince people who may not be believers in this work that is good for all kids right and i think that's what's important that people don't feel like i'm gonna lose something for doing equity focus work because you're doing something for them and that is a real reality when we talk about the pushback um and deborah you mentioned the um critical race theory pushback um a lot of it is centered around thinking it's really focused on one group of kids and it's about blaming and shaming a group of kids like no this is actually good for all kids and and we're not really teaching critical race theory because that's the narrative but the reality is equity work can sometimes be translated into we're teaching that
052and so ultimately it's really about making sure that people understand this work is good for all kids and i think that's the challenge you'll have as a governance team and the language you use when the pushback comes is that this is good for all kids that curb was for those that were considered to have a disability um and the reality is that it was good for everybody right and if we can get that work to transfer to equity work in education i think we'll be winning it will transform the system it's going to take absolutely absolutely absolutely that that is so important and you think about you know other um policies um nationally that have been put in place just and one that comes to mind with me is affirmative action okay we thought it
053was for one group but so many others have benefited from it and no one's complaining about that you know so how do we equate that to with the the education of the when you're talking about this equity work that it is for all children and it is okay if we specifically say this subgroup because if we are really saying all kids why why when we're focusing on something why does it not apply to this group then but you know so again like nicole said it is the language that that is used we are very clear um about what you're doing and be able to articulate that if the big picture is you're looking for um your your job is to educate all children and that has not changed that that doesn't change and that's a
054hard stop period now your data is telling you that you are missing the mark a little bit in this particular area so if kids or if kids are saying we're not getting this that is going to help us in our education journey why would you not stop and pause and and really look at the data and engage with with with students or whomever a community member whoever's telling you we're missing the market and then you you you do something about it all of this is positive so again it is the language um i i like this one very short sentence in this article toward the end it said the antidote to inequality is equity and that's exactly what it is that the antidote to inequality is equity and this is what we're focusing on and
055and so um this article you know you you all of you really connected it well with what you're doing you're in the mindset of what does this mean when we trans translate it into this equity work that that we're doing and and this is a perfect um segue into when we talked about language guess what you guys have been dealing with like language like that's called like your equity statement boy isn't that the language that is that is the the hook as you if you know if you if you're into music you know how you got to have that hook when you're into uh maybe if you have to write any thesis papers or anything that first paragraph is the hardest thing to write other than that the rest of it i mean when i
056was writing it took me forever to get that first paragraph or two but then i could write for hours but that's that hook on making sure that you are representing it well and that you've included everyone without going into it deeply because your policy is going to say this is now how we're going to do it this is the what of it and so we're going to transition over to the the work that you've already started um last last month when we you did a really good uh draft of your equity statement based upon the conversation everyone's input and now we're going to look at now you made some suggestions on what it could what it could look like and then perhaps you're going to continue to edit because it takes time to keep tweaking
057it but then just remember that it needs to be broad enough but make sure you're not excluding anyone but also make sure it is truly who you are who you're representing because your policy is going to have to support that and then that's where the work is that's where your goals will be and so reading your equity statement will the community have an understanding of what you're actually doing well the the staff understand okay i can i see where i fit in to this that we are all because because we all will be held accountable for this statement that the board is saying this is who we are and so of course that's why it's so important when you put that statement out there and you give it the seal of approval then that means
058that you have to now model it so i'm going to turn this over to my colleague um nicole and we're going to talk about your um statement your language which is so important so thank you so much for engaging in the conversation about the curb cut effect effect yeah yeah i agree i love um listening to the dialogue and hearing your perspective and i love again the connections you made to your own work because i think that's really important that anything we share it needs to be something you can see in action in your own space i'm glad that there was a connection and so um what i'm going to do is just share my screen to remind you about where your equity statement work kind of fell into this um in terms of governance
059because remember everything we share is in the lens of effective governance so i'm going to share my screen let's see is that showing up okay nope yeah okay good sometimes it freezes on me so just reminding you when we talk about our equity statement this was part of our discussion when we looked at the eight characteristics of effective boards right and there was a whole full report that we referenced i'm not sure if you had a chance to look at it or not it wasn't designed for us to discuss the full report but remember as this is our last study session we want you to remember that the outcomes are your statement your policy and obviously having kind of a plan which is something that will talk about how you develop a deeper plan but
060the reality is that all of this is centered around effective governance so we always want to remind you that as we go through this work that what we're sharing comes from what boards have done to close achievement gaps specifically and these characteristics are really important and the outcomes of effective boards always include having kind of a common vision a statement which is what we call the equity statement right common language to say this is what we're doing here's our vision right um and then we'll talk a little bit about the the policy in a moment but what i want to do um is i want to share with you again what we did in our last session that helped you evolve your equity statement and the hope today is that you have an opportunity to
061kind of i would say finalize your statement to say okay we want to start taking this now to our stakeholders to make sure we get input first before we adopt it okay so these were some of the things i shared before so just want to remind you is that you know your statement does it communicate clearly this common language that you can apply as a lens to everything you do okay specifically you're the governance team so you look at policy but can our teachers apply this to their instruction right can our parents apply this to the work they do as a partner with us do our kids actually are they able to apply the concept of equity to what they do in school right so equity needs to be something that is common that anybody
062can apply to everything we do so it's not just about discipline it's not just about instruction it's not just about nutrition it's about everything okay so it's very broad um it's something that can show up as a component in your equity policy and so we'll talk about that in our latter part of the session is where does this fit in your policy okay this is your statement it should be a component that shows up there um but it also is kind of a standalone as well right this is something that could show up on letterhead on your website um in any statement you make again this policy i'm sorry this statement is something that shows up in your policy but it is a lens and it's the language you can use everywhere is it student
063center so we're going to re-look at this again is it centered around our kids because ultimately we know for example our adults need to have equity applying to them obviously we don't have healthy adults in our system it's hard to have healthy kids so being student centered is very important and ultimately the outcome is always about our children so go back to the curb effect and go back to the concept of um that curve was for people who were in a wheelchair right and so it was centered around them but it was still good for everybody so same concept it needs to be centered around our kids but it actually will be good for everyone when we focus on our students who are our primary um um kind of client um does it call out
064the inequities in the data and this is going to be a hard one because sometimes we want to have like a laundry list again of people we want to call out in the data right so you have to think about okay how does this apply to all kids but then how does it talk about closing the gaps so i love using the elephant and blind man analogy because what you'll notice is again the elephant remember it has a lot a lot of different parts and it's like where do we prioritize our work right and so often talk about you know the elephant has different parts the whole elephant matters but if the ear is bleeding then we have to prioritize the ear and we got to make sure that we mend up that ear if
065it's if it's bleeding and that's when we talk about explicitly calling out what equity gaps we want to close in the data um can you measure your statement so i said in five years deborah and i come back we do some equity walks we talk to you we interview people we see your surveys you put out we look at your data can we see the equities happening right and that's important can we measure it in data so that's going to be the harder part of your work moving forward is it something that's aligned with their current vision and mission so often we talk about when you're doing this work this should not be some standalone kind of thing like it should align with everything that you've already kind of adopted as a district right anything
066that we talk about in our vision in our mission it should align okay they should be almost one and the same and some boards actually evolve their equity statement to be their vision and mission statement i mean it actually is what it essentially is saying and then again i mentioned this earlier our next steps in this work is not just to have the equity statement draft it actually is to include other people in this conversation so we want to have your students talk about what equity means to them so we encourage listening sessions right we encourage opportunities to do exit tickets and classrooms we encourage you to do surveys observations ask your parents ask your community members ask your teachers ask your principals everybody should be a part of this because ultimately as a board
067when you say hey we want to apply this to all things in our district if it doesn't resonate with a certain group then we may need to rethink like oh maybe we have some more input we need to give so what i'm going to share with you is where you started you remember we talked about you know what equity meant you individually started with your um your kind of own statements and we took them to put them together and this is what you came up with back in may so i just want to let you take a look at that one and i'm going to show you what you evolved into june and then we'll talk about what we may want to do to make any other additional statements while you are reading that i'm
068going to turn my fish tank off because it is sounds like it's going to explode i'm not sure what's going on alright so notice what you had back in may okay and then where we had a discussion and you all kind of went through it was like yeah we want to evolve the bullet point number one we want to make it more student and community friendly to remember that conversation and so then this is where you evolved it in june just want you to take a look there here's where we kind of simplified it we try to make it reflect some of the samples you all looked at i just want to give you all opportunity to talk a little bit about literally what we may want to massage one more time before we say
069let's go take it and start asking our our constituents and our uh different stakeholders what they think equity is and how much it aligns with where your statement is okay so i'm gonna pause and i'm gonna allow you to just kind of read it and then jump in and tell me what's coming up for you in terms of revisions we still may want to make what do we like what do we want to take out what questions do we have i have um i guess a statement and a question um so it the first bullet point i like it i do feel like it is a bit redundant in the sense that it says underserved student groups and then it's like policies that are fair for all students it's like well i mean i'm assuming
