JESD Special Board Meeting – May 5, 2021

001okay good evening everybody i'd like to call to order jefferson elementary school district governing board's special meeting may 5th at 6 p.m uh superintendent vidalis could i get members president please yes mrs brazuela here miss jordan here mr coo here ms here yes mania here thank you so much um do you mind also leading us in the pledge of allegiance superintendent sure i will gladly do so let me you um get this started here did that not happen did i screen share is it working you see it all right if you would um repeat after me or say the pledge with me put your right hand over your heart ready begin i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under

002god god i've tried doing it more rapidly and then i get jumbled because of the sound on the on the zoom okay superintendent on to governing governance team meeting guidelines uh the governance team members will review the governance team meeting guidelines great and we'll move on to the approval of the agenda i'll take a motion make a motion to prove the agenda as presented second i have a first and a second all those in favor aye aye that was you know okay sorry that was unanimous thank you so much and do we have anybody wishing to address the board um we do not at this moment okay then we shall move on to item seven our equity network study session thank you uh for the both of you miss deborah and miss nicole for joining

003us again this evening we truly appreciate your time thank you and we're so glad to be um back with you um this evening and what is i can't even remember last night with a month so about a month ago right so i'm sure a lot has occurred in in a month's time but um you know that that's but the work continues to go right you still have to do everything and and so i'm glad that everyone is back and looks like you're ready to get back into this work although it never is set aside remember it just continues to be active so uh we're pleased to be with you that this evening looking forward to our three-hour session that we'll go fast again but we're gonna just go a little bit deeper and into the

004work and so nicole you want to say a few words before we really start diving deep into this yeah ditto to what deborah said i'm very excited tonight for sure and just i just want to just acknowledge you for continuing to focus on the work there's a lot going on and i think i always get excited to work with boards who um want to prioritize this work um beyond just like that moment in time because there's a lot of energy in the air around social justice and equity but to really prioritize this work is so important and um based on what's happening at this moment where people are engaging more deeply there's a lot of pushback right now and so i think that it is important that boards have this sacred time to be able

005to really process what does this mean for us and where what is our vision what is our view um collectively so that it's very clear to all that are in the district in the community that this is this is our why to this work so tonight is really important um i think in this journey um we'll definitely as deborah and i always remind you this is your professional learning space so we definitely want to be open to whatever questions you have and any um um i think just clarifying moments that you have in the work we've shared a day just this is your pd time you know this is a sacred time it's no governance no business today it's more about literally just learning together and so i'm excited about that and so um today

006the way we're gonna do this debra and i always kind of co-facilitate in the works so deborah's going to kick us off today and um and get us rolling through our first part of our agenda and then i'll join in after we take a little break um give you all a brain break water break bio break um and then i'll um kind of dive into the work with you and kind of follow up when we started our work around the equity statement um work and really just kept keeping moving you forward on your journey um as a governance team so deborah i'll have you um take the virtual mic and um and i'll jump in um um if anyone has questions but uh deborah's gonna lead us through the first piece and then i'll jump

007in when we get ready to do our equity statement work okay absolutely thank you nicole and again this is this is our time and so anytime there's a slide deck up just say hey i got a question because i may not be able to see everyone very informal we're going to spend more time talking through um like you're reading assignments which i know all of you guys read your article you guys seem to do your homework extremely well so i don't have to worry about that but we're going to have some conversations about that as well and any questions when you see some of the slide deck as well i will go through quick because we kind of went through it but if it triggers you to ask questions please feel free to do that

008as well okay we're good i see the heads nodding okay let me get my screen up for you okay and everybody can see that screen deck right there we go so of course we're always going to start out with our green bits anytime you have conversations about equity about race anything that's a little bit um challenging always just keep centered around these these four agreements this is also very helpful when you are going to be engaging your community or just other groups of individuals just keep these four agreements in mind when you're engaging you know so again staying fully engaged just kind of sit in that space where we can you know connect to the dialogue that we're going to be having um you know we have distractions around us but we want to kind

009of stay engaged in in this work so that we can continue to move forward and of course in doing this work which we shared last last month of course there's always some uh discomfort but discomfort is not always a negative thing it seems like it would be but it is um that's where the growth happens when we're uncomfortable so no one really should say they're comfortable in talking about equity rates or anything like that there should be some dif discomfort so that is okay we'll just find a space to be able to listen to the dialogue that's going on and listen for understanding most importantly and speaking our truth we don't just tell people what we want them to hear we actually speak and be open to listening to our colleagues here on where they

010are you know remember i believe i shared last time when we say meet people where they are we have to be prepared when they show you where they are when you but you want to continue the dialogue and of course always expected except non-closure this work is a marathon it is going to take a while it takes time to turn the titanic if you will but as long as there's some ripples in the water you know you're doing some work and so we're this is just the two or four of times that we're going to be together and so there's there's a lot more opportunities we'll give you to um have conversations um but even at the fourth one there's still me will be some non-closure but that's okay because that means there's a lot

011of work to get done and so just kind of think about you know which if you had to select one which one would resonate the most with you that you're going to really focus on and then identify when we're having the conversation we move between these four and that is okay but it's always this is the space that we're creating for you um safe space you know we now say brave space because not everyone always feels safe but brave space you really can share um your thoughts and your views because this is all about what's best for the district and so that's the conversation that we will have everyone's good with the um agreements we're good all right so let's just remember the work centering our work um again the the why when we look

012at this golden circle and the connection on the y is your equity statement your core values your shared beliefs the purpose of this work it's so important to really focus on that is the work we're going to do in your equity statement which is going to guide the work for your equity policy um the how of course your norms your board um i call it you of course the protocols your roles your operating procedures how are you going to engage with these legit with each other that how is so important about very specific uh actions taken to realize the why and the what of course is the the big picture of the what that equity policy and your priorities there are so many buckets if you will of work that the board can focus on

013but prioritizing um the work is so important and identifying that yes there will be hot topics but not to mix those you they are hot you have your hot topics and you have your priorities and we have to learn to kind of push those hot topics to the superintendent and his staff can handle all of those things but you're aware of them but you want to stay focused on the the priorities that you have and of course your equity impact statement is really going to show the keep track of all the work that you're doing in this um on this equity journey any comments about questions about centering your work on on your this equity driven work all of this is connected is interwoven with each other good and just an overview quickly of the

014equity in education we talked about what equity means um in the far left column you know understanding what it is that and what it's not is so important is not equality um and that student success is demonstrated in so many different ways different diverse ways but the key thing to um our work you know focusing on the challenges for equity there will be challenges um when the work is pushed out to do it because yes you have the historical inequities there will always be resistance to change and sometimes that is because a lack of understanding of the work that um the board is wanting the staff to do and so we have to remember where everyone is that they have to understand where do they fit in um in doing this work so that's where

015you can have some resistance but the superintendent working with his staff can really figure out what the staff needs to get a better understanding so it's not as much resistance but there will just be some resistance because no one there's no buy-in and and you will have to kind of work through that as well and of course dealing with the um the biases um institutional racism you will have to on uh just dissect all of that these are the real things that are happening in the district that impact this work that you're going to do okay and the key thing which is connected to the governance work of course you are policy driven of course and changing remember the changing your policies and your practices making sure when we you really focus on what your

016priorities are going to be what policies or practices do you have in place that you may have to adjust and of course the resources that are connected this is all in the purview of the governance work again being good stewards of the budget not only fight um money it's also about human capital in which you will engage your superintendent because when you have your strategic well not your strategic plan but your equity policy and it's determining who's going to do what the key question you will be asking do we have the capacity to do this work as well which could you know human capital and and on financial building positive relationships i will always stress in doing this work and just doing your governance work building relationships not only amongst your stakeholders but with the

017board team as well and your superintendent so that the the staff sees that the board governing the governance team with your superintendent that you are modeling what you expect them to do as well so that that is so important and of course um empowering those marginalized um stakeholders who you don't hear from and so are you able to even identify do you are there some stakeholders that you always hear from who come to your board meetings or you get messages from would you guys say that you have every district usually have groups so what about those that you don't hear from are you able to identify stakeholders that you are not engaged with as well do you know who those stakeholders are but what do you think do you are you able to articulate who

018those groups are and how to reach out to them anybody can jump in i'm going to call somebody's name because this is there's numerous groups um that i mean that i think many of us know and and some of us share circles but they tap into us because again that comfort level and that level of trust facilitate the conversation but but i i most definitely the answer to that is yes most definitely there there are tons of of various groups that we don't happen to formally um but i believe that there are some informal conversations happening but i think the equity piece of this is how can we formalize those conversations and strengthen them so i'm i look forward to learning some of that gaining some of those tools to empower those families um to

019feel comfortable to come forward to use their own voices instead of speaking through us absolutely thank you for sharing absolutely because you you know that's some beginning work that you have to start thinking about who are those groups that we don't engage with and then what is going to be our strategy do we provide um a welcoming welcoming um environment for them to come to us or do we need if if there are events going on do we go to where they are so that they know who we are because we don't want to assume that everyone knows the board of education but you know you are part of the community so um yeah so there are different ways to engage building those relationships so that when you are pushing out this equity where they

020have a better understanding and they will be your allies instead of push back so that's why it's so important to think about any opportunities that are currently happening in your community that once you know people are starting to do face-to-face um events um that there's a presence there that helps build relationships as well and of course shifting that mental model we all have to practice this and and be intentional about doing things different because you are you you committed to doing this this equity work and so now with everything you do is through the lens of equity and so helping um frame it where superintendent and his staff will also be focusing on how do we do things different how do we have our shared common beliefs um about what students can do and shifting

021what we've always done how we used to think about educating children but this of course as you know it's a heavy lift and it takes time to do this um definitely but it has to be intentional and and discussing it freely um superintendent what are your thoughts about the work that you're going to have to do with your staff and just in this shifting of mental models because it's connected with the actions for the that the board is going to focus on what are your thoughts well i i think with um many school districts um the mental model is the last part to shift um i think people start to shift their language and maybe they start to shift their practice um but how they think about um the situation and and then what they

022believe about the situation um comes last and so it's it's big work um you know i i was reflecting as i read that article about we'll probably get to it later the pris school to prison pipeline and when i first used that term six or eight years ago there was a severe backlash um because um staff some staff unwilling to see their actions contributing to an eventual you know life of uh you know criminality leading to prison you know and i try to explain we keep excluding students from our classrooms over and over they don't feel a part of our community they're not going to want to contribute and be a part of it and it's the only choice left is to be anti and eventually they get somebody you know lead you know lead

023into into um more more criminal behavior and eventually prison so that was a that was a hard conversation that we had and i realized then that we didn't not everybody shared my perspective around the importance of of helping students feel included in part of our classroom communities absolutely and you said that was five or six years ago you had that conversation yeah and and then you know unfortunately what it did it quieted me down i mean i i i paused on that message for a little bit and i figured out different ways to bring it about later but it does have a dampening effect you know just the voices of a few right i don't know why i don't know why we let that happen but it happened so right but of course as you're

024doing this equity work that it like you said even in the article that is a part of this conversation too and and the way i like to uh when board members when you are um you know engaged with conversations about that what does that mean to you as a governing body and decisions that you're making but you have to think about when you're asking for data so if someone is saying well we have an issue of you know school to prison pipeline because of what's happening this is all what's going to happen well how do you know that well you start thinking about your data and you you know know that the connection to that statement is always is also connected to third grade literacy okay so you have to think about that um that

025yes they do determine how many beds are going to be in print for prisoners based upon they check with the education system third grade literacy and and you don't hear about uh um prisons closing because there are no prisoners right but you hear about schools closing because no children so again thinking that that is a true that is a pathway but you don't want it to happen in your your industry so what are you doing focusing on your elementary so that you you're capturing these students right now but to know where you are you have to find out what is your data third grade literacy for boys or or for whatever you want whatever subgroup you want to see how you know where you are because yes they do check with education public schools to

026see well you know because it's for profit you know building a prison is for profit and that is just really shameful that they are building that based upon um anticipating that our children are going to fail and so with even just thinking about that that would really encourage everyone to want to do you really what else do we need to do to focus on giving them the best start we have been talking about zero to three for 20 30 years you know um and why we haven't figured out what to do by now i i don't know but of course we don't want to give up on our kids but just that's how it's connected to your your decision and the the data that you have how do you know that that that you are

027not perpetuating that as well so when you're talking about equity you want to think about questions like that of your superintendent help us understand what's going on there do we need to put more resources in in shoring up the literacy so those are the type of conversations that you you can have that will connect just to that statement so have you had those conversations or you realize that that's coming if you have it right yes okay i'm gonna jump back in here and um whoops just always i like to see faces when i'm talking so you have to forgive me i like to look at people when i'm talking and so you know we went over the public education um and we went uh and hopefully you know you guys have the link and you

