001and i just feel so good about the communication sofia and i really picked up on we've really improved our own communication and um on hell i'm exhaling because you're here and uh and you're sticking around i know there's been a little chit chat about you maybe not sticking around so i'm really grateful for that uh and uh lindsay with your challenges uh in in a lot of layers of your life just so grateful to be around the table with you i couldn't have a better cabinet in the whole wide world i can't get over the stuff we're able to do the mountains were moving and right now how proud i am of each of this team members to um just to get the train on the track and keep the train on the track and
002that foundationally is kind of where we are just to stay and steady and wade you have just been such a gift to the district in terms of um being a shape-shifter for us and an eye-opener for us and a filter lens uh corrector or opener so we're breathing deeper and more humbly and i just this day is set up when sophie and i were planning it to uh she had she and i had almost a synergistic moment where we're like wade should be our guide today and so we are so thrilled to have you here wade and just to help us focus on a couple things we're geared to talk a little bit about how are we doing what's our self-reflection as a board what do you see in your own reflection uh and then
003as we morph that into the expectations that this board has adopted gosh was it 2015 or 14 it was before i came and they tweaked ever so slightly a word or two or three here or there uh and then as we hone in on our our desire to model and be leaders of equity uh we just didn't think there could be anybody better after our rally where wade just took us up as a as a true culture focused on equity so that's our morning then we're going to have a lunch break and we're going to have the opportunity to um work with alison amanda over there hello from our strategic partner team and focus on what we want to accomplish in the next three ish years two ish and then one and then one year's
004worth of goals so i hope everybody is appreciative of the let's stress casually and uh there's fruit danish coffee water and just anybody else want to co-welcome or co-start yeah i just want to thank everybody for being here i think with the self-evaluation this is why i had picked a way to um because i think we have a lot of um issues that i think together we can work at and a lot of it i think has been miscommunication between this because i think 85 of the time we're all on par on level on everything um and i really want to take this time for do some self-reflection also and really think about how um we take heed of other people's experiences and not devalidate them just because we haven't gone through those um because
005i know that there's a lot of stuff that's been going on in the district and sometimes we can get a little nope that wasn't me or brush things off so i think having his leadership here and because of the equity and all the work that he does will get us in that level for the next two years and really think about what it looks like for us um you guys because you guys have two more years um i just got reappointed so at least that's good at least i know that i'll have another four years but um to really look at that and do some self-reflection of what we've done individually as school board members for the district and how we're servicing our kids and our families heather you want to say anything to open
006the morning happy to be here doing the work and getting back into the new reality of my life and i appreciate all of you for supporting me and being there at my wife's celebration of life um he was happy to be here i thought i was leaving and i repeat some moves but then everybody in the house so i'm happy for that so i can complete and finish what i have to finish and i still live in this neighborhood and i love it not to be part of of a group of people that is trying to make it my better hasn't kicked in yet but i'm happy to be here um it's been a flurry of a start to a school year so i'm also happy that people are getting healthy again and i'm sure
007i know creighton's going through the same thing my district is where we started and then it was like people started dropping like flies so i'm just happy everyone that's here is here and healthy um i'm just happy to be here he's very good happy to be vertical it's did you say i'm happy to be vertigo [Laughter] the vertigo i'd like to finish going away the vertical is good so but you know it's been it's been a crazy start of the school year and you know it's funny because and getting ready to head out the door this morning like this brought me back into the routine because you know you typically have these at the beginning of your school year but this school year has been such a blur for me of getting getting sick and
008everything and all the challenges we've had as you mentioned and seen with you know people dropping like flies so but i'm just happy that we're functional and that and to be at the table with everybody wonderful group of people uh good morning i'm very grateful uh to be here this morning um you know been part of the creighton family for a long long time and it really does feel like family sophia when you said that at the board meeting the last time uh in support of heather and her loss it really did feel like one body uh coming together to support someone so that was a reflection um likewise grateful to be here grateful to be here with all of you um and i'm excited i i've been looking forward to this day for a
009while because it's an opportunity to bring a lot of what we're going to talk about is kind of like the fruits of a lot of work our equity progress while never finished has been a lot of learning for a lot of us and we've got some plans in place and we're excited about what that is going to bring for the year our strategic planning process has engaged hundreds of voices over the past year and you know you've been part of that a couple of times and so you know we're really excited for you to see where we've landed and then receive additional input so that we can chart the future together just just just super happy super grateful so wait i don't know if you want to take us outside as you talked about or
010if that if you're thinking differently at this point but your call well i i'll probably close that to the group but just as far as uh kicking off here i'm just also happy and grateful for everyone so happy and grateful to be here i mean i'm hearing that and that sounds like this is the circle that meant to be in in this moment in my life i'm extremely uh just thankful for my journey and my continued journey with you all and i also come into this space with a really strong sense that i'm a guest and i'm also part of the community as well so i'm i i'm really spirit that i'm sharing the resources that come from my background i'd like to have to be extremely uh flexible and and just open-ended and in
011fact i kind of made it a point to rather than start with an end in mind kind of start with the beginning of mine and just allow this conversation to move where it needs to move particularly because i really haven't had a chance to connect meeting you for the first time heather and lindsay and just you know and very briefly you know angel like the kickoff i want to make sure that i'm offering what you all need in this space today so even in the morning i know we have a whole day but um at any point if we feel like if anyone feels that we need to have an additional conversation or or tap into something that i'm not aware of that is critical for us to talk about that 15 i guess that
012we're talking about it's not the 85 percent where we if that's you know essential i'm so willing to um support you all in that so that's just i think how i want to set up the spirit of the of what i want to offer today but yeah there is there is the possibility of stepping outside and circling up and donna brought sage well you suggested it like um you didn't you didn't hesitate i didn't study session we did artwork and then now we're doing hippie stuff this is a mint i mean if we want now so i do have i do have a history with stage you know for about five years i was teaching in the tucson unified school district and i was a member of the mexican-american lasso studies department so many of
013our courses actually integrated the power of natural medicine so that you know the sage is something that we would offer and sometimes in classroom settings sometimes you know outside of school but it was a way i think for us to tap in to our best intentions to be part of a community and think about ourselves and be reflective so today as we think about evaluation and expectations and perhaps having a sage circle uh could put us in a good spirit for that um so i'm open to that i also brought my conch so i also have some experience in blowing that conch so if you want i could lead us in a i'd say it'd be pretty brief donuts i kind of feel like this is the space we want to kind of step back
014into but if we're open to it and i would and i would uh probably be most comfortable if we're all open to it and if anyone's not uh comfortable with it then we would just probably carry forward here in this space but anybody uh or how do y'all feel about stepping outside for a second and just opening up with sage that gone abroad and um it's not a um it's not a religious thing it's just really around concepts you know concepts of i'll speak to four directions and some uh aztec some now what terminology that ties us to those four directions and uh it'll just be i think a way to center ourselves so we all think i'm not opposed to it but i don't know how anybody feels i do to my faith i