070that if we're interrupting it for student groups that the policies that we're creating will be fair for all of the students but i guess we're saying that word twice in the sentence and i don't know how the other board members feel about that i think andrea that ties in to the curb effect article where we are intentionally serving underserved students but that this would benefit all anyway is that what everybody no i guess that makes sense okay i have always appreciated how clear and concise we are as a governing board um [Music] i don't know i see all of the other examples from like cincinnati and ohio and they're long so do we need that much or is this does this look does this look lazy on our part i don't know that's a great
071question um one of the things deborah and i love is that boards get an opportunity to roll their sleeves up and make it their own so there's no right or wrong way to do this if you literally had one sentence if that's what equity means then that's what it is remember this statement and i didn't say this earlier this was really centered around like a structure how the national equity project did it so you remember that they said equity is this and then they had kind of what the work looks like so maybelle one thing that you will see here is you almost have like a vision and a mission statement combined is why you see that so i would say my opinion professionally is that it's not too much it's not too little but
072it's yours and i think that's what's important to recognize and all those those different examples or what they were i think you stuff to make it your own so there's no right or wrong way to do it um i'd say the only wrong way is to not have one right so i think i think it's fine actually i think it's you all have to make it your own and own it it may take some time even after today and that's okay but ultimately remember does this apply to everything we do when we talk about equity in our district let's help a little bit okay thank you anyone else please jump in so what do you like what do you like what's missing what questions you have you know i have a comment but um trustee
073jordan had a comment about the first bullet and about the the um the last person is that creating policies and prices that are fair for all students i don't know the more i think about it i feel like is fair the right word i'm trying to think about if that word sounds like i don't know i i just i'm trying to figure out and think about if there's a better word to describe that um because i feel like fair could be seen as fair for one good people but also not for another and i'm trying to see if there's another word that might be better suited yeah i can't figure out yeah good question one of the things you may find if you all have some non-closure in this one is as you hear your
074students and your parents come up with words that may help you with what is the right word um remember the the ones that are in red was trying to make it more like student and community friendly so the word fair kind of was a little bit more broad but yet at the same time and it's not as complex as impartial right so that was kind of filling that word in and so you're right like is that the right word maybe not um so i think you all can wrestle with that you know maybe there's another word that resonates i think that curb effect article one of the things i like about that is it gives some other language to consider too so you may find that there's some other word that really you know comes
075into play um again equity and equality are not the same thing but as deborah mentioned you know the antidote to inequity inequality is equity right so like how do we find that word so so i don't know y'all chime in what do you think maybe there is not the right word well if you don't want to say fair is it equal for all students or something like that do you want to say what just trying to say that everybody should get the same thing what they need right is that what you're trying to what we're trying to say all students yeah and that's that's the struggle so marie i'm going to go back to this one and i don't think i have the larger version but take a look at that picture okay oh this
076is better because half of the screen was gone here okay yeah so take a look at the the difference between equity and equality so i always go as equality the word even though equality we're still on that mission to some degree right sometimes we don't have equality where everyone has the same thing but is giving them the same thing is that good for all kids right and that's the thing you have to kind of wrestle with now the curb effect kind of gives you an equality kind of example right it was equitable to have that curve but in some sense you think about it like okay but it created an equal outcome for everybody right everybody could be successful so i think how you word that is important if you want to use equality i
077don't think it's a problem just how you word it so maybe you you let me go back to your uh statement maybe you say um something around let me go to your top one let me move this box around so i can see it so the word like equal outcomes i don't know if i have that in yours let me see sometimes we've used that um student groups by creating pros and cons that that create equal outcomes for all students i mean that's the only way i could see the word not only way but that's a way you can use the word it's equal outcomes so everybody gets to see over the fence right so what you're basically trying to say is that every child should be able we should have the program or the
078system wherever you're calling the word for every child to be successful was that it am i saying it the wrong way or what in other words we need to make sure that every child will succeed and we need to give them the tools they need to succeed equally so that every child is successful but i'm just saying it broadly like this trying to find the words to say it yeah i'm not quite sure yeah that what we're trying to say is really doing what we want it to do right well you have the word success in the first paragraph so you talk about students every student having available pathways to success and so i think that is very broad which i think is fine because success for one kid could be different for another um
079and so i think you have that word there i think the the the three bullet points remember that contextually is about you saying what it looks like in action so that's almost like the mission part of this right so the vision is like pathway to success for all kids right like that's kind of your big picture vision but then when you go into what does this look like okay maybe it is and the word fair may not be it but it's about really calling out like is this where you're calling out how to support the needs of those who need it the most which is kind of going back to the article um conversation so maybe the word fair isn't it i don't know bernie what do you think i'm wondering if maybe the word
080support yeah could be in there like policies and practices that support all students exactly that's what i was trying to say that support all students okay yeah i think with that first bullet um it it would it will be a question once we start getting feedback and asking for input people may want to know what do we imagine are some systems that have harmed under searches yeah and they're both what are you talking about like what what what isn't so i think we have to be clear about that to say it's x it's y it's z it could be you know absolutely yep and it should show up so kind of going back to this pieces those are the things that let me go back to this slide here these are the things you're calling
081out that show up in your data right so when people ask well what kind of you know system issues are there where it's not just one right it's specific to data specific to certain kids um so i think that's where you do have the opportunity to call that out but we don't narrow the focus so much that we can't you know say like it's there's multiple issues in the system so when you go back to that bullet point i don't know bernie do you feel like we need to call it out a little bit more or do you feel like we've called it down enough to talk about we're calling out those no i i just feel like uh i and maybe even board members have to have a couple of examples up our sleeve
082yeah absolutely yeah some talking points yeah yeah like here's one example like well one example that off the top of my head is you know we we've um are trying to reduce the over-representation of our hispanic latino students special education um so their policies and practices and particularly around how we teach english and how we support our english learners that may have wrongly identified them or led them to be identified especially right right oh um yeah maybe not a harm and in some ways they get some services but for some you know it could be a harm if they can't get out of that you know right and they stay special education for what even if they don't they're not they don't have a specific learning disability absolutely so i think that's a good point
083so i mean so that's just one example for me yeah how we're trying to interrupt that right practice and change our structures and change our absolutely our ways and be more supportive of english learners so that's right many of whom are hispanic latino um when we don't support them end up looking like um they have some special needs yeah if they don't all they are are english are learning absolutely and bernie you know i love that you said that because it made me think about the third bullet point right which is calling out another piece of that is like the why you know like if you said well here's an example of data we have our latino students who have been over identified in special education right and and someone says why well there's obviously
084there's a why in terms of one how we see student success which i think is the second bullet but the third is like there's bias right there's clear bias and without the right way of calling that out and calling out those equitable practices then we won't interrupt the system right because it is systemic right that data you just shared is not like just this last year right like this is trend data that's shown up for years so i love that you just said that that this is where we have to have some clear examples and also um i think clearly calling that out well positive is it wasn't last year so right the fact that we we started to this dismantle or take apart preferences reversed outcomes so we did not over identify our latinx
085students for special education we significantly reduced that over identification because we have attention so that's an example of a success absolutely um you know the other ones are the over-representation or over like suspensions for boys over girls suspensions for african-american and over asian that revolve around the third bullet but you know sometimes we may suspend someone because the final act that they committed they threw a brick through the window i think we all agree that that is a suspendable offense right none of us would say we should not suspend somebody or we should not what we don't look at is what are the 20 things that happened before a student got so upset so disturbed that they picked up the brick and threw it through the window that that's where you know we can begin
086to look at you know johnny sit down johnny stop talking johnny you know you know pull out your book you know the 20th time johnny hears his name out loud yeah he throws him over the edge absolutely enough to throw the brick through the window so yeah johnny threw the brick through the window and he needs discipline for that but johnny was pushing the edge and over the edge by smaller things that absolutely could that the adults in the classroom had full control over and could have that doesn't get him to the point where he loses control yeah and you know bernie what i love about that example and i think helping your board kind of see like this is the stuff that happens in classrooms right that may not the brick throwing may show
087up at the border level because it's like oh you're getting suspended maybe an expulsion i mean depending on how bad these acts are right but the the the little nudges along the way that build up to that like you mentioned and then go back to your statement as i was hearing you i see all three of those bullet points there's some intentionality with calling that out right that's a system issue um there's a rethinking student success which is what i love around like seeing the strengths right the assets in the kid versus always seeing like the deficit and and you know looking at not looking at the just academics but looking at the social emotional space right because that ultimately the impact of um i look at it as stereotype threat right the more you
088kind of say that i'm not good i'm not good or i'm bad at something i'm bad or something eventually it manifests itself and that's an inequitable practice that we have in our education field right that unfortunately go back to bias bias or blind spot so what happens is those blind spots then create inequitable practices and we don't even know what's happening so i love that your equity statement calls out like all of it and you don't have it so narrow that you can't apply it to everything right then ultimately you do have some things where i see you calling out specifics and you know bernie as you're mentioning a few of these i can see the you're calling out some of the equity gaps and this is where we talk a little bit at the