028still have access to it that i don't know if you've had a chance to really go in and look at each section and see um basically it's about repeating history you know there are some things that we that are continuing to are starting to happen again and we know that it's a public education system that wasn't created for our students so why are we trying to use the same system to close the gaps and so i always will pose a question to to boards and and superintendent then until we it's changed legislatively and we know that is us at a snails pace what are you doing in your district where you can just say for the curriculum if we know that the the books that um uh these agents the these publishing companies is not

029all of our history how um and this is for the superintendent how creative are you allowing your staff to be to educate all of the children to give them all history you know um until the right books are are published or but we have the internet so there's access but how um um you know how much leeway are you giving them to ensure that they are your students are being educated for the entire history not subgroups only of history so you know just something to think about but those are all types of questions that i pose that boys can ask of the superintendent without dictating of course you know what curriculum to purchase or something like that but you still would like to know what's the plan you know in order to do that so

030did anyone have a chance to really go a little bit deeper into um this um timeline and if you have any comments about it and see how it is connected to this work you're going to do anyone have a chance to look at it a little deeper i was going to say i recall this was um from the first equity network session we had last year i realized this was a presentation that was presented and talked about how pretty much public education in the united states has a history of systemic racism is the right word um talk about how there's been different instances um events and all these kind of um those kind of events not even that long ago that actually have had a huge impact on education today it sort of kind of

031defines how kids learn but sort of laying the framework of how we can actually learn from all those past mistakes and actually do something about all that right you're right thank you are spot on absolutely thank you clayton for sharing that anyone else um want to make a comment did you have a chance to kind of look at a little deeper what were your thoughts don't be quiet i can share my my uh timeline on my screen if you want as well i know marie was not with us in the first session so i don't know marie if you wanted us to share just briefly um we have some guiding questions that um we want to follow up on but is that do you all want me to share mine or are you all good

032i know it was in your folder too but i'm like i'm a good listener and i'll take some notes okay okay and if you get a chance maria yes it is there and every and it's you know uh it definitely walks you through from um 17 what 67 or i can't even read that i don't have my classes on up until current you know a few years ago and it's just a pattern of you know education was not even it was started out for religion religious purposes and so um and as we know you know we think about even the 180 days or 88 days however many days we wonder why how are we going to be competitive globally when kids or other kids are in school 200 250 days you know 300 days or

033whatever um but we are stuck in this agricultural type of system and to to me i don't know i don't understand why that's not maybe it is being challenged but i don't see anything happening because we still have 180 or 88 days and so it is to me it seems that kids will be the more they're in school there's a higher probability that they will be they will learn more um but we you know take the summer off i always felt that three months out of school was just too much give me even as a child i was ready to go back to school after a month and so but um i don't know if when that will ever change if we will ever see that as well and so um marie i'm going to

034i want to look at this um these are the guiding questions that will support this this timeline that really shows even the testing that we did some comments about from the presidents on you know not valuing thinking that immigrants were feeble-minded and just the mentality of individuals who created this history you know um on how you know just the mindset not thinking very highly of our students and so when you think about the the publication the history of public education you know the historical purpose of it it was not to educate our children right and and so and what is the impact of the the current landscape of public education and your community but the key thing i really want you to focus in on keeping in mind of the history that it was not

035designed for our students um and and the fight just in public education not funding it um we have charter schools we have private schools um and just the fight to educate children it should just be the focus on educating all children no matter what but how do you feel that how do you think the governance team perpetuates inequities uh when you think about this the the um guideline the um timeline of education governance teams you're making decisions about educating your students um what comes to mind what are you thinking about how would the governance team perpetuate in inequities in your district what would you say [Music] so well i i i personally believe that every child can learn no matter what there's no such thing as someone can't but there are times when people hold

036them back and push them or put them into a situation where they think they're not quote smart enough and it's not about that it's probably important for governance teams to realize that all children are different and come from different places some don't have families that can help them with their work and that's not because they won't help them it's because they don't have the education to help them some come from families that don't speak english while they may learn english the children in school they're not really learning it in the way the parents understand it i taught us english for a second language for adults for several years a long time and it was um kind of sad when they would come they want to come so they can learn something but at the same

037time they're afraid they're afraid to speak they're afraid and i made it a point to make every single student of mine to go up to the board even if i had to whisper to them what to write give them that feeling of being able to accomplish and i think we need to really look at that more and i know teachers have a hard time it's a good thing they don't have the size classrooms they had years ago because the classes are smaller thank goodness and we made sure we made that happen as a school i mean well but i keep saying wee wee um i've been on school board you know it'll be 40 years this year so i i've seen it go through all kinds of ups and downs and everything and okay so

038we've come a long ways but i think we need to do more and now i think the thing is that if it's racial and it feels like well we can't teach this child because of their background or because of what race they belong to that's wrong that's wrong every child will learn as long as we give them tools with which to learn and so i think everything has a place it's like a big circle everything has a place to make that child complete i'm not going to preach anymore no no thank you for sharing you are you are spot on but having that that mindset yes every child of candler they just learn differently and then so what kind of barriers would would be in place that will hinder them from learning um if we

039say we're going to even the playing field to remove the barrier removing the fence um you know when we're talking about providing giving kids the resources they need when they need it first of all you need to know what they need and and then engage them at that level and so your decision making at the board table it definitely will impact if you don't number one have the mindset and of thinking yes i do believe all of our children can learn and and yes in this country today yes we are breaking things down into race and this we are doing that and so but that doesn't mean that because whatever your pocket that you know category that your students fall in that there are some limitations but we can say that but what are some

040practices that could be in place that show it demonstrates it every day and the kids know it so those are the things we have to be very careful of how teachers engage with students who don't look like them or or um are having some challenges speaking english are they patient enough to listen and just pick up whatever they can so there are so many things that as adults that we have to learn to do differently to get engage students and so thank you marie for sharing that and your experience um go ahead andrea andrea or andrea andrea andre okay good i was i was on the i was actually on a call today with an andrea while i'm like i don't know if her name was andre or andrew so i'm glad it's andreas i

041can remember that thank you andrea yes what would you like to share andrea i wanted to um share what i had when i had reviewed the timeline and and what i felt about it um so in 1870 it mentions the that california had devised the um the rule of ten um which basically was like empowering the separation of schools and then in not i mean basically a hundred years ago they also did i'm gonna actually just read it it basically says the governing body of a school district shall have the power to exclude children of filthy or vicious habits um and so this really stood out for me um because i feel as though there's a lot of unconscious bias like people may not need unconscious bias where they're not they're not gonna verbally say

042you know although this kid is unteachable or this kid is difficult or you know this group of students whether it because of their race or their financial status or because of their sexuality are um are not good enough to be taught um and i think sometimes people per perpetuate that within themselves it's like well they feel a certain way you know they see a kid that's walking by um maybe with their pants sagging it's like well that's a bad kid well why does someone's clothing then choose to be to determine how they can learn or oh that person doesn't speak english and we're in america so you have to speak english well why does that now preclude that person from being a student that can be taught um and so i just think there's a

043lot of things that even from 100 years ago still stand today and i think a lot of times people are like well that's not happening because they're not experiencing it um but as an african american myself and as someone that actually joined the board because my child experienced racism in our school district um you know for me it's very real and it's very personal uh and it's like we can't we can't just say what's needed to be said so that it looks good on paper we truly need to take the action um to move forward or it's gonna continue to be the same cycle and a hundred four years from now we're gonna be having the same conversation same conversation absolutely thank you that that was very rich um discussion you had the absolute rule

044of ten and in some ways think they're they're still doing that like you said 100 years later then what is it going to look like not even 100 years what about 20 years from now you know um if we don't stop this vicious cycle uh we know you know with with what we've experienced just over the last year this was a a boiling point everything was in that pressure cooker you know and it just took one thing and it just exploded and you can't put the genie back in the bottle if you will it is out there we are going to have to address it whether people are comfortable or not but what how does this impact the work that you're doing you have to be very aware and call it what it is and

045again we we address issues and behaviors and practices not attacking of course individuals and no one wants to feel they're going to be penalized for perhaps doing something that they just didn't know that just we're doing it but it has to be determined that this is just the way we this district is going to operate we processes and practices we are going to have to dismantle we're not going to put band-aids on anything we have to tear some things down and and build differently if you want different outcomes for for your students so thank you so much for sharing that anyone else want to um share your thoughts about that and thinking about how the governance team can perpetuate the inequities and then how do you end it because you have to know how to

046how do you address these um inequities and what do you plan to do about it i keep using the language dismantling that is one way you have to dismantle but what are your thoughts i wanted to share something mr please do um so one of the things to answer your question that a board does to uh perpetuate the inequities is we're in charge of approving the curriculum for the students and um and if we approve textbook vendors that are known for leaning you know one way or another then that's how we're perpetuating it by allowing that type of curriculum to continue in our schools and i think the way that we've answered it specifically as this board is getting ahead of the state's ethnic studies curriculum and approving our own which is actually even more

047inclusive than the state of california's um and and as we are implementing we actually also maybe haphazardly found out that some of our teachers uh don't have the cultural knowledge to um to you know to uh i guess teach in an equitable a more equitable way um and really understanding where our students are coming from um you know social economic wise they're a little bit removed and i'm sure our teachers are less than a lot of our other um you know neighboring districts like millbrae or atherton um but nonetheless it is there and in our in our studies um to implement ethnic studies that's where we learned that some of these teachers are like i never even knew about this that or the other um when it comes to you know some of the other

048ethnicities that we serve and even in like um one of the schools i just visited our uh k-8 school um the vice principal said that their school was eighty percent filipino bit he had no idea about the history of the philippines and colonized for 300 years like there's an opportunity there's a learning opportunity here for our staff and our teachers to understand the historical context where our students come from and meet them there um and so i think that that another way other than implementing the curriculum but also developing our professionals to meet our students that way so that not just the content but the dissemination of the information is something from an equitable space as well or at least being conscientious of it right thank you so much you are spot on because again

049you have to remember if you have teaching staff that's been there 20 30 some years they did not learn this when i was in school this education all the things that students are getting today i didn't learn that i had to learn as an adult i'm still learning and i've been far removed from from school for several decades you know but you have to remember that's not what they were trained to do so they were they probably are good at doing what they were trained to do and yes it's going to be a discomfort and this is where you get the resistance the pushback because of lack of knowledge and not wanting it to seem that i intentionally did not teach all these students who came through but i taught them what i knew but

050now that the district is having a laser focus on equity again it's making sure that everyone sees where they fit in and that yes if you if you don't know it is okay to say that it is you're not going to be penalized for that so what can we give you to help you because this is the standard this is where we want everyone to be and so you're going to have people all over you're going to have some high achievers people who are ready to go then you think about this as a superintendent can think about how do i i team these groups up if you have some really superstars that peer-to-peer it is phenomenal they would do so much more than the superintendent tells them to do it and so you utilize all

051of the areas that you can of individuals who are ready those who are kind of ready but skeptical and then some who just like oh i can't do this and you may have people who just say absolutely i can't do this so this is no longer a good place for me but and that's okay because if they don't feel that they can do this work they have to have an option out without being pushed out no one's being pushed out but at least saying you know i've been in the district 20 30 years um it's it's probably time because a lot of teachers are retiring this has just been a year that people are just saying i can't do this anymore and that it has to be okay and so you you just make sure

052that again when you're looking at recruiting you're not hiring the the teachers or the principals but understanding superintendent what's the what's the plan to help diversify um not only ethnicity um content-wise everything to make sure we have the right uh a diverse group of staff teaching our children to be able to do this equity work so that's a way that board members still engaged below that dotted line that i you know i shared with you before so connecting all that is so important so thank you for sharing that anyone else want to jump in monophone you have anything i like love to hear from you i i was just feeling really heavy reading all of that yeah it was heavy because and i even got emotional reading all of that history because it hits me

053that there's still a lot of things that haven't changed and that was really heavy considering all that we've been experiencing these past few weeks more recently and and and this vicious cycle as you spoke to the killings literally to me i consider those a level of lynching in public you know the hate that we're seeing so publicly and then i read the history of education and the level of oppression that was very intentional to weed out who gets educated with quality and who doesn't and i was like we're still experiencing that you know and so when we speak to what a governance team does with addressing not being complacent and funding things that need to be funded i mean everything that was said today we can speak to developing and cultivating an equity statement but