015i wouldn't feel comfortable with it okay okay and i respect if you guys want to do it but absolutely and out of respect to your faith i think let's just all stay together absolutely [Laughter] we had a very long night we went to bed like around two in the morning in my family we were here in a praying at church but i know they're going to be hungry around that time so i i need to be i have to make a long lunch and take him somewhere maybe even a movie this is saturday family day so maybe after that but thank you for your respect absolutely thank you a gringo friend used to call me ac because he didn't say he couldn't say angel it was italian he couldn't say angel he called me angelico
016don't call me he called me a ac spoke however you feel i like him because you speak with spanish toaster yeah i've got one of the worst names uh that translates horribly not horribly wait wait oh that says wade [Laughter] can you please i might have to bring it back i have to bring it back but yeah but um it's just nice to nice to be in the circle beneficial part of the circle so would you like me to kind of carry forward yeah okay well let's let's get right to uh you know i think our um again and you all looking at the screens here so i i do want to you know carry forward i think in the tradition of naming the fact that we have an understanding of history as we come
017together in many ways when we look at our current reality in our district or just our national or global reality um it's often history kind of looking at us in the face you know we are part of a momentum of history and there's a certain natural inertia i think of energy that if we don't do something to be a counter force to anything that is unjust then it's likely it'll carry on so i think in that sense of understanding that it does require effort it requires energy um let's have that understanding as we kick off today and that we can incorporate our awareness of a past that comes you know um in advance of our work today and then just recognizing that we're part of a beautiful landmass a continent part of a global community
018as well as a local community and then also you know i think just the sense of time too reminds us that uh we've had many different versions of borders over time you know these uh these color groups here are our peoples they're first nations and uh and grouped mostly by language in this particular diagram so we know that you know language is something that transcends borders and barriers and i think in many ways perhaps we could think about how we have a borderless mentality around the possibilities as we venture into conversations of equity and inclusion and diversity in our in our district and um you know to name those nations you know also the upper pima you know that sense of homeland um and i believe the kickoff i think we talked about the homeland
019didn't we kind of have a moment to check in anybody have a reflection on that like where you went with that i'm curious because you know being up on the stage and then offering that to the group and they're not processing it because it's a kickoff i'm not sure how it was for everybody else but i really felt like a sense of alignment because as the board we had already decided that that's what we wanted to do is recognize and have a land acknowledgement so seeing that how that's one of the bases where this project goes it made me feel like the board is going in the right direction of making these you know changes that maybe people are not used to or comfortable with because it hasn't been done in you know ever but
020to me that was just like okay it was the reassurance like we're doing what we're supposed to be doing you know because you brought that up and you're an expert and you talked about it so to me it was just reassurance that we're headed the right way it deepened my reason for why and um not only the land acknowledgement but we're looking at the name of one of our schools as as having you know a feeling of derogatory and and so we're you know it's still a very important conversation for us to have i was also triggered by uh kind of the colonial based historical perspective when you said that it it really ricocheted with me that as a child that's all i've ever been taught is male eurocentric history and um just to deepen
021the sense of humanity was so much richer and kinder just it softened my sense of who we are rather than being border based i really appreciated it i didn't i didn't get to stay for the whole kickoff because i had to go to work um but i gotta catch up and i just appreciate it because i started my teaching career on the navajo reservation and then came down here and realized like how many native american students we have in central phoenix and i think it's it's really overlooked a lot and kind of like what you were saying like we don't see a lot of school districts and boards and a lot of organizations doing things like land acknowledgements and it's such a a small thing with a large impact so just that this is being
022woven in it's so important because i really feel like that's an underrepresented group of our kids and families so i think there's some unique attributes to our land acknowledgement the way it was developed with a lot of a lot of voices our land acknowledgement speaks to not only the historic but the present and the future of indigenous people as part of a vibrant community and so i think that's really inspiring and there is alignment there for the programming the services the support and the engagement of that community and it's inspirational for for staff and for our community to engage those among us who are part of those indigenous families so i i think that's pretty cool is unique as a result of our our engagement yeah do you have any acknowledgement i can yeah i
023can pull it up but you know the other thing too is i feel that um it's amazing how many things can be political right um just even kind of the atlantic knowledge acknowledgement or talking about borders and what are you saying are you talking about an open border are you are you anti are you you know it's like so easily can kind of put you in like boxes because they take it like that yeah exactly so you know i think when we perhaps step into a space of thinking about maybe like a borderless sensibility around possibilities that we think about homelands that they're um it's also critical that we recognize that um you know many people that are not from here maybe ancestrally call this place home that's really critical you know um just you
024talking about like your your professional work and how that's so tied to your your land acknowledgement to where your home is in the neighborhood like that's so critical and that we we honor that so i think part of this conversation of homeland is to just think about the concept of home and what are those things that give you a sense of home and so when we actually do this conversation because you know for the most part the schools that we work in around the country very i mean it's very rare that we have too many native american students in those classes in those sessions we go to uh auburn school district and like in one classroom you have like ukrainian somali and vietnamese uh marshallese you know palestine and israel in the same yeah and
025so like when you talk about like something like a land acknowledgement it's like how how am i part of this how am i part of it how you know are you saying that like should i feel bad should i you know like all these kind of things might be stirred up and i think those are great conversations to have with young people right i think we we can uh recognize that sometimes we don't give young people enough credit to have sophisticated and very wise contributions to these conversations questions and ideas so you know um just as far as the spirit in which we bring in the concept of homeland when we work with students because we will be working with students with a youth equity stewardship work it really is uh having more of a
026conversation related to you know what is it that gives you a feeling of home you know how how do we create that how do we make sure that we can draw that in so there's not a disconnect between what you consider to be home and what you consider to be school you know can can we draw in some of those dynamics that make you feel comfortable that make you feel alive make you feel yourself you know so that's a piece i really want to make sure that we attach to the concept sorry really quick and when we're talking if you can just move the microphone a little bit closer to you because people online are having a hard time hearing this oh i don't want them just kidding okay great thank you yes i do
027have it yeah yeah so maybe yeah since we're here at this point it says crane school district understands that our community of schools is located on the ancestral land of the odom jude akima odam people who descended from the hohokam and have inhabited these lands since the memorial the odem whose name translates literally to people are a vibrant culture and community spanning countless generations into the past continuing to thrive in the present and carrying a powerful legacy for generations into the future with this acknowledgement the corinthian school district formally recognizes that the traditional caring keeping of these lands by indigenous people is an aspirational model of community stewardship that we are committed to honor with practices policy and human relations not out for me with that land acknowledgement i think there has been a lot
028of collaboration in that and so it feels like a mic drop acknowledgement yeah that feeling that like you said that carrying forward not just acknowledging a past putting people into you know that box but to recognize that this is this is the vitality of like who we are today and moving forward in our vision so it's beautiful um as we're thinking about self-evaluation today um sometimes that can be a little heavy in thinking about um our own personal accountability what we've done what we have not done and so i wanted to offer talking about uh youth wisdom i want to bring in a quote that comes from a really um powerful uh voice activist a strict more isquist and i i'd say maybe one of us could volunteer to read it other than me anyone