089end about your next steps and how you can leverage you know either a soup council or an equity task force but having a group that's going to literally sit down and roll their sleeves up and do a whole root cause analysis and come up with a real um great input on your strategic plan around how are we going to close these equity gaps specific to you mention our african-american students our boys are latino students around there with suspensions and also over-representation and special ed those are equity gaps that specifically this work is about but it's going to require a plan right and it's bigger than just let's have a statement and it's even bigger than just our policy it's about okay how are we going to create a game plan and so that's the longer
090term work that doesn't happen overnight and it doesn't def happen just with the board that's when you'll have you know kind of i call it an equity task force or maybe it's a superintendent council but it's a group of stakeholders who come together and help unpack some of these key issues that your statement is really applying to but specific to equity gaps that show up in the data those examples so really helpful so any other thoughts around your statement i'm taking notes by the way and i'm making adjustments um and i'll reshare the screen in a moment but i just want to make sure you can kind of take a look at some of the changes at one of my questions is um you all wanted it to be simplified do you feel like it's
091simplified enough that students and community members and maybe parents can look at it and go i know what that means like they get it or is it too jargony is it two you know uh you know how we are as educators we like to use big words right what do you think i don't think so i think it's very um consumable verbiage because like something like in the first bullet point like harmed we could say disadvantaged um so you know i don't i don't think it's too um academic okay i'll second that i agree i think it's i think we've simplified it to the point where i think we should all understand it but i will say i feel that i bet you there's a chance that when we show it to other people not
092just us here that i'm sure they won't be had to be more tweaking just to like make it even more digestible i'm sure there's like probably some phrases here that we think it's easy but i think everybody else doesn't really know what that means so we might have to tweak something yeah i mean what one test i use to identify jargony speech is i run it through google translate into spanish and then i read it in spanish i'm like oh that is not what we meant so how do we how do we how do we write it in english so that when it translates to another language it makes sense that's a good one so um and we will have to you know when we bring this to our piac group or our dlac group
093which we'll want to do um how do we have this available in some of the more significant languages so that they can provide input yeah what is your um what was your uh group you said the piac what tell me that acronym uh it's a essentially it stands for parent involvement advisory committee but it serves as our district parent advisory committee got it okay so like your dad broadly yeah like we have two or three parents from every school are invited to come we're happy if one parent from every school shows up all right you have one parent from half the school so got it okay but you know clayton has been a board representative to that committee and he's attended and he knows um the parents who come to that they they're good good
094stakeholder group to um you know even if it's five parents i think they absolutely get a good filter yeah yeah one one oh go ahead jump in sorry obviously i agree i think the pc is a good filter to explain if this makes sense or not and i'm and like the nice thing is that they will gladly say what they think so you'll get actually honest opinions about like if this makes sense or it doesn't make sense okay yeah and then i figure you have some student groups you probably can run it by some of your leadership groups uh maybe your fourth fifth graders um you know a lot of times um the um that group like when you think about the age like i would ask kindergarteners but also think about like the the
095the kids who really um give you some candid um you know they have the maturity in their language to really give you some feedback um your kindergartners and younger kids um it's always good to hear their voices too because they're going to give it a different way they're going to talk about like sometimes i'll ask um younger kids like give me an example of what equity actually means to you and they'll give like the play yard examples right and kids not sharing and being chosen to play in a game um they're not going to give you the extensive you know oh i had a microaggression where kids said something about my hair right they're not going to talk about that right but they'll give really good examples i think it's important to hear all students
096from from kind of start to finish um and then also look at maybe surveys so that's another way to use like you know however you do your parent surveys um sometimes it's great to ask them what it means but then you can actually put your your draft in there and say you know as a draft statement just want to get feedback and maybe that's just sitting on your website and you have it open for a couple of months i don't know but um you know all your your normal platforms where you bring people together your lcat forum so that's another one um which i know has been an interesting dynamic this last year but those are all great spaces to get more feedback so another thing i want to ask you do you feel like
097you can measure this statement with data so when i say you know three years from now can i measure that you have examined biases to support facilitation of equitable practices like is that something i can measure in data like how do i know that that examination has happened what do you think i'm just i'm giving an example but but can i measure your equity statement with data not just feelings because feelings matter by the way they do matter qualitative experiences matter but with hard data quantitative data can i measure your statement are there some data points you could pull out to say yes we're closing that gap or addressing that gap we're measuring the impact of our work what do you think i think it goes back to identifying and getting examples of the first
098bullet if we can draw out the the points where past practices past you know current systems have harmed or disadvantaged um other some student groups then we can get the data on that to see and then we can measure um how we've approached that and how we reversed or not um those outcomes and i think sort of the second and the third bullet are sort of the house you know the first the first one is the what yeah what what has been harming and then how do we reverse that harm yeah like we reimagine success we examine personal biases yeah you reverse that right and bernie this is interesting you mentioned about this other bullets you're right it's kind of more of the messier how work right but i always say can we measure like
099that concept of reimagined student success um three and you call it out through recognizing their unique gifts talents and interests can we measure that and i think that goes to uh when we talk about like our grading system our homework policies right like how do we measure student success is it only the traditional metrics in education or do we have other ways that we measure the brilliance of kids what i call it and so i think that part we can you know we actually can measure um because it's not always about like the stuff that shows up on the data dashboard right um the things we collect year after year but what about those incremental ways we measure student success um you know to often give this one example i stole from a candidate i
100was doing a superintendent search and a candidate was in an interview and it was a great analogy around data and they use this analogy about a baseball card and thinking about our kids like as like if you imagine like a baseball card there's like this beautiful you know person on the front right their beautiful face and their beautiful name and then you flip it over and what do you see on the other side like you see their stats right so we think about student success what's your traditional stats we have right now it's their s back score right it's their um their free and reduced lunch like you know the data right you know all the stats about kids but there's some things missing right so things like do we have metrics around what kids
101are really good at so like do we know what they're interested in do we know where they've been successful whether it's in school or out of school because remember when we have that whole story of a child which is qualitative and quantitative in many ways we have a whole story and now we talk about success like how do we measure that to say like oh i may have not passed the fluency benchmark that you have so i never made honorable i mean i'm just telling you a true story of one of our children who we just took to school her college visit that was our daughter right she rarely made the honor roll until high school where they finally figured out ways to engage with her um but she was the one that never read
102as fast but she comprehended really well super analytical gray kid to have in class but she never she was always the bubble kid so how do we measure her success and we missed it right and so what happens is over time you create that story that you're not successful in school you're not successful now what does that do when it's time to take the big test what does that do when it's time to read and it's you know my teacher's testimony in fluency and i'm trying to get there because they got to stop watch figuring out how many words i can read per minute like who said that was success in school so my point is like the second bullet can you actually measure that yes but that's the harder work is a mindset because
103remember when we talk about our educators who are in the trenches our teachers they have been given a structure of how to measure success of kids in traditional ways so how do we reimagine that that's where we have to look at do we measure different metrics and i think we're moving to that i would agree would you all agree like i think the lcff and kind of um lcap kind of continuous improvement accountability model i think it's moved us to having multiple metrics but we still often measure success based on the traditional things and so when we talk about unique gifts talents interests and social emotional growth like do we give that john i think bernie you mentioned the johnny the kid who threw the brick through the window right like do we measure when
104johnny did had a phenomenal day like does that show up on his report card right or does that show up as he gets an award and he's on the honor roll too even though he may have not had the academic success but that we celebrate his success as well knowing that maybe he'll flourish two years from now even though our benchmark is now right so that's what i'm thinking about when can you measure this and i'm i would like to say yes you can it's just the struggle is the how bernie you said it like how we do this is a little bit different and um it's going to require us to rethink what those metrics look like and grading your grading system would be the one that shows up here a lot of times
105because that's where often you measure kids success in those report cards especially in elementary where you have a lot of different like ways we measure right you break down all the components high schools uh middle school a little bit different right it's like a letter grade for one subject right but when you start looking at those metrics on the report cards these are ways we can rethink it and it can show up in data yeah i mean i'm thinking of we do an annual survey with students and staff you know and and i think a a good question there you know for staff to say i can identify um the strengths of all the students you know 50 of the time 75 of the time 25 you know and then ask the students is like
106my teacher one of my teachers knows about what i'm really good at i love it you know for for students it's more important that the students know the teachers know than it is for the teachers to say but but i think absolutely but asking the question to teachers makes it makes it a point of measurement it's like okay i really have to know like i can identify a strength for half my kids but the other half i can't so i need to work on that i need to figure out what their strengths are what they're really good at and you know nicole with this conversation and bernie you you said some things that were going around in my mind we know what the end result is we want to be able to to um uh