054the reality is is that we have to be able to fund the things that we need to change um absolutely can't just speak to them and put them out there in case the reality is is just like we did ethnic studies how we said we were going to do this and now we're talking to curriculum now we're talking to textbooks we need to like comb through that and be very focused and intentional like we want this to be an inclusive equitable approach you tell us what textbooks or you guide us through this these textbooks should not be in the classroom here that we don't just identify them we raise awareness of the why we remove them in a timely manner and also explain the why that that hat and the importance of why that has

055to happen and that's an education process because we can't just do the action and not guide people through the process because yes we're going to get pushed back we will have opposition no matter what we do there's always someone on the other side but it always has to be because at the very least along the way that's equity equity is teaching someone something they didn't know before didn't know didn't know before and so it was heavy to read that that's why i was hearing comments and i didn't want to comment because it made me a little angry yeah i i and i go through it very often i i have these emotions triggers i get triggers from that absolutely reading a whole bunch of things because i could actually speak from an experience of some

056of those things that either i experienced personally a family member experience or someone i know or even students that i've witnessed pre and during in and out of the district and it just bothered me um and then it made me again challenge myself as a board member like you're challenging us now what can we do and we can do we can do it um but we recognize that we are through that snail process of you know it's just the system that we're in love to see change absolutely absolutely thank you yeah i think you are spot on and and the the power that the board has when you talked about the um the curriculum uh you have all of these vendors who are trying to whine and dying you if you will and tell you

057i have this this is the best book since french fries okay the best thing for you now you're in the you're in a great position to say okay show us where it represents our student body i'm hoping even through this last year that a lot of these um um public publishing companies have gone back to the drawing board if you will to put in because there are two of them um who actually admitted that they knew that they were putting information in there that was not always correct but it was about its economics billions of dollars come through the school system on purchasing a curriculum and then that's what's being taught to our children so it's the brainwashing type of thing and so now we have to peel all of that back but you have

058control over what vendor contracts do they support this equity work so now you will start aligning everything you do how does this support your equity journey you know whatever you purchase who you engage with uh even when when the superintendent um has his staff doing professional development in in equity okay all of a sudden if you guys don't realize it now there and it's not nicole and i though but all of a sudden everyone's an expert in this and so through covert everyone tried to recreate themselves so they are going to be coming to your school system telling you they have the best thing for your teachers and your pr you just have to be leery of that and i'm sure your your superintendent will be watching but the board is just going to make

059sure that there's funding there to support them but make sure whatever professional learning they get that it's aligned with what you're trying to do so there are multiple things happening that's how the board can really pay attention to we don't want to perpetuate inequity so we have to make sure that we are making our decisions through the lens of equity comparing go back and look at some contracts some contracts are probably coming up for renewal some want some things may not need to be renewed you know unless they they have to shift but that's the power of the governance team to be able to to stop the vicious cycle of people coming in selling um you something that going to your students that is not um providing the best educational experience for them all of

060that now since you decided to go on this equity journey we'll come to a complete halt you will start just dissecting everything and that's why it takes time to do this work and it's so important and always remind board teams that you know you're going on this journey we'll talk about a journey but there's no there's no cul-de-sac on this there's nowhere you can do a u-turn you are on this journey sometimes you can slow down which is fine but you gather yourself and you just continue on and that's why you're looking at all of the functions of the school system the board needs to really be dissecting that to make sure that if we're going to do this equity work that we have to make sure that we're just not um continuing to perpetuate

061the inequities that are happening superintendent you have any thought i i kind of see the yeah the wheels going in your head there yes i do um you know that that question of how does the board perpetuate inequities and it just got me thinking i don't know how often that's a conscious decision that the board takes to perpetuate an inequity i think sometimes it's a factor of the system and we have to open up school tomorrow so we can't hold up something today because if we hold up something today we can't open up tomorrow but you know so so much of what of what the board does as you mentioned the proof contracts and that's to keep the operations of the schools going and and uh sometimes we don't we don't ask the questions about

062you know um equity in in these the situations and and to me i feel like the system is designed to have very heavy momentum like normal inertia like it it does not move easily it you know like you mentioned you know it's a tanker it's moving at 100 miles an hour and there's no way you're going to shift that tanker easily or slot or stop it you know if you want to put the brakes on it and so i though the system is designed to perpetuate the system and and you know we talk about dismantling and redesigning and all of those things are possible but uh but but we need to be strategic as to how and when we do it otherwise we end up with nothing and we just did nothing we just crashed

063into the wall and we have nothing and then those folks who are against this movement will come in and rebuild the system yeah after after we've crashed it crash you're right yeah you know and destroyed it you know which it needed to happen but we didn't really do it strategically strategically anyway those are just my thoughts and that's why they have you superintendent um you know you thinking strategically along with the board because the board you can kind of look at this work though as shoring up the foundation you know it's going to take years before you really see the fruits of your labor if you will but the key thing is building that foundation so that if there is a change on the board or in your superintendency that the the foundation is is

064sound enough so that it's just a matter of passing the torch and the work did just continue but what happens often is that more you know districts can just want to hurry up and get say we have an equity policy check that box where we're done and then it it's okay you have equity policy but i don't see any evidence in it i don't even see any evidence when i look at your board agenda that i would think that you are an equity-focused district i don't see any evidence when i see the principals or the teachers have their meetings that they're focusing on equity and that's where the board has to make sure that it's filtered all the way down that equity is the agenda it's not just something that's on the agenda but again

065the the heavy lift is shoring it up and that means you're looking at every nook and cranny every function because there are no um no one gets a pass i put it that way no one gets a pass even either intentionally or not but it needs to be very clear from the board of education on the expectations of moving the district forward um focusing on equity for all of your scholars because we know that we can't you know look in that rearview mirror all the time when you're driving is that keeping your focus on of course on the windshield but that rear view mirror is going to remind you of some casualties that you ran over some bad behavior some bad policies bad practices and so just making sure that every time you're meeting even

066when you have study sessions you want to be focusing on at least this portion of just like i said if you decide on what your priorities are and we kind of went through that last time start connecting that to your policies and then that's when you can start dismantling a lot of this so it is a heavy lift um it's a lot of work but i know you're up to it um i'm keeping track of my timing and i really want to get to that article right talking about another art of something that should have been kind of tugging at you a little bit when you when you read the the the um racial article i'm not gonna do that one let me do this make sure so anytime you have any other comments we'll

067um you can jump in there but i you know just wanted you to always connect these um these these guiding questions and always go back and look at that um you know uh and maria especially if you when you get a chance to look at the the land the um the guideline for um the history of public education and let's see okay let me see if i can do this so this i'm going to give you a chance to just look at this video and then we're going to it's going to kind of prepare us to keep you your mindset on thinking about um really just what educational malpractice is that's exactly what i call it when we don't focus on what's best for our students we're spending a lot of time on what's best

068for adults and so um let me see i want to make sure i could share this and i okay and then we'll have a conversation about this but just think about what we call a cat moment what what's confirming for you when you're you're um uh uh watching this and what other questions would you ask and what provokes you so just kind of think about what we call the cat moment and we'll just take a few minutes and and um watch this video oh i gotta stop sharing right yep there you go there you go all right let's see all right so just a little context too for the video this is um a setting um and some of you i think may or may not have seen this in our equity network but the

069connection um is really centered around um this gentleman kind of calling us out as a school system right and he's kind of representing the people and often say like representing our students and voices who may have not been heard and have a perspective about what's not happening well and then also he gives perspective about what may work well and so he's suing the school system it's kind of the setting and so um i'll go ahead and play it and sit back and relax albert einstein once said everybody's a genius but if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid ladies and gentlemen of the jury today on trial we have modern day schooling glad you could come not only does he

070make fish climb trees but also makes them climb down and do a 10 mile run tell me school are you proud of the things you've done turning millions of people into robots do you find that fun do you realize how many kids relate to that fish swimming upstream in class never finding their gifts thinking they are stupid believing they are useless well the time has come no more excuses i call school to the stand and accuse him of killing creativity individuality and being intellectually abusive he's an ancient institution that has outlived his usage so your honor this concludes my opening statement and if i may present the evidence of my case i will prove it proceed exhibit a here's a modern day phone recognize it here's a phone from 150 years ago big difference right

071stay with me here's a car from today and here's a car from 150 years ago big difference right well get this here's a classroom of today and here's a class we used 150 years ago now ain't that a shame in literally more than a century nothing has changed yet you claim to prepare students for the future but with evidence like that i must ask do you prepare students for the future or the past i did a background check on you and let the record show that you were made to train people to work in factories which explains why you put students in straight roles nice and neat tell them sit still raise your hand if you want to speak give them a short break to eat and for eight hours a day tell them what

072to think oh and make them compete to get an a a letter which determines product quality hence grade a of meat i get it back then times were different we all have a past i myself am no gandhi but today we don't need to make robot zombies the world has progressed and now we need people who think creatively innovatively critically independently with the ability to connect see every scientist will tell you that no two brains are the same and every parent with two or more children will confirm that claim so please explain why you treat students like cookie cutter frames or snapback hats giving them this one-size-fits-all crap what's your landmark sorry your honor but if a doctor prescribed the exact same medicine to all of his patients the results would be tragic so many

073people would get sick yet when it comes to school this is exactly what happens this educational malpractice where one teacher stands in front of 20 kids each one having different strengths different needs different gifts different dreams and you teach the same thing the same way that's horrific ladies and gentlemen the defendant should not be acquitted this may be one of the worst criminal offenses ever to be committed and let's mention the way you treat your employees objection overruled i want to hear this it's a shame i mean teachers have the most important job on the planet yet they're underpaid no wonder so many students are short changed let's be honest teachers should earn just as much as doctors because a doctor can do heart surgery and save the life of a kid but a great

074teacher can reach the heart of that kid and allow him to truly live see teachers are heroes that often get blamed but they're not the problem they work in a system without many options or rights curriculums are created by policymakers most of which have never taught a day in their life just obsessed with standardized tests they think bubbling in a multiple choice question will determine success that's outlandish in fact these tests are too crude to be used and should be abandoned but don't take my word for it take frederick j kelly the man who invented standardized testing who said and i quote these tests are too crude to be used and should be abandoned ladies and gentlemen of the jury if we continue down this road the results will be lethal i don't have much

075faith in school but i do have faith in people and if we can customize healthcare cars and facebook pages then it is our duty to do the same for education to upgrade and change it do away with school spirit cause that's useless unless we're working to bring the spirit out of each and every student that should be our task no more common core instead let's reach the core of every heart in every class sure math is important but no more than oratory dance let's give every gift an equal chance i know this sounds like a dream but countries like finland are doing impressive things they have shorter school days teachers make a decent wage homework is non-existent and they focus on collaboration instead of competition but here's the kicker boys and girls their educational system

076outperforms every other country in the world other places like singapore are succeeding rapidly schools like montessori programs like khan academy there is no single solution but let's get moving because while students may be 20 of our population they are 100 of our future so let's attend to their dreams and there's no telling what we can achieve this is a world in which i believe a world where fish are no longer forced to climb trees i rest my case [Applause] wow your thoughts about that [Music] that's wonderful i can see you you're leaning into this marie what are you what are your thoughts i agree exactly what they're saying i i think we need a lot of work got to make some changes yes absolutely you see how some of the things he talked about is

077connected well it will when you get into the the historical the timeline of public education exactly what he's talking about um who else would like to share what what what are your reactions what's confirming for you i'll share um i think what's confirming for me uh mostly is that you know things haven't changed um or things have changed so for example common core and math the math that they teach now i can't help my kid with with the math or i'm trying to help her with the math and i'm like why do you have to go it's like i was watching a comedy show and it was basically like oh well this is the new map and it's like well it's kind of like if someone were to come to my house it's like can

078i come through your front door oh no no you got to go through the back door i'm like but do i still get to the same place that i want it to go like yeah but this is the new the new to the same thing and it's like well why did you do that how does that even make sense and and how is that helping i guess it's always my question is like why are we doing things different to get to the same thing but it's not really helping get to a better place and it's constantly happening in our school system and it puts the parents the teachers and the children at a disadvantage because long term we get right back to the same place we were in the first place it's just again this

079whole cycle of you know we're doing the same thing over and over with no results and people are like well it's fine we've been doing this for years and i that's basically the issue so that's the problem exactly and and and i think the veil has been revealed on this we we can't do that and and and of course we know now when when the school buildings were closed and um parents had to become teachers that's where their frustrations were you know my my son would call me and like mom i i can't help him i mean he has a sixth grader like i've never seen this in my life you know and he's only 30 something and he's still so far removed and so just think about that the challenges that the parents had