029willing to read that quote lindsay ariel wants to read it i'm not self-made i'm community made i'm family made i'm land made i'm ancestor made i'm made up of everything and everyone that made me exist outside of just myself do you mind carrying forward and maybe just uh saying her name and uh strict male is is quest i was like i do not want to mispronounce um [Music] indigenous non-binary queer plateau pop artist i know you don't have a mic back there but uh what what is it that uh has you interested in that quote he was not surrounded by like people growing up and coming here and seeing some of my own students who live who are not surrounded by love like people just make you the impact that that had on me being
030surrounded by people who looked like me who grew up like me and educated me with me physical and emotional thank you yeah and so this word um so in many ways i'm hearing you really honoring honoring that connection you have to that your upbringing to your your family your community so as we're looking at our own self evaluation and um thinking about it slightly change some of the wording but i use the same words but these are the kind of the four general expectations you know leading for student equity operating with effective professionalism and respect authentically engaging in diverse community and then providing sound oversight um i had a hard time putting the fourth expectation into an equity lens but i think the concept of soundness and and oversight um even though it's more about
031kind of budgets and you know i i still believe that there's nothing that um should not have a an equity inclusion frame to so in these four areas as you're looking at the four um kind of similar an ariel right aria okay aria so it's similar to how ariel kind of um connected that quote to you know her upbringing um as you look at those four things and your own in your own self-evaluation i'm curious who comes up for you or what comes up for you in terms of not being self-made being community made being land made being family made who stands out for you as you just think about your own you know value in these in these areas what comes up who comes up and i think this could just be a an
032open conversation you know i mean my first instinct is us as board members fit that description because um the community is the one that got us selected here we had to build that relationship with the community in order for them to get us in this spot and they've entrusted us us you know s5 with the participation of one missing person with this so i would say us hypothetically because that's why we were put in this position and i think once we're put in this position it's either we grow in this or we stay stagnant anyone else want to speak to in what ways you are community made or family made or land-based made out of in these areas when i left mexico i was 14 i have my friends my school my perspective and my
033dad brothers he never said you want to go so we came so you have a new language i remember two shanghai i went to tucson hey you you survived it forever i'm [Laughter] area and i didn't know the culture of tucson so i walked to the anita barrio space yeah i didn't know that centro has a space evening and there's hollywood so i i walked through to the big two trees right there and these guys sitting there they look like me they look mexicans i walked to them and they didn't like it so one of them throws his foot at me and i kick him he went into the fight and i got into the uh principal's office and they said what happened was the problem well he put his feet to make istanbul he
034would he walked through his face what do you mean your space and then the principal goes campos that area belongs to anita where you go there's not a sign i go i never seen a sign there he was well it's been there since the beginning this anita barry is one of the oldest in tucson yesterday from mexico so they assigned us that that was the way of fixing things they assigned us but where that was a tennis court is and the bikes they gave us that for the for the mexicans and i said i don't want this all i want to is to be able to work to the shores from my class to lunch around the corner right around it i don't i don't want to have to go around but but that was
035it that that was the end of it so culture things and and and and then i come to the united states where things sometimes are like that the other one is is music my father is a classical guitar teacher and we play international music so when i become a christian and start writing songs people say what do you take your frames of music i go oh dude i'm made up of everything sometimes i take some music from brazil sometimes i think i don't know because i grew up with a music spain so i put that into my music because you you you they said you're not like on on a line it's like you go out of everywhere sometimes it sounds like classical like that and when when i read that over there i'm the
036mixture of my mom with my dad with my english teacher in tucson mrs sergwa remember i love that lady she used me she got because we were troublemakers and esl and she was and she realized that i play music so this is it she goes campus what's your favorite english music er egos justin the winner from cancer do you know what you're singing like i don't think them i just play them so we she used my music to teach us english so that lady made a a change in my life and and so uh when i read that i took a picture of it i said yeah man that's true that's that's something so real we're not uh i'm not like my mom or like my dad i'm like everyone that made an inquiry into
037my life yeah everybody who watered into you and then you blossomed into your own somebody pissed in and i like something from here something from there you become yourself unique from everybody else i think that's why one of the most important things and i think everybody already knows that ever since i ran and got elected my biggest thing has been being community focused because unless we're out there hearing them and being out there and and they're sharing experiences we're never going to know how to effectively change policy to make things better or to take down these systemic barriers that we have that we all historically know have been here for years so that's a huge thing and i think that's something that we are working on but we can definitely be better at because if
038we're not hearing the voices then we can effectively engage or know how that's working kind of like you i i came from mexico in fourth grade and it was just a culture shock to me just the process of getting lunch in the lunch order and lunch line like i came home and i was traumatized by that because in mexico you just go to the lady who's at the stand and we don't you don't have a cafeteria where the school that i went to yes it's the little snack bar just like the concept of trying to put in numbers to get a lunch like i didn't even know what that concept was or in fourth grade i was a product of peoria's school district and i went to a school a school office where if i
039wore a jersey i was considered part of a gang because i was brown so it's like all those little things you know and my school if three or more people of color were walking together we were considered it again because they literally would sit us down they're like nope either separate or you gotta sit down but then you saw my white counterparts they were wearing their seahawk jerseys or whatever team they wanted and we weren't allowed to do that so it's just a lot and i think those experiences ira murphy elementary in peoria so 75th avenue and peoria 72nd so um and not so long ago no that's what's mine blowing unless you hide your age really well sophia though i do uh i graduated from high school no five so that was middle school
040i you know i i'm really curious that maybe we can talk about a little bit more but you're talking about you know how do you have those relations with the communities that you can really represent a community voice but i would imagine that to be authentic may be challenging when you're a board member because you're holding some kind of different levels of accountability maybe there's guidelines there's certain barriers to that real authentic engagement like even now there's microphone right so it's like to what extent does that sense of like authenticity how do you tap into that when you're in kind of a role such as you know one that you've been voted into and so i don't know i just i to me that's a little bit of a curiosity i have never been a
041board member but you know how you can you know kind of still be real still be yourself and feel like you can be transparent but at the same time you're also holding a position where you have to represent other people it's not all about you anymore you know not like it ever was in the world but again it just feels like quite a quite a challenge it is a challenge because you try to fix that and then we all have our own personal lives right um but the way that i do it the most is i always say this i'm at the doors all the time um just because i got elected two years ago doesn't mean that my work stops so i'm constantly hitting doors talking to my community reaching out i think i
042know a lot of the small business owners around i show up everywhere i put myself in those spaces and i think that's what really creates this leading with effectiveness and professionalism is you putting yourself out there people will not know or have the opportunity to even be involved if you're not giving them the tools or the information you know and you know posting something online isn't enough you know sending a robocall isn't enough and the way that i've worked and seen it as a gruesome grassroots organizer is that you have to meet people where they're at if that means that you're going to the laundromat from six to eight because you know the majority of your people are going to be there that's where you show up you show up where they are at do