107measure it but now let's start peeling away go back to it again is it the expectation of the teachers the principals to collect this information we can't assume that everyone's collecting this data so this is when board members will ask the question well what process do you have in place that will be able to measure their unique um talents and then you know you may have groups of certain teachers who automatically do it because that's just how they teach but is it expected of everyone has that ever been told to all of them that this is the way we're going to do it so that's where you have to try we have to be careful not to assume that it's happening well you have to know that it's in that is very intentional across the
108board and so that board members can pose the question on what process do we have in place so that this conversation really made me think about this is where we want to be but let's peel it all the way back to make sure this is where we're being very intentional um going back to when andrew was talking about the gi bill you know yep we put something in place but did we really make sure that everyone it was touching everyone that needed to be touched in this regard and so and it makes me think about when you know many many years ago when i would get those report cards that had all these columns and it was saying a percentage of your strength is this the teacher they did know what i was pretty good
109at you know yes she was a good reader 25 or whatever percent and so do we still do those things it looks differently but the key thing is do we still have something in place to capture that information because if you have your equity statement saying that you're going to focus on their unique talents again who says what what's the evidence and so this is just just you know listen to the conversation just made me think about where this is where we have to be very intentional that it's good to do it but we have to make sure everybody understands that this is the way we do it because this is the equity work i just wanted to add that um i remember at the end of elementary at the end of middle and at
110the very beginning of high school taking some sort of career assessment test um that evaluated where my talent sat where my interests at and the possible um uh career pathways that i would be successful at so i think we need to systematize a swot analysis and an interest assessment on possible career paths talents gifts skills and then create policies and programming that actually develop and enhance those interests that's the way to measure it yes um for those of us who've forgotten what swat analysis is can you can you remind us um it's your strengths weaknesses opportunities and threats so the strengths and weaknesses are internal and the opportunities and threats are external okay thank you and these are all like what deborah said is you know kind of pulling it to the governing space because
111what we you know we see like you have a superintendent in the space so he has obviously the expertise as educator to to think about how this looks and implementation but what debra shared too is like what are those questions that you ask as a board what is that data you need to see that you can measure the impact of your statement so i love the discussion because i think you all have a lot of different things that you can utilize to really put this into action but what i want to do is i want to pull you pull you back for a minute and as you think about you know finalizing your statement i stopped sharing because i think it's it froze on us um i want to uh take a moment just froze
112on me again give me one second let's see i want to get out of this and get into your there it is okay um so what i'm gonna do i'm gonna re-share the kind of final look at what your statement can look like and see if you all feel comfortable with kind of using this as a quote-unquote draft that you'd be willing to share with your stakeholders and start to give feedback so can you see that okay or is it showing off not yet no just a black screen right now are you gonna okay yeah it's doing one of its uh it may kick me out so let me reshoot i think sorry about that let me try that one more time let's see if this works sometimes zoom just kicks me out and i
113found out it does that to a lot of people so it's not just me anymore i thought it was just me it was a conspiracy okay so what i did is i just was taking so this document here is actually the document you have so this is just the evolution of your statement so you all have this so as of today what i did is just took some notes but um here's kind of where i want to see if you think this is the statement that really kind of resonates with you let me just blow it up so you can see it ah that's not what i meant to do she can see it okay there we go all right so take a look tell me what you think about this being a potential i
114call it final draft that you can take and start getting feedback from your stakeholders i don't know i think i think that well it is missing something yeah it is sorry i think i accidentally shoot i think i took it out let me go back to the old one sorry um system that have harm sorry the words i deleted have harmed there it is sorry about that i deleted it on accident and i think even the word by i don't know if you all like this through through implementing or developing or through well was there a verb no there wasn't actually uh i thought it was i thought there was a word called um creating through creating policies um let me see let me go back to your old one assistant student groups it's creating
115is creating it's creating thank you maybe i think i um when i did a copy and paste on here i think i just totally like deleted a sentence but now i'm looking at it i think yeah there we go faced all our hard work no just kidding i know but the good news is because um i have uh i'm human being i mean it's all up here there it is right so you can see exactly what y'all did yeah in my haste to copy and paste and share my screen i think i just missed that one all right there we go but yeah what do you all think you feel like we're capturing it um you feel comfortable before we go into um our policy piece of our uh work for the last half of
116our day evening what do you think so i see clayton's like yeah marie what do you think you think this is a start it's a start i think it says a lot of words that isn't really meaning what it says but i think i know what you want to say okay okay it makes sense it does i think and hearing more feedback i'm sure that it will you'll massage this more beyond today like we just we're getting you started with let's go out and ask people but this is after three study sessions of you all looking through this and you may say you know what after listening to our stakeholders we want to start over and have something totally different like it's okay but we wanted you to have a process to begin to own
117what equity means to you because you are the visionaries of this work i just think that the words are talking about things but not getting to the real message right yeah and that marine makes sense potentially interrupting systems yep get that language out just go to the what we want to do we want to create policy practices that support all students right and it doesn't matter about underserved students or oversearch students all students got it all students got it that's all i'm saying is i more i read this it gets so like what the heck got it got it what i think maria is saying all of the above i think that's what's interesting i think you're capturing everything and so um being intentional and calling things out i think is important but also it
118needs to be broad enough where you're not putting yourself in too narrow of a space either so i think that you all have a little bit of both because marie think of it like this you're a governance team right so this applies to governance and policy but like does this apply to our teachers does it apply to our parents does it apply to our community members that's i think where you'll have to wrestle with is this applicable to everything in our school district versus just one group of kids or even one particular policy or practice and so that's why yeah [Music] to support all students it doesn't matter what issues or or backgrounds or whatever it is that oh i see what you're saying i'm just saying i got it i look at we support
119all students right well here's the here's the trick if if we said that then we'd be doing the equality thing kind of goes back to that so without this piece here without you calling that out then what we're not doing is being intentional about what is really the issue you got to call out that our system of serving all kids we got to talk about what that means because all kids don't get what they need and you do have to be very very intentional about explicitly the data is calling out certain groups of kids have been underserved and if you're not clear about it then what'll happen is you won't ever get to the root of the problem does that make sense so i think i hear what you're saying and you're right the outcome
120is all kids absolutely like it shouldn't matter who kids are but unfortunately based on the history of public education it does matter who they are and we do got to call it out because if not it will never get addressed and so that's why i love your statement where you're calling out like examining biases because the biases is where kids are underserved right why is it that some kids don't get services that others do well that's bias right and that's historical bias and kind of going back to your article right there's a reason why certain people weren't served as well as others and you're all calling it out that that's the essence of equity work so i think what you're saying i get it i'm not disagreeing but i think without calling it out it's
121kind of like yeah you'll just kind of it'll be too general and you won't really get to the root of the issue so is that does that make sense yeah okay okay yeah but i think we're all saying the same thing so i definitely agree okay yeah bernie what about you do you feel like this captures you know uh kind of a starting point that you can feel comfortable going out and getting feedback on i think so i mean i think i'd be curious specifically from the board like what what questions would you like posed to different stakeholder groups like i can think of some like um is this understandable is this clear how can he be made clearer you know sort of taking each sentence one at a time you know asking questions like
122that i can think of you know can you identify some systems that might have been harmful to some students um you know how do we support how do we change that um how do we identify students like i can think of some questions that we can get feedback from and and you know just for the board you know i have assembled a group of principals um to support our work in equity you know they're i'm calling them right now for lack of a better word sort of an equity steering group um it's not the task force it's not very broad yet it's just principles um but it will get broader um got it so they will help support you know getting at least the first level of getting this out all to staff perfect um
123getting feedback from staff and maybe even some parent groups at the school site and we would replicate that again at a district level but uh if there's particular questions that we want to seek um answers to or feedback on that that would help me got it now any governance team members have any feedback on that is there particular questions that you want to hear um in terms of feedback for your statement i think that's an interesting question uh that bernie proposes is this is this like does this that what was the word you use and i had it on my note let me go back to it when we're talking about simplifying it so does it actually um is it simple enough is it clear is it clear enough yeah yeah is it understandable click
124is it clear yeah is it clear yeah you know i would say to follow up on what um superintendent said i was gonna say like does it keep us accountable enough like sometimes like it's like you know like there's a lot of like even beyond school boards organizations that create sort of like statements in general um but like is there a way you can say that well it's not just for show rather something um i don't know if there's a good way to ask a stakeholder that question yeah just more just like this is actually would you like believe this would do more than just right that's a great point great question i think especially in this area i mean in this particular space of work um it's just so easy to do the hashtag
125or do the you know it's how do we get beyond the hashtag beyond the facebook banner uh you know how to how do we get beyond our district has an equity statement like what does it really mean and and you know my observations in the last six months is that many districts have the hashtag or have the banner but the and the districts that have started to consider accountability measures and what does it look like and how do we have to change um are the ones experiencing some of that that pushback that deborah and um nicole have warned about or not warned just you know made us aware of that that when if we can if it can stay high and not really applicable or not really it doesn't really impact anything we can get
126a lot of nods yeses if it begins to change if you know i believe for the better if it begins to change what we do and how we do it um that's where we where we get some we will get some um [Music] definite some i'm gonna say i'm gonna say pushback but that's just looking at it from the negative i think it's going to be more questioning of what we're doing and why we're doing it that would just be the positive way to look at that got it okay sorry nicole i think go ahead to answer uh clayton's question about how are we being held accountable for this is to make it smart with something that's time-bound so so we're we're examining biases right okay and then you know so i think that you