080just through this covet uh time of trying to educate their kids and now you know and feel that a loss too you know and and so and that that is so unfortunate absolutely who else would like to share your thoughts about the video what are you thinking clayton there you go see we're right on we're on the same wavelength there like everything he said in the video is true i mean if you think about it like um 150 years later i think even just after their way of life has changed quite a bit so like you can teach the same way but you're not actually adapting to sort of what's actually changing around us so even that sense alone there's so much that could be done differently um i wish i could say that our

081ford ourselves can change that whole system in a matter of a couple of months of this discussion um but i think uh it's a good start i mean um ultimately in hopefully 950 years we'll get something different out of it so um yeah yeah and and again that's that lens that the board will be looking at things in a way that you ask your superintendent again not telling them how to do it but have you are there different ways of doing this if if we're trying to not just continue to do what we've always done and i'm sure that that's where his mind is you're trying to engage his staff to so that they're not so frustrated and feeling personally attracted i have been a teacher for 30 years now you're saying i don't know

082how to do it well no what i'm saying is you know we have to focus on equity and we know that the data shows us that we are not educating all of our children so one thing we do have in common is that we want to educate all children so what's the best way to go about doing this and so all of this is going to be happening when you decided to to focus on this equity work which everyone should be and it's not saying that no equity work is taking place in your in your district at all we are now it's now just going to be very not going to be named it's going to be very clear and it's going to be intentional and connecting the dots that's what's that's what's happening now

083so you again that's when you will have individuals who are ready to do this because like i've been doing this yes i am ready i'm glad now we're naming it that it's okay to do it you know and so what are your what are your thoughts other other um trustees what are you thinking about the video maybe as i was playing um my daughter actually walked by and named the video she was like that and i said it just came out and she was like no i watched it he was in a courtroom right i said oh yeah okay so um it's funny the things that kids see on youtube but um my thoughts were you know much like trustee jordan's where it's um we're not we're not teaching critical thinking and to um backtrack

084to the whole common core that's what i think that that's why that was developed so that they have critical thinking skills but by way of math which to me is not the best platform to teach critical thinking um and there are definite um educational uh institutions that are disrupting the way we teach like i know um elon musk has a school in la that's very centered around critical thinking oracle has their own school here in redwood city called design tech they don't even have a bell schedule and they don't have teachers it's pretty autonomous and that works for some students but not all so not all can go to a tech school like that because some do actually need the hand holding and this is when the assignment is due and those kids make up

085their own assignments um which is interesting and i think it we can take some things from that but um it doesn't work for everyone and it's not accessible for everyone to be at a school like that but there are there are other institutions and there are ways to disrupt our current in educational system yeah and as we know education just in 2019 it will never be the same you know and we shouldn't expect when school we're toward the end of the school year just saying so in august september when school opens up for the next school year are you going to be prepared to offer different tier type of learning because what if there are students who were not doing as well face to face but you know what remotely they are soaring so are

086you going to take that opportunity from them because we need all kids in schools so that's the conversation a lot of boards are having because if we're truly going to adjust and give children what they need it would seem like it's a punishment for children who just don't operate well in the classroom setting so are you going to offer once a week everyone's remote or whatever i don't know if the state is going to control that or if they're going to allow the districts to be as creative but you have to start thinking about what other type of learning environment are we going to give all of our students because they're they're not cookie cutter we we can't give them it's not a one-size-fits-all and so that's going to impact your equity work because you

087have to make those decisions allow parents of course to make the option but they know what's best for their child and we have to get away from thinking that the teachers or the adults on this side know what's best for each other parents know what's best for their children and we have to allow them to tell us that too so but just and i don't know the superintendent is doing this where he's like deborah why did you even bring that up i don't want to think about any other tier but that's something that may be going through his mind because it is a conversation that's happening all over the country i have to just tell you that so anyone else want to chime in uh about the video manifold do you have any comments about

088the the the video at all what are your thoughts i i agree with everything that's already been said i i loved i loved the video um i've seen different forms of the video um you know my youngest daughter had just something i forget the name of it but it's it started with uh being a disrupter and i was wondering what that was but it was actually a bunch of students um in new zealand and that's what caught her attention and the reason why i share that is because um the finland model was something that a charter school in utah had copied um or at least right to embrace when they designed the school about 10 years ago and they just been really successful um and it is a it's a pacific islander model i mean

089it's funny too because dr jeff andrade in the east bay went out to new zealand and he speaks about this model um continuously and talks about how he has mimicked that model and what it is is bringing community into the classroom you know um and it's not just ethnic culture it's community culture and how that impacts you know um the the energy of the school and the level of ownership you know so i know that our board particularly many many community school districts in our in our area have not at least public schools have not been able to get to that point we dream of it watching this video we know what we want to do but on the other end i think it's important to recognize how we're speaking to our families and educating

090them in being that kind of disrupter in really asking you know our school districts our governing board and it's weird to say that when we're the ones that are going to be held to that level of accountability but the reality is that i know i teach my kids so that you won that classroom and you know and i've got one kid who most of you know is just a little bit too vocal my son reno i'm like you have to just you know step back a little bit but the reality is is that he's very vocal so i kind of messed up when i actually influenced him to do that but the reality is is that we also have to teach our families how to use their voice through their students and their students who

091use their voice absolutely the educational system accountable when they walk into that classroom they need to be able to say this is not what i thought i was going to learn or this is not what i think i should be learning and question it and we need to be okay with that yes this is the level of accountability we need to be okay with that we can't say oh my god that's a difficult parent or difficult student and and and take a punitive lens we really have to say question the why if we have even one student that comes in and says this is not what i thought i was getting and we need to visit that so that's that's my take away absolutely absolutely good because again lining the kids up as if they're

092in a factory we're so used to just opening there's this video too where it kind of opens up your head and it is just pouring the knowledge that's what they expect you just pour it and then they regurgitate they're not no critical thinking no analytical thinking none of that and so we have to make sure that we disrupt that because there are classrooms that that could could be in your district could be happening here just go read this and then take up 45 minutes and read that we might talk about it for 10 minutes and then the class is over is that acceptable you know again raising the bar and so those are all the areas that i'm sure your superintendent um probably already knows some areas that yup you have to pay attention to

093this um right superintendent i want to put words in your mouth yes he's like yes yes that's exactly how it is so i know i want to make sure we're going to take a break in a little bit but i want to um really give you a chance to talk about um the article on avoiding uh racial equity detours did you did you get a chance to read that article yes superintendent did yes anyone else i see the smiles that's not telling me yes yes yes i've read it all myself okay well and if you haven't that's okay because we can still have some dialogue you have access to him um and and marie says you weren't a part of the first one i would love to hear your what did you glean from that

094article you know it's really focusing on um how schools are operating when you're trying to focus on just racial equity you know how is staff being engaged are you supporting people who don't really want to do this and you have disruptors and then you know it gets into what are you know putting what kind of programs do you have in place that really um is not helping students is perpetuating inequities you know like the diversity day you know i had a conversation with addition to start thinking about do we have something like that where we have a day that we're trying to engage students to learn more about so we tell in this case tell the black students to go sit with the white kids or whatever so think about that do you have anything

095uh what what kind of what did you glean from it marie what did you pick up from the article that you would like to share of what we have done you mean or anything in the article i mean there was so much uh you know just talking about all the the detours and you may say ah that's a detour in this district yeah well i think we have done some things to bring the um different groups together and one that we had a few years ago that i really enjoyed where everybody had to do a study about a particular country and and do everything bring to us everything that they learned about it and that was really um amazing for me in fact i think part of it won an award in the county but

096anyway um children be able to discuss with each other what their background is and what their beliefs are and what they've done and what they haven't done and let everybody realize that we're a melting pot we have many cultures together and we need to respect and enhance and come to a complete circle that we if somebody has something they believe in that we respect that i think the first word is respect respect accept that people are different from each other and try to understand why they believe something why they eat something why they wear some particular kind of clothes i mean i can remember a time when somebody didn't like to see a man wearing the his head covered and he looked like a muslim oh he must be bad why is he walking down

097the street it's okay to wear what which which your culture is and it's everybody can't judge you by what you're how you're dressed or you know racial is the same thing if you see a black man you don't think right away he's going to do something wrong i mean every culture has something believe me everybody has some struggles in the country they come from but when we all come to america we're american we're american we can keep what our background is but we need to embrace everybody else i i just think that's the foundation that i don't know that parents teach their children that teachers probably don't teach the children that and it it gets carried away and in some areas it's worse than others i think i i grew up at a school that

098was very mixed with many different cultures so we never had a problem with at least we didn't growing up thinking anything being racial until you go somewhere else and see what they have people have gone through so we need to teach all that we need to teach that i need to you know engage in the parents and let them know about it to teach their children and everybody together has to put a piece of the puzzle in there to make it work then you will find out that everybody no matter who they are where they come from will succeed absolutely thank you absolutely two things good and it's okay if you didn't have a chance to to read this because we can we will um go into it more um next time but just thinking

099about uh are we driven by uh authentic desire to do this work this is where you're going to have to you're going to find pockets of people like not i guess i'm gonna have to do this you know um because i need this job whatever and so we in order to get that shift in that mental model getting everyone to see how they have a buy-in you have to want to do this work right and so if not you will continue to practice um behaviors on trying to fix those kids if they would just do this we will have a pr we won't have a problem or we don't have any equity issues because everybody's fine but think of that equality because that's easy you're not ruffling anyone's feather give everyone the same piece of

100pie and i would always say you know thinking about a pie cut it in four pieces i divide everyone gets a piece but what if i haven't eaten in three days and you just had a steak and lobster dinner you know should do you really need that piece or should i have it so that's how you have to really start looking at equity and so but if this is so there are some triggers in this article because it's really going deep about race and knowing that you will have some individuals who will totally be against it they don't believe it that is necessary that we treat i treat all people the same i'm colorblind blah blah blah which are words that we should really remove out of our vocabulary you know um but one thing

101i do want to say to you maria i want you to consider okay because language you know our words mean so much so when you're doing this equity work we have always been comfortable saying we're a melting pot right now i want you to kind of just kind of consider saying envision like a cobb salad we know what a cobb salad is right when you have everything so you have the eggs you have the lettuce the bacon the cheese everything is lined up and even if you start mixing it up you know what the eggs are still the eggs the bacon is still the bacon so when you're a melting pot you're almost like assimilating in you're taking away my i don't want to be in a melting pot i don't want you to take

102care of take them i want to be a black woman walking in the room so if i'm a cobb salad i'm still going to be that that cheese regardless if you just something to consider thinking differently on even our language what we're so used to saying not meaning anything negative about it but really if you're saying melting pot you're taking away someone's identity i'm not trying to be a melody i don't know i'm not a part of that so that that's just always a good example because i love salads and i so i use that as an as an example and so this is probably a good time to take a little how much of a break would you like because i want to make sure nicole has ample time to really take you down

103so a couple of rabbit holes we need to take you through um so what do you think ten minutes five minutes what's a good break five clayton says five what do you want five is good that's five seconds okay we'll take five minutes it is see i was gonna say it's ten o'clock here oh it's only eight o'clock here i hang out all night with you guys if i have thank you so we'll take a five minute five minute break right okay so just turn your microphones off mute your mics and then your camera if you like to a five minute break are you able to keep up with us marie i know you were you know you didn't do the first session and we're not leaving you behind it seems like you're right on

104you're right there with us thank you i think i am good good everybody's good because i'm getting ready to turn you over to nicole all right thank you guys for allowing me to take you on that journey and um now i'm gonna pass it off to my partner um in in in our work i'm gonna say partner in crime because my partner in my in our work that we do and there you go nicole turning it over to you all right well it might be considered a crime to some what we're doing so we got to keep that in context but um i will say i really appreciate hanging out with you tonight tonight and just listening to some of the dialogue um around what um what the history kind of means to you um

105you know i just want to acknowledge um manifold where you mentioned um you know watching that timeline you know and just kind of the i heard you say like my personal experience right is what i heard like you can see like your own experience in that timeline and that's pretty powerful um and and the timeline represents like historical facts right those are not our opinions right those are things that show up as history in our at least education system in the united states and i um i want to call that out for a minute because as you're kind of going into you know the the context of equity and kind of our you know understanding of history but what does this sit in our governance space and um specifically based on the fact that they're

106going to be a lot of i think deborah said push back to this work um and so sometimes just addressing the pushback as a governance team is to share the facts share the data and then allow people to come to their own conclusion about what it means to them you know we don't have to force this down anyone's you know throw it around here's what we believe and that's you know i think i heard you say like we want to be a community of learners right together on this equity journey and i really appreciate that but that history timeline is hard to argue and some of it is it's law right like there's experiences there but most of those are attached to law and policy and um when you connect to your own experiences and