043you pretend to do laundry at that time or do you just no sometimes i take my kobe house here [Laughter] my washer does not have the capacity big those big ones are great yeah the big tiger blankets it's very important to for me two things number one uh maintain and keep my identity real and that includes what i've been through because my experience nobody has had it i never had his experience he's live what he has lived and that makes him so and the people that i'm with the people that i pastor the people that i deal with every day that makes me who i am and then coming to a table with different people and then leading in a community so diverse so it immediately it sends me a sign that i need to
044be respectful for example to to anything that is spiritual not everybody believes in what i believe and and uh i'm certainly not better than many people and not worse than many others so so i i need to be very respectful to everybody but that doesn't mean that i need to bend over of who i am and and that's very important to me as as far as i respect you and understanding that maybe somebody is not going to be respectful to me but i still need to keep my identity even if they don't like it even if they don't agree with me that's fine let's agree to disagree i'll be respectful that's very very important because i represent if let's say uh somebody that there's a quote about a world war two and they come to
045the western churchill they were trying to brave him and they said because you are so important in this and they tried to break him and they go if i go for your bravery i lose my value so you have to know who you are and and and you're a very valuable person in this i go and i want to keep it like that so yeah no bribery i continue to win my values and that same here i respect everyone and and i can uh uphold you even if i don't think like you because there was one time where somebody was bringing something about the lg tv community and there was a sense that i was going to be against it and in my side in my inside i was laughing i said god loves everyone
046god doesn't want anybody to be bullying anybody so why would i be against protecting anybody and i explained myself and said no it has nothing to do with religions it has to do with human beings and where do i sign so that that's what makes very important to me respect but keeping my values when i first read all these like i just started thinking about the families um in our community and because i taught here and i actually the first thing that came in my mind is it wasn't yesterday it's been a long week one day this week i was starting my day not at my office but at one of our schools and so i actually drove up 36th street and one of the crossing guards at papago now is a parent of one
047of my students when i was at kennedy and i rolled down my window and she was just like oh and you know like it's just it's all those little moments and um just knowing like i still have a lot of families a lot of parents that reach out to me and check in and not just from the creighton community i had one of my students from my first class reach out to me and uh when i'm from when i taught on the navajo reservation and she's at asu and she's graduating with a degree in engineering and starting her masters and i'm for my first reaction is okay i'm old um but uh the the second piece was just like continuing to have these families and these parents reach out to me year after year and
048be like you know hey they're in high school now they're they want you to come to the you know see their band concert they want you to come and like you had this impact on them and i mean that's why that's why i ran and um i mean no you know we ran together i'm like these these are still my kids like i might not teach in this district anymore but but these are my kids and my families and they always will be and um so i think that's you know i did not grow up the same as the families that i teach but being able to put myself in their shoes and listen to their stories and and hear and truly ask like how can i help you and and what do you need
049and i think like i was kind of thinking when you said you know the fourth goal is a little harder to put it in an equity lens but honestly i think that's one of the biggest ones on here is our budget like that is a tangible way that we as a board have the ability to reallocate our resources and i think very often with school budgets with government budgets honestly people tend to put money where they think the need is instead of putting the money where the community says we need this and um you know that goes down to every little supplemental curriculum program resource that that we are ensuring gets purchased for our district because let's be honest most of the things that are published are for a one size fits all child and
050so how are we you know how is our curriculum department really looking at where the gaps that our kids are saying this this is something i need more help with or the parents are saying this is something my kid needs more help with and and those are physical tangible dollars we can put in those pockets um you know or purchasing curriculum where kids do see themselves and hear themselves and and relate um so you said like oh that was kind of hard i was like that actually to me is the most like you know tangible it's a tangible it's a this is something we can do right now um but we need to listen to our kids too like listen to the kids because they'll tell you this is what i'm struggling with and this
051is why these books you know i don't like to read or you know i these concepts don't make sense to me i don't have this background knowledge um and those are all tangible things that we as a word have the power to say let's we need to allocate to this for anybody anyone else's kind as you're thinking about your community maintenance sorry i like to be very reflective so yeah i usually take a while to process things the first thing that i thought of was just growing up in my childhood how you know i grew up in a two-parent household and we weren't rich but we always had everything we needed um and so um i was pretty privileged uh i didn't really think about it until of course i got older and started reflecting
052on things things and things that happened um in life that make you reflect and continually reflect um and that happened to be one of my favorite things about my wife and i is that we could sit down and have have hard conversations with each other because we were safe with each other um so when i started teaching um i started in in mesa and you know in in some lower income schools so i kind of got a glimpse into you know um different families then i got a job in isaac and i've been there for 22 years and 97 of our students are hispanic students and so it really took me a long time to like listen to them and and i was blown away by like certain things one thing that just always stuck
053with me was like why are you tired oh i had to sleep like under my bed last night because there was a drive-by shooting and like things like that that they will tell me that i never understood because that never had happened to me like i never once in my life had to sleep on the floor because there was a drive-by shooting i never had to sleep on the floor because there are multiple families in the house i always had like my own bed so just like having that time to like learn and then being accepted by my families and most of you probably don't know this but there were there were some of my families at my wife's funeral and there was a lot of my ex-students there um because i have built those
054relationships with my families and this is one of the reasons why i wanted to be a board member is because i want to continue to build relationships with families and it has been a constant struggle with me to like really look at myself and say like your thinking wasn't right at that time like how can you reflect on that because we always say you know i'm not racist i'm not this but it's not it wasn't about that it was about like actually learning about people and about learning about myself and the things that i have had that other people haven't had and my kids have taught me that and like lindsay said it's powerful to listen to children that's why i've requested that we have more kids at our board meetings to let us know
055i want them to be open and honest and kids are like that kids will say what they they need to say yeah and that's not going to sugarcoat it that's what i want because yeah i want to know like what do they want what do they need my kids tell me at school there's a lot of times where maybe i go off track somewhere because that's where they're leading me and that's where they need it at the time so i think a lot of teachers have that natural ability to do that but i want to hear from kids i don't want to constantly hear from adults i want to hear from that's who we're serving we're serving our families and our kids and the kids are the important ones and we can learn from them
056so that was just kind of my reflection when they're going to be creative they're going to think of things that never would have occurred to us they're so smart so in maybe thinking through you know the time you've had together and as a board um how are how do you see that balance because you're really speaking to making sure that we're hearing kids you know to what extent do you feel like you have a balance of hearing from all constituents all stakeholders in a community are are we adequately you know just in a sense of kind of evaluating where we are you feel like we're having opportunities to hear from kids at the same rate we're hearing from adults is their balance in that because we're an intergenerational community so you know we can't just
057talk to kids but we need to so like we're just as you're kind of thinking back we're thinking where we are now where is that balance i don't think we've reached that balance at all yeah as a collectively we haven't i don't believe so they that's one of a big thing that i think we need to work on yeah like my you know we've kind of talked about it a little bit but like having kind of those sitting student board members you know having that council and and i know that our students meet in leadership groups with you and in other areas of the district but we need to have that space like i would i would have loved to have 12 kids around this table today too we all used to be kids don't