127know we and this is just an example i'm not saying this is what should be but like annually we examine the biases to continue to facilitate better practices right or how uh not just how but how often are we doing this and um i like uh bernie's response um to getting you know community involvement um with with with asking uh questions like that and not really opening the floodgates to you know what other verbiage do you want to add because i thought that's right elongate this and kind of take away from from what we're doing already absolutely no i totally agree yeah because you you'd be i call it waffling you'd waffle like for a year right and and coming up with an adoption and it's okay like it's okay to take time debra and
128i often say like don't rush this process right it may take you a year to do the final adoption because you all took several months to do your own work right you want to get feedback but eventually you don't want to go back to square one where it's like okay we're wordsmithing and fighting with one parent because they're like you didn't spell this word right that is not the essence of it it's really about discussion it's about those questions you just said is like is this something we can measure is this something that you know we can see these examples of inequities those are key questions um that definitely you can think about asking and they can show up and not just like set a dialogue with your input um you know from your stakeholders
129but also like in a survey so you always want to ask questions that you can ask two and three years from now by the way right so you want to have things that can get you really good trend data around input and keep in mind uh mabel you made a good point which is kind of our segue to the policies you mentioned the time-bound piece so remember the equity statement is more like a vision kind of mission like big picture right your policy is going to be more detailed and then that steering committee which may evolve as bernie said into kind of an equity you know action planning or task force you name it steering committee that's where they really go into the plan right because remember the plan is more implementation which the board
130doesn't do i think the board has the policy which is where you all can call out your ways of measuring the impact of your policy and this statement is in your policy so i think that's the other piece that you've already kind of done is that you've revived your policy already because you've already adopted the csva version of the policy um you just want to evolve it and that's what we're going to do in this next um last part of your session so um i want to ask just in general andrea i know we didn't uh get a nod from you but it sounds like everybody is seems to be okay with this being like the draft that we get input from um bernie um is you know contemplating what questions we want to ask
131people to really get input but do you feel like this is kind of a good starting point when you start to think about getting input from the stakeholders absolutely i agree with all of my board members i think um to answer your question bernie i do think in terms of i don't know about a question specifically at this time but i am thinking that we need to incorporate obviously our teachers in this because i know it was mentioned earlier um you know obviously we are here for our students however our district is um compromi you know it it consists of so many more people and in order for our students to be successful obviously examining this teacher's biases our administration's biases or staffs biases yes but um making sure that that is glued into all
132of this because without those stakeholders our students won't be successful um so it's kind of a mix of all of that and so just ensuring that we're thinking about that as well got it all right and bernie in the notes i'll make sure you have um this actually in there you all have access to but i'll make sure i reshare this there's a couple of key questions you actually can ask um and just do something very general around just getting feedback right just what do you think of our statement and not really go too deep um but more about what do they think equity is what is an example of an inequity right and then also um where is an example of equity in our district so that's going back to measuring this like have
133these things actually happen and i want to say yes i think marie said it we've done some really great things and bernie said we've been doing this so asking people that and then just asking them to give input on this statement you know it could be simple very broad i wouldn't ask them to go into word smithing it for you but i'll share those notes with you and it's like maybe four questions you don't want to have too many right before you give them it's just too much and it can be asked to kids parents you name it like i think that's important too that you can ask these same questions to anybody and it'd be consistent and it could show up either verbally or in a survey yeah and i think the the you
134know there's different questions that we want to ask verbally in groups because that's when you get into more nuance um i have found that surveys sort of need to be closed versus open in terms of right right right there's nothing worse than trying to compile 100 responses and they're all different like wait you don't have a research you don't have a researcher that you've hired in your district oh that kind of code that can code the reason they can code no no no we don't have to that's me most districts don't so that that would be me that would be you i don't know oh no it's all good sometimes i feel bad that i ask the open-ended question because like i can look at it and get the gestalt but i cannot get to
135the get to the you know yeah it's a hard one yeah if you know a small group you can get that when you can when you have the conversation right you know and the key thing um before we move on is you guys have gone been going through this for months and so again you have to be careful when you put it out there so that they don't think that they're rewriting it for you like no we we this is our rationale uh we're on the front load we're going to kind of give you a statement on the what we've been doing and this is what we've come up with now we want your feedback on it um because you guys have taken the time to really go through and remember the the stakeholders um
136that will be looking at it they have not gone through this and so but it is a it's a good thing because it's going to be fresh to them so it could be they could bring up something that you just didn't even think about but you know when you're ready to put it out there and i like those clothes then they quite just here are the questions this is where we want your focus to be there be very intentional about when you put it out there what you're looking for because if not you're going to like throwing the net out there you're going to bring in so much stuff that you really didn't want to hear um so or didn't need to but just making sure everybody stays focused but it's all in the language
137on how you present it to them but i think you're well on your way this is a good good start though all right well what i'm wondering is um do we want to take a little bit of a brain break maybe five minutes so you all can pause and then we can come back we have about an hour and we're going to go through gesture policy which again you've already adopted so that's the good news you have one but we need to go back and make sure it's yours um and apply your your statement will just be a part of that but do you want to do like a five minute brain is that okay okay okay so maybe i was like yeah yep okay so maybe we'll come back it looks like six minutes
138so maybe 8 30 is that all right all right cool we can just stay leave it right yeah if you want to mute and um and mute your uh um uh turn your your video off it's up to you but yeah usually i'm on your brakes you just mute and stop your video stop video and views right yep yeah yeah yeah perfect all right well welcome back from your break um what we're gonna do is um transition and make a connection to your equity statement um into your policy and so um what we're gonna do is actually um deborah's gonna kind of walk you through a dialogue about the current policy you have but just want to do a quick connection to like the purpose of a policy um as well as um connecting it
139into like how you use a policy so i'm just gonna share one slide and then i'm gonna pass the virtual mic back over to deborah to get us started and we're going to pull up your current policy so again congratulations you already have one but i want to make sure that we um understand kind of the the next step so can you all see that okay perfect all right finally all right so what you see okay deborah yeah okay so what you're going to see i'm going to pass the virtual mic back to deborah but just want to make sure i give you just quick context of why we're doing this piece and why it's so important when you're talking about your equity policy work is that one it's not enough to have a policy
140okay yes every effective board has an equity policy does this work but it's really like how do we use the policy right so what debra is going to walk you through is kind of two pieces is what are the components of an effective policy right that is a living breathing document and how do we kind of take that equity statement that vision infuse it into that so it becomes like the lens by which we do everything and then how are we gonna actually abuse this policy where it doesn't just go sit on the shelf and um become the toy you forget about so um so i'm gonna go ahead and leave it up and then um i'm going to uh pull up your um a policy uh that you have in a moment hope i
141have the right version so deborah i'm going to pass a virtual mic to you all right sure good well here we go so with um again you guys have um adopted the csba one and then you it sounds like you've had a chance to look at the other policies which we can kind of talk about if there are pieces that you like but the key thing is you know just understanding what's important to be in there and and and that's the key for when you have a template that you um uh adopt then you have to make it personalized because there are stuff in there that you have to put in that is very specific so of course your your background your understanding the why you're doing this work and and what your the reasoning
142for focusing on on equity is almost like a statement but it's just giving some information on it it's just your data why how did you even get to this place of saying that you even needed an equity policy so really identify what the background of that is and and your your vision and your purpose um of of the board what your vision statement is almost like your equity statement and nicole had mentioned this before where some boards have if you look at the other policies they have really made that their vision their mission statement if you will is what their equity statement is but it's so important to say what is the purpose of what the board is is supposed to do it it's it's really important to say what the purpose of or the
143purpose of what the district is going to do the superintendent what the superintendent is supposed to do so it is being very specific and intentional about with the vision and who's going to do what and of course your equity statement you know we always tell you that that is what drives your equity policy that's why we just spent so much time really um crafting it to make sure that it is a very good starting point to be able to now flush out what it looks like and so that's why we didn't have to have too much detail in the statement because the detail is going to be in in the policy and how it's going to impact be implemented where staff will be able to look at the policy and really see oh this is
144what is expected this is what it looks like in the classroom this is what uh i'm supposed to do whatever you know what the superintendent is supposed to do the board and the district as a whole everyone will be able to see what their role is um and again the superintendent the direction the guidance the uh the administrative regulations all of these are components that uh fall into an equity policy we've shared with you on some sessions before like four um priorities and and you guys view those priorities and whether you you ex you know what those four buckets that we would say that um are your priorities they're not hot topics but you definitely need to have your your priorities your goals or where your focus is going to be that supports your equity
145statement and so we had talked about the budget human resources teaching and learning and school climate and safety so whether you use that you can start there and then just kind of um pull out what area is very specific and uh maybe you had mentioned something about monitoring like every year you would use it as an example actually this is what should be in your policy it should be an annual evaluation of it where everyone is being held accountable that is it's uh monitored and that it is measurable because you may have to make some tweaks and of course we always have to make sure that it aligns with other policies too you never want to have your equity policy contradict anything else because it should go hand in hand with if you have bullying