107i think andre you did that when you talked about um the um the formula of 10 right and and then looking at california's history about how we excluded children and fast forwarding to what sometimes seems remnant of what we see now right is maybe it's not explicitly saying that we're excluding you based on these vicious filthy habits but it definitely shows up in the actions of adults around who is allowed to be served in certain ways in schools versus who's not and that's i think more dangerous than ever and why i think i often hear people say out loud as we speak that racism and different forms of oppression don't exist and literally that is something that our leaders are combating as we speak because you're engaging in this work as a team so the

108deeper you go the more you may interrupt right some thinking that some may not have in alignment with you and in your truth as deborah talked about the four agreements their truth may be different so as you think about like the work we're doing tonight a lot of this is to get you um you know kind of building your equity muscles to also combat some of the resistance because ultimate end of the day you have to stand for something right and even though this is very complex work and all of us you know we come together you know five board members and superintendents you come together as this team right versus just individuals and what happens is you have to have a collective common organizational vision common language around what equity means in jefferson and

109that's the work i want to transition into now is to make sure that as we do this work you have common language so that you can educate the community that you can help people lean in to this work and that no there's not one way to do equity work right i think that's where people get stuck is they hate your equity so then they hear race and it's like ah equity and race are not necessarily the same things right equity is really around like this big picture like deborah said it's giving kids what they need now what's in that umbrella is a lot to write and it's not just based on race it's not just based on one way of doing things and so what i want to share with you tonight is a little

110context about equity um and have you all walked through continuously developing your equity statement so that as you think about when we revisit your equity policy that you adopted we can make we can massage it into language that we can own and it really align with your governance work okay and so what i'm going to do is i'm going to share a couple of um things to think about and here's one that's i think really critical um to the work and i'm i'm not on the right slide there we go uh-oh so i'm gonna pause just for a second kick me out because it thinks i'm gonna say something profound i think so let me let me let it it's it's give me a second it's probably because i shared my screen and you don't

111like what i was going to share it's a safe space so it's not a problem for us okay i told you it kicked me out but let me back in all right here we go all right so what you see here on the screen um is just a little bit of um context for why it's so important to develop an equity statement and so one is as i mentioned it's a way for you to clearly communicate and create common language right that is um clear to everyone in the school district but specifically around how you develop and lends for how you do the work in the school district so equity again is not just one thing it's not the education side of the house right it's not just um preschool it's not just one part

112of your district it is the lens by which we do everything and that's very important we talk about taking this to a space of communicating to like our teachers for example right who will find like equity work to be very hard because a lot of this is going to land in the classroom on their shoulders and we have to make sure people understand that equity work is not necessarily another check the box a thing to do it is a lens by which we do everything so how our kids go to the play yard right and how we supervise them and how we look at what books we're going to bring into our classrooms how we look at um what food we feed them right all those things are going to come up right it's not

113just academics it's not just one version of how we do this work it's about everything we do and it's a lens um it is a component of your equity policy so bless you thank you and uh things right this really falls into your policy um it should be student-centered i think we all would agree right when we do equity work it's important people know that this is not about adults although equity applies to all stakeholders i want to be very clear right if we don't have healthy adults it's hard to have healthy students um uh doctor speaking of dr jeff duncan andrade one of the things he would talk about is when people would ask for support from a consultant standpoint they'd want you know him and his team to come in and look at

114like we need to address the student culture we got a lot of suspensions and the schools are you know out of control and we need you to come and help us and one of the things he would say is well when i come and deal with student climate and student culture i'm not going to come and look at the students students are fine usually it's because the adult culture is not healthy and so again it has to be student-centered because this is about outcomes for our kids right and of course adults matter every stakeholder parents everyone matters but this is really centered around kids and all kids right we have any groups of kids who are not getting what they need that's where we know that we have work to do um it explicitly calls

115out the inequities in the data so one thing about your equity statement as we develop it today i want you to think about like where in the data are we seeing those equity gaps and we have to call it out in our statement right so where do we see that if we see um in our data we see students with special needs right are we seeing this this constant um perpetuation of a gap that's happened over the years so we need to call that out right so yes equity work is about making sure all kids have what they need but the work is also about closing gaps for the kids who need it the most so you got to call it out um it's measurable it's a big deal it's measurable and it's associated with

116data so for governance teams is really important because deborah mentioned earlier when you talk to your superintendent but also your staff right the staff that presents to you um absolutely you have to be able to ask questions that show up in the form of data right there it has to be evidence so when we talk about having an equity statement can i measure that it's happening right and that's going to be very very important it can't be some arbitrary thing that you can't measure us you'll never be able to see that you've accomplished that goal so your equity statement needs to be something you can measure like you can see it happen um it should normally align with your mission and vision so one of the things that we often get excited about is when

117um governance teams work on an equity statement you almost simultaneously are working on your vision and your mission statement for many folks who are revising it your equity statement work actually ties right into your vision and mission statement so when we say equity in jefferson is this you're really almost calling out your mission and your vision right what do we want to see where do we want to go our vision and then our mission is kind of how we're going to get there right and so that ultimately usually shows up and should align with your mission and vision statements and again for some districts as they're revising those sometimes the equity statement becomes the mission and the vision which is not a bad idea um and then lastly of course it includes your stakeholder voices

118so tonight while we're gonna work through this process and i'm gonna kind of walk you through um it is important you recognize that tonight a little bit of non-closure has to be accepted because there are multiple people who are not in the room with us tonight um aka our kids right our parents i mean there's a whole community that needs to weigh in on what equity means so that as a governance team you're going to set the vision for what equity is through your statement but you want to do that with feedback so we have a really good sense of that equity is about giving kids what they need in jefferson right because one thing that people do is they'll adopt us a statement that's kind of general but it doesn't really speak to the

119needs of the actual district because your kids have their own unique needs the district next door has its own unique needs so you want to make sure you have a collective common vision around what equity is and it requires people to be a part of that process um i do want to say this though we don't want to take forever though to create our equity statement and adopt it because sometimes what happens is we feel like we need more input we need more input we need more and more and more so we never adopted right we just spent a lot of time waiting for input and that's important but there's a point you are going to adopt it and then add that to your policy and it is what it is this is our statement

120our vision as a board and yes we always want to get feedback and always include the community but this is our vision and our statement that we have for our school district because that's your roles you are the policy makers you're the visionaries okay um there were some samples that were shared um where did those uh show up in your package your um your uh sample equity statements did those come in through okay okay they did not okay and i usually share them in a separate google folder so if it didn't show up in there it's okay what i'll do is um i'll share it in our next session for you all to go back to but what i want to do is um i don't want to give you let me see if i

121can yeah if it didn't show up in the packet i'm not i won't go through sharing the screen yeah we just had the sample equity policy yeah you have that one okay okay but the statements didn't show up okay no worries there's like four of them that i've shared with folks and so i'll just share with you for your next session but one of the reasons why i bring it up is as you're doing this work i want you to also be mindful of what people's equity statements have been like in other districts and also just the context of what people are calling out okay and so i may share my screen in a moment but what i want to do is is kind of go back to what you all said equity meant to

122you um so i'm going to pause for a second do y'all remember on april 1st um we talked about equity um and i asked you all to share one word that described equity to you remember that and you all not only shared your word and then you did the elevator speech you remember that a 30-second elevator speech okay you still remember it this is a quiz now watch this i remember that it happened i don't remember what i said right now what i said oh it's all good so i here's what i did because i knew you all would have slept by then um since then right so i actually was taking notes and hearing you that day and what i did is i wrote down words that i heard i heard words like access

123impartial level playing remember some of us were like i can use the hyphenated version um systems um access achieved um and so yes my phone you're remembering yep your word was access and uh and so marie i know you were not there so i would love to hear your perspective about if you could choose one word that describes equity to you in education what would that word be first i'll give you a couple moments to think about it but what would be that one word you could sum it up in one how would you describe equity in education um availability does that be availability yeah okay okay i like it available now tell me more about availability and and here here's what they had to do i'll let you cheat for a little while but

124they only have 30 seconds to tell their definition okay of why they chose their word but tell us a little bit about what availability why that came up for you as far as equity well i think if we give everybody the tools they need the information they need then they'll know how to apply that that's what i was okay what i was trying to say does that make sense or do i have to look deeper well when you mention available what came to mind when you saw it giving making sure the resources are available as well i think i hear you saying yeah guys okay i love it got it okay all right does anyone else want to share a little bit about what they recall and that discussion um around the definition of equity

125for you or anything you want to add to what we may have talked about before i share i'm going to share back to you kind of a mirror about um of your definition because i put it all together and made just kind of a definition for you that we're going to wordsmith and tear up in a moment but anyway not want to share or add to our conversation about what you recall about equity what it means okay all right before i share why is it important that you have a common definition what would you say why is it so important that the team as a governance team has a common definition of equity we're on the same page yep definitely being on the same page tell me more keep keep adding in me or somebody

126else anyone yeah i love it yeah i'm sorry it's gonna drive our directives it's gonna drive your directives yeah yep do you have an example of that specific to equity well in terms of the directive piece so if you had like why is it important we have this common language so it drives our directives you have an example of what that might might be uh so like we just recently changed a couple of words in our meeting guidelines that at the very beginning of the meeting and i think that that was really important because there was a change in the overall makeup of the team so um with our new board members so i think it would be important for us to come together to be on the same page as to how we're going

127to conduct our meetings and our our yeah our way of you know our decorum and how we treat each other and was a big thing and um so we included that word in our guidelines so yeah that's being on the same page and having the same verbiage and the same idea directs us you know in a very specific lane to be in absolutely absolutely will said great example great example yeah i got it i gotta steal that reminds um several governance teams work with how that was really really a perfect example of your norms right and how you how you're just your culture of how you want to work together and be on the same page that's huge with this work especially with equity work because it is so full of emotions right you're all

128kind of passionate about it and what happens when emotions go into a space right sometimes people get pushed one direction another direction because emotions change right there's remote there's levels of emotions but with being on the same page having common language whatever you do you all have a similar way of seeing how you want to move forward so i love the word direction right and that direction could be in many ways it could be down to something as serious as a major decision you have to make when you need to vote right deborah and i always talk about how we encourage boards to be a 5-0 or to be a 7-0 whatever that that makeup is because ultimately that really speaks volumes about after the vote what happens in that work right behind that vote

129and understand that you all have like your own right to vote for what you feel is your perspective which is what the beauty of a board is there's diversity but we often talk about being on the same page because equity work is not lightweight work right it's not a small decision you make it typically is a big deal and so bernie jump in please yeah i was just going to add that equity is a small simple word but a very complex concept and so we could distill it down into a simple definition right that we can agree to then when i say equity i know that you understand what i mean yeah you know and i'm not saying equity and you're you think i'm saying equality and someone else thinks i'm saying access and somebody

130else believes i'm saying opportunity you know that if we've come to our definition or the way that we want to understand that word when we speak it and use it then we know what we're talking about because it is a very i mean we're spending at least four sessions on this that's right and we're gonna end and we're still gonna be newcomers to to this work right right we're not going to be experts so and it's all right yeah so absolutely no well said and it is complex and so you know i think it's a great segue into what um i took your complex conversations your 30 second elevator speeches and so what i did is put them together um and i tried to create a um hopefully simple definition but this is our opportunity

131to um kind of tear it up and come together and look at how we want to define equity in jefferson okay and starting with our team so what you see on the screen let me make it a little bit bigger and i'm gonna wordsmith as you um you know as you so choose um for me to do and as you look at this definition what i did is i took your words and i tried to create actually some language um and so i kind of put at that first top paragraph you know what equity means and then i actually added some bullet points on like what it might look like right and so this is just a rough rough rough draft and so i want you to take a look think about what's resonating with

132you the words in bold are actually words that came from you in listening to your 30-second elevator speeches grammatically it's not perfect on purpose because we're gonna wordsmith and massage in a moment but i just want you to take a look see what's resonating with you and we're going to kind of take a stab at crafting massaging this iron all right so as you're as you're processing what i'm going to do is just kind of open it up for the group to share what's resonating with you what questions you have maybe some edits what would make more sense so this is your opportunity to just tear this up and um we're not going to go deep into the weeds but this is opportunity to look at wordsmithing it is an opportunity to look at how

133would we make this make sense for us so it's just a rough draft a starting point now let's start to massage it so anyone jump in and mute yourself and let's let's let's take some time to unpack it what's resonating with you i'll start there it's resonating with you clayton why don't you jump in what's what's resonating with you right now sure i was so i was trying to remember what we talked about during the last meeting so i'm trying to refer well some discussion i will say one of the things that i think is um important to me at the very end of the first sentence talk about uh doing all those things as a need to in order for them to reach their full potential yeah i think that's important just to highly