058forget and i've seen that happen in other districts and there is a lot of i mean when i was doing our evaluation i was like i was mean to us on our evaluation in some of these areas because i'm like we're not doing this and we've talked about it and we're not doing it yet so i think that's very important too because we need to look at our children they are our leaders tomorrow they're going to be our next teachers principals administrators school board members and unless we're opening up that space for them to grow in those leadership roles i mean we send them off to high school and by that time they're like oh forget it i want to do this no more and i only talk about because i'm going through that with
059my son i have a 13 year old and he's in eighth grade and right now he's going through some phases where he's like i don't want to do this no more because we're not engaging them he's like screw it like i don't want to do it no more and i'm like okay so it's that engagement of our kids i think that we really do have some kind of we need to work on it basically hungry i'm laughing because at one point i sometimes he just comes to me and i take my children this is back in june chuck and david both of them hey guys what do you think about exact path and then chat was a point of it well what do you mean unless you you you're more explanatory i cannot understand your
060point david jumps in it sucks [Laughter] and then i go come on come on make it clear give me more yeah why does it suck according to you and he goes well it only teaches you something you learned in the past or what you are learning now oh so it teaches nothing new correct is that what you're trying to say well it feels like teachers only use it so they can have time to prepare for for for what they are going to do next and i said next time i want to be more more prepared when i ask him something because the the answers are like that they're on sugarcoat yeah that's what she said let me bring it so uh and and but now i never had exact that so even though i was
061a kid one time i i don't understand what they're saying i go back come on dude give me more because i don't know i i wasn't done like that i was okay and you you okay i'm gonna dictate you're gonna write it down and then you're gonna memorize it by tomorrow that that was my school that's right and and and another thing they taught me was like a couple you need to clean tomorrow you need to clean the whole room for everybody and teaching now is so different that sounds like a very exact path yeah and anyways i just wanted to read that because when she said they don't sugarcoat it no oh no they don't i think that speaks to i think with our math curriculum adoption we did a better job of getting
062student input invoices more than we have in the past but just being mindful that anything you know even the supplementary pieces like getting the feedback from the kids you know yeah you know when it's relevant the learning is exponential and so i think what you're trying to do is what's relevant to me if it sucks or if it's terrible or if it's not the it's all about the past not the future what can they do to pivot that conversation with kids because then it will be more relevant to them it's not just an exercise in isolation that is a good chance maybe when we ask him in in a table like this or in the classroom they will try to fit in with the teacher or not hurt the teacher they threw it to me
063like that because i'm the daddy i think the teachers are saying the same thing on their texts but i think often we assume that kids are you know let's get feedback on this curriculum and we assume kids are going to be like oh it sucks because it's not fun like no he's saying it sucks because i'm not getting support and practice in new skills like that was a very insightful thing like this program that's supposed to be adaptive that we've done a ton of research on and you know experts created it and yet you have a child saying it's only having me work on things i've already learned that's powerful want to remind you all here is i'm your facilitator [Laughter] oh and the the basic way to think of a facilitator is just the
064um simplification of like conversation right so i kind of make it i smooth it out or i find ways i can help transitions or i keep keep it moving you know what i mean because like there's like an agenda so like how do you kind of keep it uh keep it pushing so to speak um and you know when we think of facilitation um you know i think in that same kind of idea of the i think the myth and and sometimes the the really the miscommunication i think that we come into our teaching with that we're there to like share our knowledge and our great wisdom of expertise when really it's more of you know how are we facilitating the growth uh not centering it on ourselves and recognizing that we're part of the
065learning process right and when we're part of the learning process as adults that's really what engages an intergenerational learning environment so um so in the spirit of kind of facilitation that is one of my goals here and the reason i'm setting it up like this because you know i'm a facilitator maybe like why would i put that there the reason is because there's another angle on facilitation and uh there's a man named augusto boa who had a method called forum theater and it was through a a theatrical work called theater of the oppressed and it was a way to engage communities in theatrical uh kind of structures but around real issues like it you know like so you know if if there was exploitation at a at a major corporation or there was things that
066were you know unfair or unequal he would come in and do these forum theater sessions where you give people an opportunity to kind of play out different options and possibilities so you know this idea of examining multiple paths is really the way of a difficulty so that's another i think way that maybe we think about teaching is you know to what extent are we facilitating and difficulty right to where we um step into the learning complexity to be adventurous is diverse yeah to be adventurous is to take paths unconventionally and i think this is beautiful difficult a difficult time this is yeah this is awesome um so there's actually a non-profit organization called fuerte movement and they actually do this so they hold um artist sessions sometimes they're open mic nights sometimes they're painting nights
067but what they do is they take real issues that are impacting the community and they open these spaces so like recently they just had a rent is too high paint party so people came in and took out their anger um and it was really moving because there was a family who recently just moved out of their house because their rent went up five hundred dollars so then their whole family came to this pain party and they took out their aggression on this so this is awesome because we do have an organization locally here that already does that and that i think that's they help navigate the community through their struggles or whatever it is they're going through different opportunities like this what a cool opportunity if there was a way to partner i i'm sure
068there is yeah that was high to win yeah it was called the rain the rent is too high paint party they just held it last two weeks ago but they're always doing like events like that and they they're an arts focused non-profit so everything they do has some kind of art involved whether it's music sports poetry whatever you name it they they do it it's really awesome and it it it sounds like almost like oxymoron to say that the rent is too damn high party because like rent being too high is like that's oppressive right and it's and it's and then to party around that and so like i like this idea of um being able to balance celebration and challenge you know thinking about how our work can still kind of be centered in
069a way of being joyful but not losing sight of the fact that we're dealing with pain and hurt and these struggles um and so i kind of in that spirit of both like facilitation difficultation um i didn't want to bring forward a conversation that we could um bring up again and it came up when i just recently did a session with the leaders of uh school so in school administrative leadership and you know donna eric you may want to remind uh us all kind of what the teams were that came from each school because i know it was the principal aps i think it was the there were coaches so as a way to kick off the year um the idea of like like what what do we want to carry forward you know and
070i think by saying what we carry forward we may also be uh tapping into what we want to leave behind as well but as you kind of as we think about an idea of moving into a new year and still in the spirit of self-evaluation because there may be aspects about just our own way in the work or our collective way in the work that are things to uh discard you know re reimagine or just carry forward because the other thing too is like let's not lose sight of progress and things that have been accomplished that's so critical so you know i'm just wondering if when you see this question of like what do you want to carry forward what does that make you think of from either your kind of individual standpoint or as
071a group so for me individual individually what this mean is breaking down the systemic barriers that we have in the school system to make it better for our kids and i think a lot of the times we're in the mindset of what can we do next year to make it better but we haven't even got to the root cause issues of why our kids are not learning why is this happening i mean we have some kids that are living at motel 6 because they just got evicted and we expect them to come wholeheartedly to school ready to learn so to me it's very at the bottom of the ticket i'm not thinking about like okay in the next five years yes i understand that we have tangible goals and we have to set stuff because