146or any other type of suspension or or anything of that nature um and so the practical application you know guys all your governance practice everything you do um it is going to to guide you in your your decisions that you're making uh the evaluation progress um again making sure that it's not just sitting there not being looked at it is a living document really even though it is a board policy but this one is very active because it's woven through everything you do it aligns with your lcap um and and the work that's going to be done throughout the district board superintendent uh more question that i always say this to you what questions would you ask of your superintendent so you have to continue to make sure that when they're the work is being
147done what questions do you have um your agenda building you know we always say that equity of course is not just on the agenda it is the agenda and so when you're building your agenda um will we be able to look at your agenda and know that you are an equity focused district your decision making all of this is connected to um through the lens of equity this is all the work that we've been doing with you over these last sessions to make sure that it that you can apply this you've learned all this and you have to just make sure that you apply it and again prioritizing the work the areas that you're going to stay focused on because there are going to be obstacles or distractions where people will say well this is
148equity i want you to you know worry about this but you have to just stay focused on the whatever your goals um are going to be not um of course the hot topics but actually your your priorities your um your main goals um reference as a re-centering of the governance work of course when we talk about um the golden circle always focusing on um the why what and how but especially your your why you're doing this work and this will go hand in hand of course with um when you're monitoring evaluating are we still focused on the work that we're supposed to do so this is just an overview and and as you looked at the csb aims um equity policy and the other was it hopefully you did pick up these components that were
149were there and and of course these are what we're saying should be in there but if you wanted to add something else that that is okay as well so did you have any questions about um the overview of the what goes in the policy now that we're getting ready to customize yours now i'll be very specific about putting the ingredients in this this cake if you will so any questions on that and so if not where the conversation is going to be is when we start when nicole pulls up your policy that um you adapt it and and just um as we go through this and mayweal you mentioned that like the cincinnati one that was longer and all that so it sounds like you did have a chance to to look at um the
150policies um looking at elk grove though to me it looks like this is also the csva one is that correct nicole um i believe they they have doctor this looks as close to as possible to me um i would say yes and no i think they really cus i like theirs because they customize it for them really really you can see they put their fingerprint on it um so i would say elk grove is definitely their own um and i think this one has been in place prior to csv i i'd have to double check um when csv uh put that into your uh was it your gamut system but yeah they really made it their own and they'll go which is what i liked about it okay um but it definitely has some some
151similar um framework to it as well just out of curiosity for your um board um when we talked last you all have adopted the csv policy so it's officially one you've adopted that's correct yeah so bernie's like yes so i think um one of the things we wanted to do deborah mentioned the that there are some other samples you got a chance to look at so like cincinnati you think oakland is in here um you have um uh portland fort worth um have you all had a chance to take a look at any of those okay and the reason why we bring it up is because although you have an equity statement one of the ways that we like you to think about massaging it and really making it your own is to look at
152what are some other examples right so i think maybe you'd mentioned earlier like you know do we have too much or too little for a statement but and it's like no it's about it being yours right so there's no right or wrong way but i think they have some really good language in theirs that sometimes helps us to massage it so would it be helpful to give you a couple moments just to go back to your um samples to take a look um before we go into um unpacking yours let me stop sharing would that be helpful to give you a couple seconds to go back and look at a few okay i saw a couple of nods deborah so maybe we give i don't know maybe about five minutes so you can just all
153go through look at your own policy but also look at some of those and maybe there's some language that you may like about the policies that you saw that were examples so that when we go through yours as you go through each section by section that you all have some language you may want to infuse okay right i think that's a good idea because we don't have to recreate the will there's some good language out there and then you've just been words method bernie i think you're on mute my friend i am i'll go ahead and pause the recording for five minutes okay sounds good okay okay so as debra is walking you through your um policy i'm going to just pull yours up on the screen um of course i'm gonna find it did
154i find the remember there it is all right so i'm going to pull it up on the screen and then i'm going to show you um the word version that we're gonna word smith and there's a couple of little uh notes that we have in there to kind of walk you through a little bit of some of the changes you may want to consider hey can you see that okay perfect all right we're on a roll with zoom now all right so this was the sample policy and i say sample loosely because you've already adopted your policy which looks just like this um from what we understand and so this particular policy um i'm gonna pull up in a word version and we'll share and make some notations as you all are discussing your policy
155okay just so you know and then what we'll do at the end is we'll be able to give you your draft revisions and then you all can determine next steps on when you want to amend your policy but this is the policy you see here and some of the verbage at the top is just more about ed code and then what you'll notice is when we get down here to this piece more of the policy itself like the what you believe diversity is they give language to that in order to eradicate that's the piece we'll start talking about where you may want to put your equity statement in you'll have the board shall so that's kind of the board policy itself and then you have the board and superintendent shall right so now you kind
156of have the alignment with what you expect of the superintendent and that's also where the admin regulations may come in so we'll talk a little bit about that in a minute and then last part of your policy is where you actually call out like ways that you actually measure the implementation of your policy so that's the last piece and what you'll see in the policy you'll notice the components of a lot of policies you'll see the cfs there which are references to your current policies that have similar connections um implement implications okay so just giving you a reference about your own policy okay is what i'm sharing on the screen okay and you may notice at the bottom just legal references these are all kind of general things that people put in their policies but
157you'll also notice that some of them may be things you all can add in that are specific to your own um references so like they put in the csva publications there may be some documents you want to reference that you want to put in your own policy that's all stuff that you can do on your own um as you um develop your policy okay um just a quick question before we jump into this um do you all have a policy committee are there two of you that are specifically working to look at policy we do have two board members that review policies perfect prior to adoption or perfect education for adoption perfect so this will be really helpful i think um process for you um to do that whichever ones you are appointed to those
158roles and so deborah i'm going to do this i'm going to take this one off the screen i'm going to pull up the the other version and i'm just going to share a couple of notes just based on how discussions have gone already that may help with you all evolving your policy so let me make a little bit bigger so you can see it let me see how's that look okay all right all right so this is just the word version and what you see anything in red is just edits that we've begun to make just based on what you can consider okay so deborah i'll let you go and i'll just type okay and and so okay we're going to start to at the um let me see where the further down do yeah
159here that's where the equity statement is replace it so in order a little bit further and go like this make it a little bit bigger because yeah i'm squinting okay let me do that so these yeah there you go so you took out in order to eradicate that okay in the board shell can you go down a little bit let's just go up to the statement piece first i think that component of this piece is where so i put strikethroughs here because this all seems like language that's identifying like the way they define equity right so this is where i just inserted your your equity draft statement of potentially replacing the language that's already in your policy so that it's not redundant right and so what you guys can see do you agree with that
160um replacement everyone's good with that any any of the language that that's um [Music] striked out it's it's okay i think you captured everything in your equity statement you were in agreement with that yes yes okay yes a lot of people say this is just redundant or the language is just not the language you used you would use yeah in order to eradicate i mean there you can always explain it more have your own statement there but i think if we clean this up and you don't have to have that so your vision the philosophy and your your goals those are the other policies that it's referring to okay is there anything here that you would like to add um in um making any other statement prior you know about your equity statement or to
161actually start going into the other part of the policy any any other statement you want to make just ask i'm assuming that these changes would be after we decide on what the equity statement is if there is changes am i correct yeah because this is a draft equity policy so we're not yeah yeah but since we went through all of we're hoping that you know you of course you're not going to start all over with your equity statement but i think you have enough information in there that you can the policy can now start flowing um based upon what you said you're going you know what equity is to to um to your okay cool that was me yeah yeah yeah i think they think who i think you you understand more um as well
162as anybody else that you know sometimes we adopt the same policy several times in a year because updates come to it so i mean we could we could wait until we have our equity statement what we want it to be you know after input and stuff or we could choose to adopt it and then re-adopt after it's been refined and worked on more fully so that would be a decision of the board um we're you know specifically and i'm just thinking of some policies that seem to come up three or four times a year like the seems to be the one that comes up in every in every uh update packet so but in in looking at the other policies there was a heading about the guiding philosophy so when you guys looked at the
163others were there any other language that you were that you did like from the other policies that you would like to put in here um you know based upon the other policies that you looked at i'll go i um i liked i don't know for some reason i gravitated toward the word culture so who it was it probably was cincinnati because i think i looked at that one the most um there was like uh they talked about like a teaching and learning culture um and for some reason that was important to me and being culturally relevant as well so there's that i also liked um lifelong success because that goes back to legacy and would probably even include multi-generational success um you know we kind of stand on the shoulders of the people that came
164before us right and so if it wasn't for you know rosa parks if it wasn't for malcolm x it was if it wasn't for you know um vicki manalo the first you know filipino olympic star or whatever like if it wasn't for all these people all of us wouldn't be here so i think most of the policy needs to also speak to that um like a domino effect because there's multi-generational privilege right um but what we talked about that staggered start so this is kind of like we're teaching the future generations to teach the future generations as well right it's that that whole old added that each one teach one adage right so i think those spoke to me the most um i don't know but i'd love to hear what other board members thought