134make sure that that's always on the clear focus especially understanding access of fair and quality resources which students probably get but probably not every student um gets a bet the full gets the best they can to reach their full potential so got it so you feel like that's resonating with you and very much needed to be called out got it got it powerful okay anyone else want to add to what clayton shared or another perspective on what's resonating with you i i agree with clayton um trusty the top uh paragraph there resonates with me and so does the first bullet point the the two the second and third bullet point i i like them but i don't know they're just i'm just trying to think of different language but the message i agree with the

135message yeah um but the first half of it like i said the paragraph and the first bullet point um yeah but i'm just trying to this um other words absolutely than that i i think i actually like it all right i just um i just know that um my personal preference would be to find yeah absolutely i agree yeah i literally is rough and i took exactly the words i heard from y'all and tried to kind of create some grammatical sense to it so it's definitely needs some massaging but i'm glad the concepts like we're capturing the concepts that you feel are important um so it's good to know good to know i would um just propose that maybe we consider a different word than fair yeah just because fair so often conflated or means

136the same as equal which isn't always equitable so we often say you know yes you're right it's not fair but it is what is needed it's equity right so i i think if we could think of another word sure so it doesn't get mixed up with that whole concept so i'm going to share where i think clayton i think i got this from your description and you mentioned more like a fair shot like they give the fair shot and kind of like opportunity is something that kind of came to mind as well do you remember that one yeah i remember because i think i remember my phrase was the uh the hyphen one it was the level playing field it was yep yep i do remember saying something similar but i do agree kind of

137like maybe fear is a very i mean it depends on how you define the word fair yes clear to like me and you are could be totally different right right that that might open like as says probably open to too much interpretation how how does this look how does that look now opportunity is a little bit more because you you use the word fair shot is what i recall and so like having a fair shot means i have an opportunity is what i was thinking and now it's not so so how does that access an opportunity i often use um in in similar spaces so how does that look could i make a suggestion sure go ahead um i was going to say appropriate and huh so it goes along the line that it's tailored

138to their needs so tell me tell me uh where do you see that fitting in is it in the bullet points or in the first paragraph still so um back to uh fair and quality so it would be appropriate resources okay so let me see something that doesn't really make sense okay so that's if i took this piece out right is that what i hear you saying yeah it's just a suggestion but just to answer it to the word fair oh god it got it okay okay all right we're just massaging it no right or wrong answer just massaging it and then um one other thing sorry to on top of it's so much more easier when it's already laid out in front of you to kind of critique it and yeah and that's why

139i did it i just took your words and put it right to you all and try to make it grammatical sense but it needs to make sense to y'all and that's why we're doing this so yeah um there's a lot to massage in this of course and so you're just kind of starting the process so it's all good okay great great i just didn't want to seem like i was nitpicking at what you did because it's amazing this is it this is a nitpicking process so it's it it's totally i'm here totally to support you all going through this because you don't always get an opportunity to do this so this is what the work's about so yeah absolutely so um just fleshing out the last part of the sentence and you know i'm not

140saying anything grammatically correct right now so based on their needs in order to reach their full potential but we're saying that this is here so that they can but i kind of wanted to flush out that this is here because it's important in order for them to do so so it's not just there we're laying it out and then you know pick it up if you want to but this is an actually a very important piece that needs to be implemented in order for them so something to the effect of like based on their needs as it is an important part of ensuring learning success so based on their needs in order to reach their full potential and as an important or a key factor in them being successful students or having ensuring learning success

141i don't know maybe that's true yeah you know what i think no i hear you i know what you're saying and i'm wondering do you find that that may fit into describing what the work includes yeah it could go down you know because i hear what you're saying like it's like up here it's kind of like we're staying we're committed to insuring right and and these are the things you called out but then like you're going into like you know the importance of it and so i feel like it fits somewhere maybe and might be missing in one of these bullet points um if you want to add a bullet point great most people don't go past three or four bullet points but maybe it's in that space do you think or do you feel

142like you you want to add it to that first paragraph i don't know maybe i'm being redundant i just wanted to make it you know like very direct and and want that this is happening because it's a key factor it's a key factor yeah yep okay i don't know someone have a thought on how to i get it and i'm just let me look at it from a distance and see do you um mabel do you see a place to add learning success and maybe the third bullet i mean the way that i heard it i heard you wanted to focus on learning success maybe you maybe in your mind you were focusing on something else but what i heard was the learning success was important yes i'm wondering if maybe that third bullet can

143incorporate learning success since it is in that general area [Music] i'm going to do this um i'm going to put it here so the words are here and um you mentioned is important or even critical for so i'm going to put it here it was critical or important for learning success i'm going to put it here just so we have the wording and then we'll figure out where to place it because i i get what you're saying too does that sound okay yes absolutely and we'll see where we can place it because i think as you all keep massaging this you're going to find that that's going to fit somewhere it makes a lot of sense all right keep going keep going you're all on the roll you're on a roll you know i had

144um a comment about number three the uh the resetting the levels of growth i think yeah yeah i was gonna ask um is there a chance a better way i don't know if anybody asked us a better way of saying that yes yes that was yours yeah that was yours clayton so i was going to ask you i loved it though yeah i don't know i feel like i'm reading now look i think that phrase like a little bit too difficult for someone to understand what about this because i often use this word because i i think what you i kind of hear you saying like how we define student success and you mentioned like there's different levels of growth right and i feel like levels of success like in how kids kind of um

145grow and i think um you use the word pace too so that's why i put those together um so yeah grammatically it may not make sense the way i put them together but i think your your concept is brilliant um so reimagining student success and i'm going to go like this for a minute um and somehow through um it's almost like recognizing or it's something um around incorporating or recognizing maybe uh-huh including recognizing including or incorporating taking into account accounting for okay facilitating so that may be over here that might be the word we were missing um there's a word here um i think this is what was missing and here's here's where i was thinking about this one you all remember i gave you this sample of the national equity project um definition and

146this was the one i was kind of missing on this fourth bullet where to fit this in and this might be it is that there's the work includes facilitating um i was trying to think of what that would be because there's a lot of things you can do to facilitate learning success and so i was that might be one way to fit that in just an idea just to see if it makes sense to that critical um um that piece about what's critical for learning success and that full potential piece and so that's i don't know maybe that actually helped a little bit with that i'm gonna get deborah nicole's name out of here he's taking up space there we go oh that's not what i'm gonna do that's not what i meant to do

147i meant to do this yeah but did that help a little bit about mabel do you feel like that was did that connect the dot maybe or no it for me it does but i don't want to you know okay it's a communal effort so oh yeah absolutely yeah i feel like when i put this together i was missing a bullet point and so i think you helped helped kind of fill in some of that so we still we're still working on it though so keep going you all keep going and and if this helps one way when you develop your statement i'm going to go back to this piece remember this bullet point here about is it measurable and associated with data so as you're going through developing your statement can you measure this

148can you measure this so that's something i have a question about first bullet um intentionally interrupting failed systems that harm it that harm marginalized student groups i get that but do we harm the marginalized student groups through and partial policies and practices that's how sometimes when i read it oh yeah uh yeah i see what you mean so it was more about intentionally interrupting yeah through impartial policy yeah so that we we can we can massage it it was like i was trying to pull those two words together yeah yeah yeah can you say they're intentionally interrupting felt systems that have harmed marginalized student groups by incorporating implementing impartial adopting yeah maybe i adopted i think that then negates the negative negative again right how about that because adopting is one right so you all

149are policy folks and then you got implementation right which is doing the work right how does that look maybe too wordy is it too worthy and again i think um it was um so andrea mentioned impartial right so it's not just focus on one particular thing um being very impartial and then i think um mabel you mentioned the systems piece i think i got that piece in that you mentioned people don't fail systems do that was really powerful and stuck out to me so that's where those two words came from that were in bold in that first bullet point andre do you remember that piece when you talked about in partial do you feel like i captured that or is that maybe um out of context on the way that i placed it in there

150no i actually uh like the way that's uh placed there yes okay okay okay i know it's like a draft equity statement so i was wondering like i know this is like facilitating equitable practices do you normally use like i wasn't sure if it was okay to use that in there or do you need to find another way to say that you could yeah it's your statement um i've seen lots of different ways and so the word equitable practices came up to me just because without you so here's the hard part where you're trying to create this statement but without going deep into the weeds of what those practices are i was trying to stay very general um and so that's where i kind of thought that word might fit in um but it doesn't

151have to like that's just kind of my thinking to kind of connect that piece because all of these are like the bullet points or the action piece right like what you're doing what it looks like in action and um and of course you can go even deeper right and look at these and go okay we can really call out what this looks like um but we the equity statement is not designed to go into the weeds because that's where your kind of policy um state your policy um kind of ar show up right your board policy piece so we don't want to go too far in the weeds so it's really more about big picture but tell me what you're thinking clayton you feel like it's a um another word that comes to mind in

152terms of facilitating or i think someone said facilitate and that's where that word jumped in and i think i was thinking of facilitating what right so what might that be yeah uh i don't know i need i'm gonna get this one i hear you yeah i hear you what are y'all thinking what do you think so when i see bullet number two and number three i'm feeling like they may be somewhat similar so fostering a level playing field and reimagining student success um you know when it says focusing on what students do best if they already have unique gifts talents and interests isn't that what they do that they're doing what they do best by uh i guess saying that they have these are we're acknowledging or recognizing that they have these unique gifts talents

153and interests so i'm not sure if everyone agrees with that or if they're like it should be two different points or if we could merge the two somehow right trying to think through that yeah yeah they have some similarities i agree yeah what do y'all think will it point two and three have some similarities and i think um level playing field i think clayton that was your piece that we pulled from and then focusing on what kids do best um i think was maybelle um i think i um yeah i think i pulled that from your um comments about what kids do best and so maybe that is similar to unique gifts talents and interests so it would be something where we literally kind of take this one out and or incorporate it into this

154third bullet or does this fall into level playing field is um equitable practices i sort of like the third one mm-hmm i think the the first bullet point is kind of negative which i don't like if i'm gonna make something for the future i want it to be what we're going to do rather than i i somehow i don't like that first sentence but i do like the second one is it this word right here marie like the harm the market yeah yeah yeah i think that's just i i don't want to say it like that i want to i want to put i want to put in that our equity work is what we're doing and not to say what we failed rather than saying adopting this from here forth right does that make

155sense absolutely yeah i think the systems piece um was um that was i think maybe you called out the failed systems um and so one of the things i want to call out for this piece and marie you write like it doesn't necessarily sound like is positive as other ones right but right what i wanted to share with you is back to this slide here where we talked about calling it out like how do you explicitly call out the inequities and so this was that bullet point that kind of gets you to hint that there are groups of kids that you specifically are doing this work for and without apology right so how do you how do you call that out right and so maybe there's some other way you want to do that but

156some people use marginalized um some will use even say historically marginalized um but it's calling out the inequities what it is so how do you word that you know so it sounds um like you said the work we're doing now but it it definitely is about like there are groups of kids now who are part of a historically marginalized group um and that kind of goes back to when you all saw um that definition let me do this real quick so while i'm thinking about it i think i have it pulled up here let me pull it up real quick i'm gonna go back to your other session with the um the definition from the national equity project i think that might be helpful to see some of the wording let me grab that real

157quick you remember they called out removing the predictability of success or failure i know marie didn't you didn't get to see this one so this might this might give you something some ideas but here is the sample definition let me blow this up for you remember that one you see that first bullet maria is kind of calling out like that you know calling out racial cultural social factors so it's really calling out specifics around we have this predictability of success or failure um so it's really being intentional but i here's one thing they did put if you notice ensuring equally high outcomes right so um so they called out in a different way but maybe that gave you some ideas of language there yeah yeah okay i was thinking we were making it just the

158positive way of what we want to do but you're saying you want to say what what the inequities are first okay i think so and here's why is that if you don't call it out then how do you ever measure that you did it and i think that's the hard part because remember equity gaps show up in lots of different ways so i mean it might be in discipline it might be in student achievement um it could be access to your um your advanced courses right like gate and all the different ways that kids are kind of have access which you called out in your definition so it's really calling it out because this work is because what why are we doing this work again because we have inequities right and so i think it's

159hard to it's hard to say that in a pretty way but i get what you mean like you know i i definitely get it and um so i don't know that help i don't know if anyone else has thoughts around that because maurice has a really good point and this is one to really wrestle with i think around um let me make this bigger for you all i know you all are trying to see it from a i'll keep refreshing it for you but that first bullet is what she's referring to and so the word failed system i don't know um um maybelle you had mentioned um systems was your word right so i was trying to pull out that word and i used fail because you kind of called it out that people don't