072we're you know the legislator basically controls us the state whatever rules we have but if we're not focusing on the whole child first then we're missing the mark i mean i remember when my son was in third grade there was he was going to build more prep and there was this dental bus that would come to the schools and that's something that we don't have anymore so like those necessities are those small things where some of these families can't take time off work it really it depends so looking more on the those things looking forward on how we can create those paths and make it easier for our families because eventually if that's taken care of i mean we just got funds taken away and we're not even offering free lunches to our family and
073communities that was something that they depended on for two years so things like that on how are we allocating funds to make sure that those needs that are necessities are taken care of first instead of going into buying a three million dollar you know whatever it is so i i look my forward kind of going backwards it's how do we get to the basics and that's where i feel a lot of the times we miss the mark we just expect these kids to move forward give me this a or give me this be school and we're we're messing it up we're missing the mark i think i'll put this back up again cause i feel like what you're tapping back into is your idea that like this fourth one probably should elevate to the top
074of like tangible yeah well i mean you brought up something that's i'm dealing with every day in my own district is we are getting funds taken away and i think something beautiful that came out of the last two years was how our communities and our government rallied around supporting the needs of our children of our families at a very basic level and now we are starting to very quickly see all of that be undone and it's it's breaking my heart honestly i know um in creighton the virtual academy kids are dealing with it in the same way i am for the online school that i run is i had to fight we bring them in person for testing next week and i had to fight to make sure that they have breakfast and lunch served
075because the government congress has determined that they don't qualify for that and the fact that i had to jump through so many hoops to make sure that while i have kids physically in my care from 8 30 to 3 30 that i had to jump through hoops just to make sure they had food during that time and that doesn't even begin to start the fact that they are no longer allowed to go to their home schools and pick up the five day meals the all of the resources that they have as you said have been depending on have just been pulled out from under them um sorry i get emotional about this because it's something i'm i'm talking to these families every day and i don't have an answer you know like i'm working with
076everybody i can in my district and our community partners right now to find something that's sustainable and not just you know i've had donations and that's great but that's not sustainable because these are things that they have come to rely on um and you know everyone needs to take their political views out of that whether people should be provided things um i know that gets people get very controversial about that but it takes so much you know when families have been through different circumstances it takes so much in our society to pick yourself up and to provide the basic means um we have so many families who are i have friends i have teachers who are being evicted because they can't afford to keep the apartment um and that's a that's a huge reality and
077i think we need to be really cognizant of that when we're thinking about our tangibles is because of the housing market because of everything that's going on in the area we live and the supports that everybody had the last two years that are now just being gone i think we're about to fall off a cliff honestly but that's why i feel like this is great that we're having these conversations because the community entrusted us to know how to navigate those systems and how we're connecting with other non-profits how we're connecting with the community how do we support our community resource center that we have right here that does all that for our family how are we supporting them so they grow so our community doesn't feel this hit you know yeah um our community resource
078center is a huge thing not many school districts have that and that's one of the things that i'm most proud of um but there's so much more that can be done there um but i think that's reprioritizing what we do as a school board and what how we can better serve and i this is why i wanted to have these card conversations because a lot of the stuff will get brought up right um and it just brings us back to why we started this why we ran and i did run with them too and i remember our biggest mission was the families and the kids everything that we do with policies any you know resolutions that we pass everything has to be geared and focused to our kids and to the community not to make
079anybody else happy sometimes that ruffles other people's feathers and i understand that but i am the biggest ruffle feather there is and i have no problem doing it but sometimes those things have to be done because nobody else is out there speaking out for them and this is a system that's for them not for us you know i already went through split and i went through it and those experiences as a child that gave me those that's why i fight so hard because i don't want another kid feeling what i felt you know i know how it feels to go through that come home and your parents are so busy working to maintain food on the table that you didn't even have your parents to talk about that i basically grew up in the school
080system all alone i didn't have anybody to tell me what fafsa was i didn't know how to apply for college i figured all those tools on my own or with people that i you know leaned on to or realized and that's not fair we're we're failing our kids when we're not offering those kind of things so i totally agree i mean i've helped my kids multiple times you know getting resources directing and i and i know we need it i think the problem the first thing that i think of is how do we how do we tow this fine line of things that we have to do as a district because government says we have to do it and what do we have to do as teachers so i'm coming from a teacher point of
081view is i'm being told at school like here's your curriculum right and you need to stay on this path you need to stay on the on this you know um push forward but one of my kids only comes to school every 10 days right so what am i doing for this kid but then i'm gonna get punished punished later on when this kid doesn't thrive when this kid isn't doing their best when this kid scores falls far below on a test because i didn't teach this child so there's like this fine line like how are we helping our families and then how are we also like having our teachers feel like they're not being punished and our families aren't being punished and our district is not being punished so i think it's such a tricky
082thing and i literally have no idea like how to fix it um and i love that sophia has a lot of connections with um like those things because i know a lot of other people like me personally don't have as many connections and so i love doing those sort of things but then how do we balance that out between doing our doing like the job of a teacher and and being an educator and benefiting our students but then also being someone that supports our students first and that that's a hard that's a hard like line to travel it really is and i know it's a struggle for everybody from top down i mean so i guess that's kind of what that's where i am i'm always like i feel like i'm always stuck in the
083middle of what's best for our kids i always want what's best for the kids but then when we take like you know the new asset test um for the state like our kids are falling far below and then now we're being punished again where it should be about the kids first like sophia said it should be about those kids and healing these kids and these families they're going through such a hard time and teachers that are going through a hard time i mean i'm a one income household now and i worry about keeping my own house but if i get kicked out of my house where am i going to go you know so i feel like there's just this constant battle right now and i think it got exponentially worse when covent hit and
084now things are just i think there's so many things that were brought to light that maybe were hidden before but now they're just so exponentially like out of proportion okay i'm curious about you because i'm feeling like if i'm thinking about carrying forward it seems like a strong carrying forward of like some mutual uh value in uh providing in a way that's you know not theoretical but very tangible and practical and based on offering like our basic sustenance for life and you know like offering that foundation and so yeah hearing them so far i'm curious what your thoughts are around just the caring for i just wanted to kept kind of just name the fact that i feel all that synergy happening and just we think of carrying forward there's a lot of energy around
085what we're what we're missing right and that's part of a caring forward too but as i'm listening to this it's kind of like new to me i've been very focused on on church there's been a very high level of drug addictions every morning i walk out i see young people with paper foil and blues and he's trying to help them and then we're hosting migrants every week and we have children i have to be careful that the drugs that the needles and special every every day i mean into that but i'm listening about the the meals for the children and uh i just texted a couple of my my friends that are close friends as in college and they always ask me about papa they grew up here and i uh and i'm just asking