165of the others as well and maybelle real quick um which policy were you referring to that sample language i'm pretty sure it was cincinnati's okay so it was kind of like um okay so in the beginning the portland one did have quite a bit about culture culturally relevant pedagogies and strategies as well got it and so you're thinking more like in the beginning like deborah asked about like putting that somewhere in here around my kind of your guiding philosophy kind of putting that up here in lieu of this language i struck out is that kind of what i'm hearing and here's why i say this when you all go down to what the board and superintendent shall do and you start looking at actions that you can measure there is some language we could actually
166infuse in some of this which actually may show up and where's the one i was thinking of it's somewhere around um like this piece number five right there yeah there it is and that's what you put like the word cultural relevant that kind of thing so we could infuse language in this piece too so i just want to make sure i don't miss that does that kind of what you're thinking maybe when you brought that up that it needs to be infused in throughout the policy maybe not just at the beginning um possibly yes okay okay anyone else someone else are your thoughts about um if you would like to add anything um anything else according to even what maybe i'll share anything resonate with you from other policies um the language did you like
167the guiding philosophy to kind of start out um you know then what the board's guiding philosophy is so you know this goes back to what mabel was talking about earlier in the sense that there's just so much more in the other uh in the other statements um i like how i think they just they explicitly i know ours is very concise but i think because they explicitly delve much deeper into kind of their action plans which is what stood out for me they were like you know this is we're going to create these timelines and i think the one i'm talking about is oakland where they're like this this is the timeline and this is what it's going to achieve those are some of the things that i feel like will help with probably the
168conversations we're going to have with our community and stakeholders because this is so concise that it's like well what about this and how is it back to i think the question you asked earlier which is how can you measure this i think with those timelines putting it back to how it's going to help with these three bullet points i just feel like we we just need to elaborate a little bit more maybe i don't know what is what do my other board members think i'm going to go down here because this may be helpful what do you think deborah i feel like they're going into this piece which may be helpful is go beyond the statement and look at like the actions right like what you shall do so let me go here the first
169yeah the first part i just took um where it says the board shall and i just took what you currently have and i just put a bullet point so you can actually see what it says it was kind of it was mushed into one paragraph and i don't do well with that so i like the bullet point so take a look at that and then we can go into the action down here yeah which i'm taking notes on where we can infuse some of that language yeah so i i had a question um it seemed to me that some of the policies that we're looking at got into the weeds more than a policy should and i don't know if the the administrative regulations is where that goes or a separate equity plan um you
170know and i i'm referencing particularly the portland one which it was three years after the equity policy was adopted that that school board approved and adopted the equity plan so there's a lot of time and energy thought put into that plan about the action steps that they're going to put into place so i think as far my understanding as far as policy goes we need to stay up high by big goals and you know guiding principles so that regardless of who's on the board or who's the superintendent or you know that that guides us and then the plan is the more nitty-gritty of how we get there right right right and that's why i think identifying what you're you know we call it guided guiding and plans or your um your priorities um so that
171you stay focused big picture um and so to you know hearing wanting to hear from you what are your focus areas because that the focus areas should be in your um equity policy as well you know that's staying at the governance level uh whether it's those four buckets that we've talked about before um and so what are what are your thoughts about um these bullets um what the boards i think i show to bullet point one bullet point one seems sorry now there's four sorry um andre no go ahead there we go um so i'm looking at bullet one and it's very specific to culture or some uh people of color um i don't know i feel like based on what we've been talking about earlier it might be too like it's not as i
172don't know the word to use it's not inclusive of everything yeah do you feel like like some boards have used um [Music] like socioeconomic backgrounds in in addition to like students with special needs so this is where you did kind of call it out even though you do want to say all kids but this was about intentionality again and to see a deliberate awareness of the impediment so i think that was the piece so this is where you may want to call out what are those student groups that you're referring to so students of color diverse cultural and gifts like is this general enough but specific enough i don't think it is um it doesn't call out um you know students with disabilities it doesn't call out um sexuality you know i think it's it's
173not enough okay yeah and that's why in some policies they have a list they list everyone you know um you know as if we will not discriminate against you know gender um identity socioeconomics um disability uh they start listing everything so um the only area you know doing that is what if you leave some group out but right now yeah that's the tough thing because they can like well what about this group what about this group so how do you list it can we add at the end you know after we think of but i i would agree that you know having the general categories it's hard to be specific within those customers but then add the adding and and other um marginalized communities communities student communities because we don't know what will come up
17410 years ago you know we we had no we had very few um eastern families and now we have quite a few you know 25 of our families are our middle eastern right so um that that's now becoming a a student group that um we can address as a group because we have so many and you're right thanks for bringing that up because when you're doing any policy it's it should be sustainable it's not just for today you try to make it broad enough where you're not constantly having to update it all the time but even though there will be tweaks so that that's good good can we say anything language any other marginalized student communities instead of all in any because we've listed some so any other yeah and i gotta massage this because
175this sentence is not grammatically correct anymore i'll massage it though but yeah we're calling it out so i'll massage it when we give you your final draft yeah okay so what about the second bullet ensure that equity is the intentional result of district decisions what are you you're okay with that one sorry deborah i would actually also include religion since burning from the middle eastern population and how much it's growing i think um that would be important to include just to add another one right okay and i'll fiddle with the language just so you all know because it's uh yeah it's not grammatically correct now as you all yeah one more actually if you want to go that route do you want to do sexual orientation yeah i felt like that was missing too did
176i miss i put gender identity sexual or and sexually sorry yeah yeah yeah because there you have to spell both of those out okay students with special needs those economic backgrounds and any other marginalized student communities and again remember this part up here is um and bernie said it really clear like it's designed to be at the thirty thousand foot level right as a member ensuring that it's addressed not doing it you just want to make sure all the bases are covered yeah and so it's more about because boards make decisions you don't do the work so this is really about like your decisions you're intentional um that they address and here's this other piece which i believe this is the the um the bullet point that probably needs to be massaged with this first
177bullet point so i'll fiddle with it because i don't want you all to feel like you have to go in the weeds for that but you see how you're calling out certain groups so like the first bullet point in the third one kind of does the same so i feel like those two can maybe be integrated but this is the big piece is considering whether your decisions so this is this is again it's an equity policy and it's it's any decision you make are you considering these things right and then you're calling out bias and stereotypical assumptions this is going to be big when you look at your data so that's the big picture for what the board shall do right but then when you go down to this last part i don't know if
178you all want to jump into that for the sake of time to make sure you all can really look at is it calling out the big things your big priorities i think that's a a good start there but yeah this is aligned with the board priorities um we have a about 12 more minutes do you guys have the energy to just kind of add look at what's here and if anything is um that you will want to add we talked about the data it's based on data disaggregated oh would i go high enough sorry let me go up here sorry about it right there yeah okay there we go and this part i haven't touched any of it so just so you all know i just put a notation around aligning with your priorities um
179obviously bernie just mentioned the soup the admin regulations and then timelines and these are things that may be developed over time you may not do that now right it's kind of a big picture but you got to allow the the policy to actually drive development of actions and these are all actually pretty decent what they call that which you already have it's just being more specific about priorities so you have assessing student needs here [Music] so uh you have your funding which is [Music] yeah are you sure they have access they you know encouraging students to enroll so that's in the climate could we explicitly say equitable access in that you can um let me see enabling encouraging students to have access to enroll in like that um maybe something like that yeah yeah it's
180okay if it's not perfect we can i can fiddle with it i just need to notate what you're envisioning yeah yeah access to but this is that that access conversation right so that's big you've got we don't we don't have advanced college programs i was going to say that that one probably should come out middle school but we do i mean we do try to prepare students to have access to advanced college preparation programs when they enter right well i think i mean i don't want to go into the weeds here but like i remember visiting um where did i go fdr and there was a stem class a coding class stumbled upon uh bernie i don't know if you remember this this was a while ago yeah and i and i asked sean uh
181the principal there how come there's only boys in here and notice he was like i didn't even notice there were no females in this class and i said okay this is you know to me that's an equitable issue um we should be promoting girls to take this course so something like not only just extracurricular courses but higher level no um they didn't have it before like they didn't have access to it before it wasn't specifically promoted to them i'm going to use this word and again we're trying to keep it broad because you don't want to call out like you have so many that you may come up with that you want to maybe keep it broad but i hear you what you're saying mabel is things that and you called out they didn't have
182access at all um i put higher level or advanced i'm gonna because you do have like gate you all still have gate um we don't no okay so so does that even sound right higher level or advanced courses that may not be it's and we don't have separate courses but we we aim to provide those opportunities in the heterogeneous classroom okay let me say okay right okay positive climate almost do an engagement and so just real quick just kind of this for those the two of you doing the policy review like this is where you have to talk about okay maybe this doesn't apply right because some of these things in here are not applicable but this again is the sample csv a game this is why you want to go through make it your
183own because this may not apply based on right so yeah i i thought about that too but i but i think the way that we phrased the statement above or higher level slash advanced opportunities that the kinds of programs that we're trying to prepare students to be ready for right maybe programs and ap programs yeah absolutely so then you'd all put your policy because you all have policy around that you just have to massage so yeah absolutely this is where it is so tedious where you literally have to go through like every line um it is it's it's like yeah very tedious but um that's why like you said bernie it could take up a couple years you know um for you by the time you wordsmith it and adopt it i want to put