160fail systems do and that's where that came from do you feel like the word failed is is needed in this space or can we reword this in a way that really calls out these inequities i guess a loaded questionnaire i know it's expecting my critical thinking skills here i know at nine o'clock at night right i mean i know it has a negative connotation but i think what we're doing has a historical context of being negative so it's hard to skeet skirt around that um but as far as using the word failed i know we don't want to put a negative foot forward first um yeah but use another one could use another word i would still like to answer to the fact and and present that you know because i use system because it

161is institutional um going back to talking about how you know the we we we lack the the staff and teachers lack the professional development of um reaching our students culturally and you know the whole curriculum and books that we uh contracted with the vendors that we contract with have his history of leaving certain groups out or not really mentioning them or it's you know native americans are stuck in this one little you know key chart on in a whole entire book of of american history it's it so i i i like i would like to keep systems in there um because it answers to the fact that this is an institutionalized thing this is not just one individual or some you know hater over here or whatever this is something that is very broad and

162reaches everybody um and and and not only is it very broad it's also a core thing so um what we're trying to do is not you know change one person's mind we're trying to change an entire system so i would like to keep that word in there but you know saying the word failed or we could definitely use something else yeah how does this look because what you just said was really helpful so structure systems is like like you said there's a lot that happens within systems and you all are calling out systems are like the policies right it's the practices and the people are within that system and then structures is a word that others have used too and have used them both um which really speaks about not only policies and practices but

163um almost like constructs right and i can use that word as well um that are literally like boxes like help things that are deeply held beliefs right in structures that are in place that have not changed right and i think that's another word you can call out that's not so explicit around like the failed system because i will say this we're public school educators we champion public education right so to say failed system right i kind of agree with marie like oh maybe that's that's too a little bit too much because it's like then why are we doing this right so um so how does that look if i put in systems and structures or just leave it as systems interrupting systems i like adding the structure because it isn't it's because it's i think

164of it in terms of a technology and process it's like systems is the technology structure is the process and together if you don't have a good process but you have a good system then it's not going to go together so i i like both yes got it okay good good i'm glad we captured that maureen does that feel a little better yes it does feel a little better good it does feel better okay all right you are you all good about calling out the um marginalized student groups because one of the things we don't have here and i'm i've always you know felt like this is okay is you haven't called out any specific groups in the data except marginalized which i think is fine because it leaves you open to talking about any inequities

165that occur not just one group like some groups like to call out you know their students based on ethnicity or based on economics right and they kind of go through like those demographic bullet points but sometimes it's like when you say marginalized there's a whole lot that goes into that right because i could be there's intersectionality as we call it right where there's more than one way to be oppressed um and so while one kid may fall in a category of not historically being marginalized based on ethnicity but then they identify with another part of their or um kind of identity that is marginalized now like how do you like determine like do i support this is this so it's really kind of calling out all groups when you say marginalized does that make sense

166yeah so are you all okay with that because it's calling it out and it's being explicit but it's not going deep into the weeds so you don't put yourself in a box and say that our equity statement only applies to certain kids right but but in your calling out like based on marginalized you can pull up data associated with that that's the great piece about it but it kind of stays general does that sound okay you feel comfortable with that okay cool i'm wondering if the members of the board want to include anything around we discussed earlier the mental mindsets um belief systems challenging those and implicit or explicit biases yep um that sort of undergird a lot of the inequitable practices that we might be that and you know um fulfill it good one

167so i don't know where where that would fit um and we wanted to put it in there um but i sort of feel like that that that popped out to me when you showed us the national equity project one where they're talking it did the what are the examining examining uh bias and um let me go back to it there it is so exam so they call out basically um interrupting and equitable practices which you all kind of called out right i think that's where that word came from and then examining biases so you're actually calling out that space and so let me go back to yours and see um so what we could do maybe is as kind of massage this last bullet um is um you're calling out facilitating equitable practices and examining

168biases that impact um let me see i'll just try this i don't know maybe that makes sense let me look back well they're sort of different right one of them is and the other one they are yeah yeah and you're right so let me see something because you also called out this so interrupting was up here as well so it's kind of like i don't want it to be redundant if you all will feel it's redundant but they are there you're right it's a positive and it's a negative um can you flip the phrases around examine biases uh-huh that's to help facilitate yeah and the reason i i point that out is because that's where i've engaged on one-on-one conversations with staff members right um you know the individuals might say we all have biases

169we can't be humans without a bias we have to you know we it helps us make decisions and i say you're right we just have to know which of our biases are actually harming others and which of our biases we need to disrupt in ourselves so that we don't harm others so [Music] i think there's it's a grammatical issues examining biases to support the facilitation of equitable pride that are critical to learning success is facilitation spelled wrong i thought it wasn't but you know it is nine o'clock at night so okay i think it's just moving are there two eyes or is there another oh there it is f a c i is what you want oh you got it yeah yeah i think it just was moody for a second i think it was

170delayed yeah so how does that look and and i you know what this bullet is one where you can measure this right because i think remember go back to one of your you kind of litmus tests can you measure your equity statement and you can measure this even though it's hard to measure bias right it's hard to measure um people's mindsets but you can measure this through when you do professional learning for your staff right um following up in multiple ways um and also observations when we talk about equity walks we talk about observing um practices in a classroom you can see there was the impact of professional learning on people's practices right so examining biases typically happen where when you facilitate that process through usually professional learning and then bernie you get a great

171example through those discussions right um and how we kind of have dialogue about about biases so i don't know you like that that last bullet point i think bernie had a really good one to add to this it's coming along you see how like you all made it look so much better than when i showed it to you it was it was it was bare it needed some some some meat to it but it was it's getting there you're doing great so anything else you're thinking about remember this is not designed for you to finish tonight so you know i want you to be really cognizant of we're in the beginning phases um in our next study session we'll come back to this massage a little bit more and remember we want to take our

172statement and place this in our policy because you're putting your statement in support of that lens for how you're going to govern so as you look at this and you think about our statement can i apply this as a lens to every decision we make and can i can i line my questions right to my my our staff and to our superintendent when we want to really as a governance team um ask the questions to let us know is this happening you know how is it happening and when we say when we use the word equity this is the lens we're referring to so i want you to look at that i'm going to give you another tool before we close out to help you really see how powerful your statement is but i want

173you to just have one last glance at this and again we'll come back to it i'll send this to you by the way bernie so you can share it with folks and have it um as a you know a document people can look at and you all can fiddle with it between now and the next session but um how do you feel about leaving this for now as a rough draft and and be able to come back to it and honestly have discussion with some of your constituents with colleagues just kind of throwing it out there here's our star here's our conversation as a governance team here's where we started and then we're going to continue this and unpack it together how do you feel about about putting a pin in it for now and

174being okay with a little non-closure one question i i would pose would be um in that first sentence we mentioned an available pathway to success do we want to make that plural like each student has available pathways um yeah yeah thank you i mean it could include just one i mean it'd be great if everyone had at least one but sometimes students might have two or three so right yeah yeah i think manifold would have that piece i think you'd add it in about the pathways to success and then maria mentioned availability so i thought that really blended yeah jumping we can just get rid of the and in front of it right basically what i want to do in front of it okay yeah that's better sorry yep got it this is why more

175than one set of eyeballs happens at nine o'clock at night because yeah and even at 11 o'clock at night my eyeball i am excited i am excited about that fourth bullet yes that is because when we talk about the mental model buy-in that is that's a strong statement right there um that's going to the core of the work that's where it's going to be uncomfortable for everyone for staffing but you you're you're spot on right there i really like that bullet point yep yep andre did you have a thought okay so the only question i think before we move past this is i feel like you all didn't wrestle with bullet point number two i think we were just avoiding this one how do we figure this because you're calling it out but i know

176you talked about maybe we're saying bullet number two is kind of like bullet three um and we might be redundant so does anyone have any last thoughts about me where we may want to stick um these words or kind of mesh them into belief i almost see it not just taking it out and leaving the other one underneath uh-huh because it says about what students are doing best yep and then the level playing field is kind of like the pathways the access all right let's try this let's see how that looks i don't like the playing field that's pretty short and sweet huh yeah i think it just encompasses many things yeah got it okay all right so here's what i want to do for you all because you all should be getting nice and

177tired and so i want to give you some closing connections right to to this work and where we're going because i think this is important for you to see where is this going um and so as you look at your draft again the word draft is very critical that means this is not exactly what we say equity is but this is kind of where we're are starting our discussion and we're going to massage this and again we want to go back to can i measure this are we calling out you know what um explicitly we're talking about is it student-centered can we communicate this um and is this something where again we see like openness for feedback from our community members because some of these words have to be meaningful right for people it can't

178just be us right it can't be that we're like here's what equity means and then the kids are like that's not what that means to me right so we don't want to have any disconnects but i think you all are on a great path and i'm agree with deborah i'm really excited about um not only you know your additional to your additional last bullet but just overall i think you captured really the essence of what you feel equity is based on our original discussion right that we had and that was just the beginning of that conversation so one of the things i want to do is i want you to think about this statement as it's the lens by which you govern okay it's the lens by which you govern and remember when we talked

179about effective governance practices and why it's so important that we just have the basic effective practices and i'm going to go back to one of deborah's reminders um of why this is so important and you all i mentioned this earlier about why it's important to have a statement is to be on the same page right so deborah um you always show this this particular image which is always important for governance teams to recognize as you do equity work and you kind of define what equity is you got to remember where does all this sit now in our governance right what is our role in this and so remember this was a great reminder of like where the superintendent role is where the board's role is and remember as a board you all set the vision

180you set the goals you set the policy so some of the work we're doing right now sits right above that dotted line that's what you all just worked on we're setting a vision through our equity statement about what this work is about um your policy is what we're going to massage in our next session and so as you already have started your work your policy is centered around the csba um sample that they've used and it's great starting point what we want to do is massage that with your equity statement to really create a clear vision for where this work is going to go what is the direction we want from our superintendent and our staff right to make this work happen which goes underneath the blue line right and where now implementation happens at

181the superintendent and superintendent designee levels so this is where as a governance team we understand this what equity is but we don't do the work right i'll say one more time we don't do the work right so this is where we don't go but what we call into the weeds which is why i pushed you all and you all did good tonight by the way some boards i work with want to go deep into the weeds and talk about what it's going to look like and all that it's like wait a minute that's not our role that's for the superintendent right to take your vision and now actualize it in actions and then share that back with you here's how this looks here's how we're doing this work and that's the role of the superintendent

182and so as you all are working together and continuously using your norms to create your culture for how you work together that's where that dotted blue line is so important that you all will come like below that line above that line in your communication but the great news is your communication is centered around one common language that's very important for governance teams to recognize and so even though we're continuously going to massage your equity statement your roles in this work is going to be critical to remember that this work is driven by a lot of passion a lot of emotion and remember until everybody in your entire school community has an understanding of your equity statement this work is going to still be messy because some are not going to agree with your statement some

183are not going to understand your statement because they haven't had that lived experience right they may not have context this is very new to them so understanding our role in terms of how we sit in our governance space is really important to remember but i'm going to give you a little bit more of a context about why this is important so in your work one of the things going to happen as you were looking at your equity statement i asked you how would you measure that right what is that going to look like like how do you envision this happening there's a lot of work that goes into your three bullet points you call it out there's a lot of work and so often when we talk about governance teams is to recognize that as

184you start to begin to do your equity work and take your your equity lens now we have to talk about prioritizing the work that you'll find that you can't do all things equity there's going to be a lot of things that can be applied with your equity statement in your lens but what we often talk about is effective governance teams prioritize their work and so as you prioritize your work you're gonna find that you're not gonna be able to get into the weeds with everything because you'll never get anything done and as you look at effective governance teams they don't get caught in a lot of the operational kind of weeds of the work that's the role of the superintendent but for the board your role is to really prioritize so as you look at

185the example you see on the screen you see four different spaces where we ask governance teams to think about what are the most critical things that you are going to be responsible for that rise to your kind of governance space okay that specifically around equity but specifically around what effective governance teams do we focus on these four things because these are the top priorities in our district and anything that's not really part of these priorities we probably shouldn't be spending a lot of time on right and so safety is absolutely a priority would you all agree school safety is important right absolutely what's our climate of our campus there's a lot that goes into that i gave you a couple of bullet points that are examples right that's where discipline comes up discipline definitely comes