086them about because i haven't made my my uh my contribution so i i think actually not only thinking and bringing ideas but actually being that that's what i'm thinking just using being the the the answer not only promoting other people to give but being the givers uh uh setting the example and uh so uh i i i was writing and i was texting as i was listening because it's kind of like hit me no it hit me what the heck i mean it's yeah it wasn't a god i mean my kids eat they love food if you invite them to your house i don't know what type of food they do they'll eat that's right if an italian invites them they said people says i want your kitchen my home lady say i your kids
087make me feel good like well why they eat on my food my children don't wanna eat my food and your children empty of the plate so so uh food is important uh uh and and uh that's what you have me right now and i don't think i'm sorry of that that i bring this but i remember you now from tucson high yeah [Laughter] and and uh you impacted my life you play football yeah and your grandpa is anthony quinn yes i know i know let me tell you we never befriend it watch this we never befriended i never hung up with you i i was a sophomore year was my first year in united states wow so my senior year she but every time i crash past with you and i saw you the football
088player you were i was a kicker you were a good kicker and you could hear it and i looked up to you because every time i crashed past with you i didn't know any english anytime i crossed out with you everywhere you had a smile you were kind and and and that's what i remember you and now i said wait okay hold on and then i said and i wrote something here he's been writing your name down yes yes yes i do that i said it says we never went out together we never were close friends but you were always kind and uh if we he football uh you know my kids say that they bought a shirt i have a game i didn't know what it meant it means that they can they have
089girls with pica games and i said here i look up to you but you never knew me probably but but every time i'm that one kid that was playing the guitar with my little brother and we were playing la bamba and people was just around the table in lunch maybe you you weren't there by that time but i remember you and i remember that antony quinn because we play international music over the greek it's a great music yeah you play it and i've seen that movie a million times with my father and so when when and somebody told me oh his grandpa is antony queen who is the other one so that's why you see me writing i'm writing about these i'm tasting about it i i'm one of those kids that you maybe you
090don't want in your classroom if i was your student i can be like yeah amazing things at the same time and you're still cool [Laughter] oh man well you know what when you said you knew me my thought was you're going to embarrass me but nobody actually just touched my heart man i don't know bro do these bites good do you mind if you take like a quick five minute break i gotta go to the bathroom me too yeah yeah i know everyone's like and i still drinking coffee after the reunion foreign i think he's just taking a phone call right yeah okay well um yeah i'd be really curious to uh support that specific orientation to what you're talking about which i didn't really have a lens on until now so but like it's
091imperfect right so let's let's make that happen um what i will do though is um introduce a little bit of language that i also think can be supportive even as we maybe get into some of those uh details and looking at the cumulative evaluation piece um this is a word that is part of the name of the process that we work with students with and it's youth equity stewardship and youth is really a way of speaking not just to the fact that it's for students but i really love to think about youth as something that is more of a spirit right so that i think any of us probably in this circle carry a certain youthfulness to even want to be with you right and if you don't you probably shouldn't be around some youth
092right so so youth i think in the spirit of like that just curiosity and energy and just wanting to grow and learn and then the the equity piece i'll talk to you in a second but the we've really felt that stewardship is a really key term and perhaps as we're kind of looking at speaking to the fact that there is that kind of punitive uh linking to the accountability in our work like how do we perhaps create a standard that's um not just centered in achievement but is centered much more in the way that we contribute to the wellness of the world right to our local national global communities so this idea of stewardship um here's the working definition it changes day by day but right we where we are now it's defined as action
093vitalized by creativity compassion cultural understanding and the well-being of our community so kind of four um four ways of thinking about how we root the concept of stewardship and if you kind of if we took more time with it we could perhaps think about what stewardship looks like without creativity or without compassion take any of those out and what are you left with um it's perhaps a personal agenda yeah i mean right seriously you take all these out then you're just in it for the personal agenda not the community that we were placed to serve yeah and you know i think and all of these i think dimensions really feed one another and i think beautiful ways and this thinking has come out of uh experience but also just in uh collaboration with so many
094people in our thinking like creativity recognizing that um you know the degree to which we uh value imagination over just knowledge right even einstein famously said that right that imagination more important than knowledge but do we really live that do we is that the way we engage our systems um you know rooting and care rooting in understanding of culture that is beyond it includes our racial ethnic realities but extends also beyond that right into all of our elements of identity and orientations and aspects that are the beautiful pieces of humanity and then ultimately like that standard of you know not just achievement because there's a i think there's an argument to be made that if you focus on achievement and you get achievement um what will those what will those well what will that learning
095development result in is it possible that you could be set up to wield that learning as a weapon to the world if you're not also centered in a sense of like responsibility to the people around us so that's you know the spirit behind the idea of stewardship and then with equity you know we brought this up with the kickoff we showed this and it's a it's a it's a cool natural image of what we could see quality and equity more of a distinction between the two right and and i think students do a great job of speaking to this like what does it look like in the classroom oh because you know we all learn different and you know i it's like if we all get the same thing you know we all get spoken
096to in the same language and if we all some of us like to work together some of us like to work alone it gets so clear as to why you would want equity and seeing kind of the um you know the flourishing the thriving of these plants when you give everybody and everything what they need however um i also want to speak to this idea which is that uh equality used to be a really powerful word still is huge uh historical and i think kind of ongoing significance for human rights and um and in some ways i was very suspicious how many years ago but there was a time where equity really wasn't a word that was being used in educational spaces at least that was my perception i i it came to me like
097early 2000s and i was like equity like do you do equity work and at the time i was working in schools like so what's your take on equity and i just had no clue that there was something called equity aside from uh equity like in your house or like real estate that made sense although you have equity in your house or something but i didn't know that it had a relation to something you know in the educational system so um equality i think is also something that i hope that we're not pivoting out of equality because in so many ways equality i think is a standard in the baseline that we need to i think particularly you're thinking about you know how different districts have very kind of disproportionate resources and and opportunities so like
098equality is like critical you know so so as much as like we keep talking equity equity equity let me make sure that the standard of equality is powerful and i thought this this quote here i'm not going to put it up too long but this quote when i saw this i was like yeah maybe this is why uh equality got shifted over to equity almost like felt like a pivot like yeah we don't want equality like let's try this equity thing you know we we get what we need so everyone the reason we are where we are is because maybe we're all just getting our needs met in a different way like there's almost a way to justify how things are today by thinking about well it's equitable right we we all have equitable consequences
099to the way that we live our life or our families or our cultures our communities have lived our lives so in some ways we kind of get you off the hook so it's kind of yeah like i like that you said like the baseline standard like you need equality in order to achieve equity yeah so you need equality to make sure we have those foundational like pieces but then we add the equity to help everybody get exactly what they need and so i want to put this quote up here this one felt like i know this when you're accustomed to privilege quality feels like oppression right and this yeah and you think about today kind of even in this work and you think about equity it's like who now is kind of feeling people who