184this in while i'm thinking i'll tell it relevant because you want to focus on the curriculum and that goes by what maybe else said about [Music] various amongst different girls then i skipped four sorry before does that read okay you all talked about like um suspensions and how to school climate um i also wonder about calling out special educate over representation see where we can put that yeah okay does it take that's usually number nine don't you think yeah i think proper evaluation is that yep there it is on equity and excess outcome with costumes on all indicators and there's that collect including minimizing over-representation of student groups and you know programs such as special education i'm gonna put something in there okay yeah i'm gonna um i think i'm gonna put this in like
185a ie kind of thing we'll see i'm gonna fiddle with the bernie because it's it's not the only thing right but it is calling some of that out and that's a big one for you all so i'm going to put it in parentheses and then i want to put the suspension ones i feel like that one might have been here yeah it's already just okay so language doesn't look good but i'll fiddle with it that was the other one you call right bernie earlier yeah that and this one was over messaged latino students all right cool being very this is where you you're connecting your your equity statement into all of this yeah i love it i love it being intentional yeah [Music] all right so as we go into the last one the only
186last piece besides all the legal jargon which you all don't need to go through is this last one this may be all this reminds me of what you said about the timeline and i think clayton you mentioned accountability so this is that statement about how you all regularly monitor and so this is where you may want to add in something around how you would do that right so obviously there's some big picture things like how you ask questions and the data that's rep that's presented to you but do you feel like there's other language that would be needed here just kind of leave it general right let you calling yourself like you shall regularly to regularly monitor this policy and the decisions you make which kind of goes back to the the uh connecting to
187what the board shall do up here which is about how you'll make decisions that was this piece here but this is after you call out some of your priorities and actions or activities this is where you talk about how you'll actually monitor and so i think the action plan which is a separate process it's going to take you time to develop a plan on how you implement all these this is where you may find that the timeline and accountability metrics show up i think also there's an opportunity in the local control accountability plan like the board regularly reviews progress on the lcap um reviews writing of the new lcap actions so if we could sort of be explicit that they'll utilize that the portable utilize those reviews and um you know lcap reviews and as
188well as updates to that is not the perfect time for these questions to come out x how does how do we how do we ensure that students um with you know where where do our students that have uh their gender identity and sexual orientation um how do we support them where where where does it show up so okay i'll fiddle with that but that i love that so we're gonna add that piece in because and and i think it's just helpful for me to think about yeah do lcap reviews and we do lcap updates at least once every six to eight weeks okay just a perfect opportunity um for that to happen to monitor at the same time yeah yeah to say oh we don't have any actions that address expertise so how do we
189make sure that we incorporate more actions in that area got it okay and bernie do you envision that through your kind of admin regulation process and also the equity equity was the word you mentioned a steering committee do you feel like that may be another way to help utilize the progress monitoring for the board um yes i think that the steering committee right now is mostly uh focused on how do we push this work that the board has done out into our schools engaged in similar process similar activities okay um eventually i think that that will grow into um once the board board the equity statement and policy is defined and adapted and i i would hesitate you know to create a separate equity plan as a forum did because we do have the lcap
190i just would like to make our lcap be our equity plan like that would be nice bernie that would be really nice i i really appreciate you saying that i think um i've had that kind of struggle with districts to say how can you take the plan you have and it drive your work i think the problem is that you know it's usually like 300 pages long so what we say is like take like a piece of your lcap and that be your equity plan because the plan is more about closing an equity gap and the lcap is about a lot of things right so i think it's calling out like you had two you called out is over representation and special ed and also the suspensions maybe those are the two things that show
191up in your equity plan that that steering committee or task force whatever group that is that's the group that really is part of the plan because remember the work is about closing gaps right and so i think while you know your policy kind of speaks to all kids it also speaks to like we got to close gaps and that's where the plan i think is is really helpful and it is kind of separate from the lcap but it should be a piece of the l cap right it shouldn't be like it's some separate thing no all the actions should be in our elk absolutely everything exists outside of that absolutely so what i'll put i'm going to put a note here um i'm going to put equity action plan um focused on key equity gaps
192or something like that so i'll just leave it at that for now that make sense and then the uh and then you mention your admin regulations which um i'm just going to put um um i'll just i'll put it there as a as a reference because i know that you as a superintendent also kind of have your kind of directives to staff and what you are yeah so that i think needs to reference be referenced here in some way shape or form because everything you all do should all be lined together it shouldn't be like this is some separate document instead yeah like i don't like doing five different things no yeah it should all be a lot i want to do one thing that has five focuses or something that's right that's right that's
193right that's being efficient okay cool all right yeah yeah it's that time it's that time and actually they have to have quite a number of things that they've gotten to adjust so i know yeah it's still going to work but it's so worth it yeah so just out of curiosity as we close out who are the two that are kind of tasked with looking at equity policy i mean equity at policies uh-oh claims like okay this is this is where it drops the hammer drops right clayton and and amanda who's not a vote so we get to volunteer for everything right so so just a quick note for like the next steps like your policy um obviously has already been adopted so i think for that you have to just say look we have a
194policy we can use it we can apply it it's not like it's something that's separate um but now that you see all the things in red hopefully clayton this may be helpful for you and manifold to look at and go okay let's really unpack this you may have to go through these cfs and make sure those are updated and accurate for your district i think that's important so um what i'll do is i'm just going to put those in red just so you all can just take a look at those because i think that's important and then um this is in the google folder bernie so you all should be able to access it still so i did it in real time so you all could have it and not um and then you can
195massage it a little bit i think you all um you like these you have your account yes see all a lot of these are already um and and i and as i was reading this i don't think that the csba policy excludes anything that we've discussed i i think that we've made it just made it more specific so i agree yeah i don't think that we're like in danger because we have we have the equities like we can do a lot under the csba equity policy this just absolutely makes it false yeah and just making sure it aligns because there's some some things don't apply to your district and some things do so that was the only thing that the policy i was just bringing up for clayton and manafo to be able to look
196at um so i'm just highlighting it for them so they can notate yeah but overall i think your policy you have it and now it's what do we do with it right so deborah do you want to kind of close out with that piece so we can let them have a great evening and and allow andre finish packing yeah and what we do what we do with it is that's the work so clayton this is where and just take your time and and um present it back to your colleagues to have some discussion about it and and um these are good topics to have some study sessions on with with your group and you have input and just take sections at a time because it's overwhelming when you when we just presented that i know
197you're like oh my gosh and so it's just pizzas at a time you know keep the elephant in mind how do you devour an elephant one beat one bite at a time that's how you know you don't know you don't but we're not going to say you don't on this one birdie you do but one bite at a time and so and so again thank you guys again so much it's been a a journey for us and we're still your thought partners you have any questions we we don't disappear just because we don't have anything scheduled and and this is continuous work so you just kind of think about your next steps on what you additional support that you may need from us or or just support that you will need just so that it
198doesn't stop you don't have to be left doing this on your own um and so we're here to support you as well so thank you again for staying engaged and and really um focusing on this this important work and and um you're all doing you're well on your way to uh being that equity focused driven because that's where you what you want to be you want to model that so thank you again so much um so um nicole let's just try to connect at some point and and figure out what other options for support facilitation might be available for us you know in step three absolutely yeah absolutely we've taken one and two but we've got seven more ahead so absolutely yeah kobe kind of stole a year from us of what we originally planned
199i do want to say that that we made some adjustments because of covet and not being able to do some in person but um definitely we can talk about um some additional support around you all evolving your equity statement your plan as you all get ready to utilize the steering committee and you know evolve that process bring your stakeholders in we can definitely support some of the even stakeholder listening sessions um we can do some equity walks which debra and i love to do have you kind of go in and you know what does it look like in action right sometimes board members don't get to go into the schools and see it right and then know kind of that context so that's one piece and we can also observe your board meetings and give
200you feedback below coaching around that sometimes that's really helpful when you're in the trenches time to do this work so there's a lot to be done there's definitely more steps but i love that you all have a bridge and a platform to kind of jump from and you've done a lot of work in four sessions and literally um a virtual space with three hours which is very limited um so you all have accomplished a lot um believe it or not um you should be proud of your work and and um thank you for being as a board being so supportive of your superintendent this means a lot um you know superintendents have the burden of doing the work their principles you name it and um all the staff have to do the work and you're
201the visionaries and so you supporting bernie and his staff is going to be super important as it gets tougher um and so deborah and i will be watching up close or from a distance either way to cheer you all on because this is important work and bernie um be very i'm excited you have a great board who believes in that and uh and has the vision and has kind of opened the door to really take it to the next level so we're just honored to be thought partners and lock arms with you and so thanks for having us and hopefully we'll get to see you in person one day yeah one day great well thank you so much nicole and deborah your time um is invaluable and we're so grateful that the lines of communication
202are gonna continue to stay open between us because um like you said it's a lot of work um and you know tedious work at that um so thank you for your continued continued support nicole and deborah um were were so so lucky that you um are able to do this with us and build with us so thank you so much thank you do you want to adjourn our meeting ms manuel yes i do uh i will adjourn this meeting at 9 30 39 p.m thank you thank you bye-bye likewise