186to the board's attention because you have discipline policies right okay looking at teaching and learning right teaching and learning is a priority would you say like what's happening in the classroom right we're in the business of educating kids absolutely teaching and learning because you have lots of policies around academic achievement and around how kids are successful in your school district and so i gave you a couple of bullet points there to think about what are some things that really come to the forefront you all mentioned um ethnic studies which i appreciate right that curriculum adoption right that's where the board sat and so those are things that should rise to your particular um priority space human resources probably a big deal right would you say 85 90 of your budget goes to people so it

187should be a priority do you have board policy that governs personnel yes you do and that's absolutely a critical priority so recruitment retention hiring you set the framework for that you don't hire right your job is higher superintendent that's your one employee but you do set the framework and the expectation around hiring practices and then of course you then approve of those that are hired into the district because they're associated with your other priority which is off to next to hr um and sorry human resources and your staffing is your budget right so as you look at these four priorities your budget is very much you know a common sense one we don't spend a lot of time talking about it because you know that you have to be a fiscally sound bored like your

188responsibility is to make sure that your district is fiscally um sound and that you're sustaining resources and that your district has obviously your reserve and everything that's associated with the budget right that's a big deal and it should rise to your priority space now how why am i bringing this up a couple of things and when we talk about equity that as you do this work you're gonna find that a lot of things are connected to equity right because it's it's about everything we do we want to use that as a lens for everything but what may happen is some people in your community are going to come to you as a governance team in the name of equity and demand that you address some of the needs that they bring to you and as

189a governance team you're gonna have to wrestle with these because everything is not a priority and my funny example and deborah we got to come up with a new one you got to give me a new one but i've been using this a lot because i think it's a very real example is you will have someone who will come to you and may say and i may have shared this with you may say like their priority and their equity issue is that you have one school whose facilities um have these beautiful palm trees in front of them and there's five of them and there is a problem because this is not equitable because at that school on the other side of town you got 10 palm trees park um planted in front of them and

190that is not equitable and trusty cool i expect you're going to address this and it better be an agenda item that we're going to talk about and have a whole study session about and you're going to say thank you but this is not a priority right and and yes that is an equity issue let's unpack it and then you're going to come up with the equity statement and say well for us equity means this and are palm trees and facilities important for our kids learning does it impact kids maybe but is that directly correlating to learning and and uh student achievement probably not so it's not a priority and then you'll gladly say let me direct you back to our wonderful superintendent who can address your needs because that is way in the weeds and

191that is not something that a board member should really be spending a lot of time on right so that's why priorities are important because with equity work people are going to prioritize it in their mind what equity is to them and yes we want to listen to our our constituents and our community but we do have to prioritize our work or else you will have a thousand initiatives you will be up all night in board meetings till 2 a.m because your agendas are full of all kinds of equity related things so when we talk about your agenda building process using a priority structure like this is really helpful too so that your agendas and your business is really focused on what is most critical when we talk about the work we're doing as a team

192the other place that's so critical for this is how you ask questions to your superintendent and the staff so the staff is starting to get used to our board's priorities are these so when they present it to you they present to you knowing your priorities they present to you knowing your equity lens so then we have a culture around how we collaborate with our staff and our superintendent and we're not just having random questions about things that don't actually apply to our priorities this is where we talk about operational getting in the weeds board members who are effective governance teams i should say who are effective don't get in the weeds and spend a lot of time on operational things because if that's not impacting what you said you want to do then it's really

193not again effective it's not a good use of time and so i'll use a great example here is some of the questions you may ask so this is a great kind of connection we have our equity lens we have our priorities for our work now our staff bernie comes to your staff comes to you and they're sharing a presentation about i don't know school discipline or student achievement or oh i got one we want to bring a consultant forward and do a contract for professional learning right i get to do that all the time and what questions do you ask to your staff to ensure that you are one allocating your money responsibly because that's a priority and two that this has an equity um it's impacting our work through an equity lens so look

194at some of the questions that you can ask a real quick clear question is and this is something that the staff will just get used to so when they present to you they'll already come with hey bullet point two how does this practice align with our equity statement and policy very easy question but we have to create our statement first right and we have to have our policy well known so that then we know that our practices are aligning with what the board vision is around equity so i'm going to pause for a second and see what's resonating with you about your statement and kind of aligning it now with prioritizing the work so we don't get too deep in the weeds but we actually kind of see where this really um kind of folds

195into our governance so what questions or thoughts do you have in our kind of closing time together and i'll go back to this and i can go back to the questions if you need to anybody jump in what's coming up for you you got it you're on the home stretch you're on the home stretch tell me what's coming up for you prioritizing the work is that is that resonating with you or maybe you have questions about it would you say these are priorities you have as a board what are you thinking what are you thinking i i think the prioritizing part looking at this again um for me is a is a good reflection um for us to to really look at this and and compare it to what we have prioritized um and that's

196speaking to a level of alignment um i mean i'm looking at this now and i'm like how much of this in here is stuff that we actually have identified as our priorities um so i i do recognize that we we probably would need to revisit okay that are to be our priorities um to ensure that it's aligned with the equity statement that we're drafting because we have to put that into practice and we need to know what we're prioritizing to be able to to facilitate that conversation with regards to all of the components that need to be involved and then looking at the implementation of course requires the level of process that we need to visit as well absolutely got it thank you monophone that's helpful thank you i would say oops i don't know

197what i said so if you ask the next session i won't know how to answer that's why we record these so i was gonna say that i actually so professional development i think has come up a lot tonight um and i was for me i think that you know obviously professional development will always be a priority but i think especially with um our equity statement i think there's going to be so much change that's going to have to happen not only within ours for our students but i think obviously for administration for our staff for our teachers um and i feel like that is just it's a very high priority because without them buying in and without their engagement it's going to be hard to truly implement what we're asking to implement right now so

198yeah yep great connection great connection yeah i love you kind of reminds you of when deborah talked about the connection with the water system change and that mental models conversation right and and pd is definitely a big piece of addressing the mental models um especially around your statement right it's like how do we educate our staff and help them understand what it is so because you don't want to hold people accountable without giving them the support and awareness first so i agree andreas definitely a big component thank you any other thoughts about priorities and connections to your statement i don't know if this is a connection specifically to our statement but something to maybe add into this chart um because we i i've been talking about equity for the longest for decades now and every

199time it's always been like well we need to you know recognize we need to we need to acknowledge which is great and i think is you know the first priority but and at the same time we also should be celebrating right celebrating our cultural relevance of of our students um when we do actually have things like that our um at least ben um that i've seen has a cultural night where and this is pre-covered of course but every you know students bring um dishes from their culture and they and they all get grouped up and everybody's tape everybody has a different table and we all get to sample each other's foods from each other's culture which i think is food to me um and i might just be a fatso but i think is a

200great way to connect people and celebrate our cultural um um not differences but are are just our culture and and um not just recognizing it but celebrating each other's culture so i think maybe something like that in here along with the cultural relevance just so it's not just like a surviving it's it's it's more yeah like thriving right absolutely no i hear you yeah and maybe honestly i wrestle with this slide all the time because i i think when i first developed it i think we had how many bullet points devon's like well they're not going to fit on the slide anymore so it's really more of a reflection of like some of the main pieces but i love that feedback and i'll actually maybe add that around that school climate um piece around um

201not only that family engagement and outreach but i feel like that celebration is a big deal it's big it's around really acknowledging culture right and that's a big part of this work so i think the hard part with this is when you look at this from a governance lens right that's going down into the weeds but what it does do is it's questions you can ask as a board members how are we celebrating student cultures right how are we doing that and then how is that impacting student achievement because here's the one thing that always gets worried about and kind of goes back to the article um that deborah had you all discussed right is that avoiding racial equity detours is in the name of equity we may have those wonderful celebrations right but they're

202not adequate in terms of being able to really celebrate the true essence of kids and maybe more around stereotypes um so they actually don't authentically really celebrate and then what happens is we actually cause more damage than good and we don't even realize it and then what happens it doesn't show up necessarily in impacting student achievement um or kids on kind of cultural identity and kind of ex and feeling included in the the school environment which does impact achievement so i think you're what you brought up is important those are great questions to ask yeah and also uh nicole quickly the the celebration piece has a place in your equity policy because you must celebrate that said when you there's about seven different um items where it says to make sure the ingredients if you

203will and as always you have to have that celebration in there absolutely and so it's best to put it in your policy because those are that's what you're going to live by that's what's going to guide you and so it'll be a constant reminder that we do have to embed some celebration of this work yeah absolutely and i'm sorry i don't mean to go into the weeds but i just wanted to give you know the team an example of something that this can be transferable to something tangible that we have is we have a a coding class at one of our schools and okay the last time i visited it was all mail and i was the only person that brought that up i said hey you know there's no girls in this class and

204the people that were teaching it the principal that was there they were like wow we never noticed that before and that's what you guys are all boys so you don't actually see that inequity but i do and something that we can do um as a district and you know our superintendent actually made this um suggestion that we bring somebody right email that has been successful in stem celebrate that person and in in that we are allowing these girls to think hey you know what she made it i could do it and and kind of you know bring the celebration to the relevance of it and and allow them to see that they can be successful just like the women that we would bring in powerful yeah great example great example yeah powerful yeah you all

205are on a roll and and here we are uh that last agreement is now we have to celebrate um no i'm sorry we have to acknowledge and accept and expect a little non-closure right now um maybe not celebrate it but at least accept it and so um you know in our three hours tonight i think you've accomplished quite a bit um in terms of one just having the time to process you know sometimes we don't recognize that that's needed the discussion um you all had a lot of kind of think time and really look back and go is that what we think equity is and so you had a chance to look at your statement you had a chance to reflect on some of the ways that you know governance teams can perpetuate inequities if

206you're not really conscious of it and so through looking at the timeline and looking at some of the detours that dr gorsky talked about in the article so our next steps is really to continue this work so i know that um um bernie we have the next session on june 2nd if i'm not mistaken um and then again on july 12th are we still those still the two dates all right good we'll get to hang out in the summer yay um and so um one of the things that we'll do though is continue to evolve your equity statement so i'll send you that via email bernie so you can share with the board um as well because you all may want to look at that and like tear it up with some more on your

207own maybe you want some feedback from someone so it's yours as a draft um we'll continue to unpack the priorities because i think that's an important piece and maybe between now and then you all can come back with what are your current priorities and how this may align um and then we're going to look at your csba um adopted equity policy and actually kind of massage that a little bit so that you have a little bit more meat to it in terms of not only what the board shall do from the policy space but also the kind of what the superintendent should do because that's remember below the blue line that's where the actions happen so you want to be very clear about what that is and that's where you align it with your statement

208and your priorities so we'll do all of that in really the next two sessions okay because that takes quite a bit of time and so when we're all said and done you'll really have kind of a updated not only statement but also policy and then you all can decide when you want to adopt that as a board okay so with that um let's see um maybelle i will pass the virtual mic back to you um as president and um share our information again and i always excited to hang out with governor's teams even late night um and so please remember in between our sessions please reach out to us if you have questions you need a thought partner we're here for you beyond the study sessions and want to make sure it's really clear and

209sometimes individually you have questions um or concerns you know definitely reach out to us because that's what we're here for um on the journey so um thank you again bernie for for allowing us to partner with you and as fearless superintendent always appreciate the vision of our fearless leaders and all of your staff of course who lock arms with you um and so thank you again for allowing us to um support tonight and just i really honor to support your work very proud of you should be proud of your your progress so far and it's a long journey still but you definitely are moving in a great um i would say um you made a big step tonight just being able to really kind of get to a place of common language you're still working

210at that but it's pretty powerful i i really am honored to see so thank you again absolutely and and thank you for staying fully engaged right i really appreciate that it's tough and just your the rich discussion um and and yes this is being recorded so do go back i mean you guys brilliant minds i i have to commend you and the way you dissected that equity statement i was impressed because not everybody does that we know right nicole no no good stuff yeah that was good so i commend you for that it's my honor to to work with the with the team as well and look forward to our next session thank you thank you both for being here with us this evening i know i know it's late for you miss debra um

211being in a different time zone but we truly appreciate it and i know that this is invaluable to our district and um definitely look forward to being with you again a couple more times and really flush this out and we appreciate your assistance with that um does anybody else have any thing to say superintendent trustees okay well if nothing then i will adjourn oh yes yes i'm just saying thank you thank you i just have one one quick ad i just want to say when we speak to equity i love that president biden has announced a nhpi month something we've advocated a long time ago when we talk about equity i think that's a great example yes absolutely absolutely and um i really commend this board this district superintendent viralis for bringing this to us

212it's such a timely thing um with everything going on in the world and in our community as well so um thank you thank you and if nothing else i will adjourn this meeting at 9 34 p.m all right thank you everyone good night happy mother's day have a good night thank you thank you you