100and a lot a lot of times people try to like quickly put this on race like it's white people you know like quickly like that's what we're talking about well no it's like i mean yes and it's like it could be any one of us that holds privilege like i hold multiple layers of privilege you know in my just being able-bodied right just being uh heterosexual you know like things that put me in kind of a dominant category i'm a man thanks for reminding me i was thinking yeah yeah football but you were the cool kid yeah yeah right what's up yeah yeah so um so anyhow i feel like there's still a there's still like an ongoing struggle and that uh importance of centering the quad i thought about student loans when i saw
101this because yeah because of people posting so much stuff about student loans and how people feel upset you know about fair share right i pay mine you know my parents paid mine yeah yeah and and even within that right like we know like that there's it's complex it's complex and i think that's like i think something really critical is that the more that we can build this work around the nuances of of the relations we have around us i think the more we can have a better discussion you know and not just because again it's kind of there there may be some very clear like reasons and and ways in which maybe somebody who just didn't have the means but just struggle to play pay those bills you know off that you could feel slighted
102you know what i mean in a towel now it's all you know i'm in a great position because i didn't pay any of my bill [Laughter] but i think i was in school too long ago so i don't think i i i don't think i'm even part of that anymore but i do think like just as we're well i think it's a shame associated yeah um right yeah yeah i think privilege is i think a great awareness to have you know spaces in which we carry power in the world and i think you all are speaking a lot to the privilege of being on the board and what that means and the the leverage that you carry the power you do have and also the limitations are part of it as well but there is
103i think a sense of how can we place privilege in a space where if you need to maybe process some feelings of shame or guilt around that that perhaps can be like part of anybody's journey i think the way that we make change in the world is to think about how we see privilege as a right yeah and i also i don't necessarily think privilege is a shame thing but i also do think that privilege should be seen as an upper hand and it's what you do with that privilege what really makes the outcome right because like you said as school board members i am privileged i have connections with other people that most people probably wouldn't have i'm very legislatively and politically involved too but it's what i'm using with that privilege that is
104gonna you know make it or not do it so um i don't necessarily think that we always look at privilege that way but we really need to start talking about what are we doing with that privilege that we have been offered and that we have and or choosing to effectively navigate the system and i think that's where sometimes we lose it we know that we come from a privilege a place of privilege and then certain things come up and then we want to get offended like no no no that's not what it is so we just need to accept people's experiences and what are we doing with that privilege that we have that many others don't and how we navigate it that way so it's privileged to be looked as like a tool because if
105there's a lot of people you know i i've learned to look at it that way because it really is it's a game changer some people there's people out there that have the power to make things happen or do things and they just choose not to so that's when it becomes uh a bad thing i think just making space for the complexity of privilege like building on that like kind of what you said like i feel like if you took you know any given sampling of people like somebody has a privilege of some kind in some area you know and so it's not just money it's not just race it's did you have two parents growing up you know did you even if you did were there 10 kids in the family and you felt like
106you didn't get the you know attention like you know or things like i mean there's so many layers and and going back to you saying like we have to really create space and accept other people's experiences and how they might have felt oppressed in certain ways how they have felt privilege like you said maybe they've had a journey of feeling shame or not knowing how to navigate things but it's so like this quote is so simple and so powerful but there's so much complexity underneath that yeah and i think even as we frame privilege to realize that sometimes privilege can if if you carry a certain privilege in a certain area it often makes you or can create a disposition or an awareness that makes you ignorant to are arrogant or arrogant or ignorant or
107unaware of so you know there's some lack of privilege to having privilege and there's some perhaps privilege to not having privilege that gives you a certain insight or so again i think just that nuance is not just like a negative positive but it's it's constantly a conversation constantly with relationships uh in different ways and i think there's an assumption that can be made that privilege is void of that in privileged suicide or hardships due to the complexity of whatever comes with their privileged lies and i think there needs to be a sense of awareness it's probably the right word rather than assumption what is privilege and why did i assign you privilege just because you're a white male so again um i i like putting some of these words here in up but i i
108will say like one of the tasks i think being a facilitator as well as a difficulty is realizing that often the equity work um sometimes people believe it's just kind of like a trojan horse to you know uh elevate a fight against white privilege you know what i mean and it's just not it's just not like i think the um the narrowness the the the the kind of minimizing of i think the power of conversations of equity and inclusion um you know i think really outweigh that narrative but i do feel like certain words we can normalize you know like we can we can normalize a term like oppression we can normalize a term like privilege in a way that doesn't cut it doesn't threaten it doesn't shame and blame and so that's kind of
109a reason to kind of even put this in here to say like no we don't have to steer away but it also i think speaks to the idea that as we think about our role public figures that we are thinking about um subtlety we're thinking about creativity uh re-languaging how you know how can we navigate language in a way that doesn't just trigger people you know like we don't kick off our equity sessions or conversations launching off with white privilege but if it comes up it can be part of a conversation just like any level of privilege that anybody might have and in so many ways people carrying one privilege are also carrying trauma caring so many other dimensions that are not privileged right so it's just like we we all kind of carry this
110storyline um i wanted to do a creative activity uh bringing in some kids these are so cute yeah right 2033. how is that even possible that's way out there i guess that's true um i'm wondering if you all would be open to doing a creative activity with an article that uh i wrote it was um it was it was the it was either doing this or uh a song that i but this to me i think can operate like a song but it's going to be our voices with some music and um it's set up like a little kind of like a play we need uh three narrators and then everyone comes in on certain lines you guys down to do something like this yes okay cool so let's just i'll go with half right
111there sometimes it's better not to ask permission and just to apologize later let's see where i'm at that works too all right so um let's uh let's get a few narrators we need narrator one two and three i'll be one you'll be one only two there's three the rest of us we are everywhere we come in on the everyone lines so what i'm going to do though uh if i'm still coming through here i'm going to give us a little bit of a track put your music underneath as we kick off all right so i believe we kick off with and i just need one of these no he's got a whole stack oh he does okay so and this is uh this is an article uh that was uh published about a couple years
112ago but the idea is i'm thinking about the golden rule and um considering how do we utilize the power and the the um the beauty of the golden rule and place it into our dimension of education and so there's a there's a platinum upgrade dimension of this work so as soon as the the music comes in the narrator begins what word would you fill in the blank space of the following sentence with if you were giving some somebody advice you should treat others as you would like to be treated how did you complete that thought if by chance you thought of the word you then you are in alignment to the tenants of the golden rule a philosophy referenced in multiple faith traditions we see it in the sacred writings of the quran wish for
113others what you wish for yourself it is rooted in the foundations of hinduism as it is articulated in the holy scriptures of the bible unto others as you have done to you it is quintessential to an understanding of buddhist teaching it is a profound jewish cultural tradition resounding from the torah what is hateful to you not due to your neighborhood it is beautifully referenced within the baha'i the lord faith would not wish to be laid upon you in all these diverse spiritual communities there is a common theme and threat of developing empathy by making social choices of how to treat others by understanding our own personal needs however what if we were to instead place the word they into the plain space above as in treat others as they would like to be treated with
114this pivot in language all shall shift us away from treating others based on our own personal biases and therefore be taught to find out how other people choose to be treated based on their vantage point in youth equity stewardship as we journey along the creative intergenerational process of fostering equity inclusion and excellence together we explore this idea the transformative impact of coming to understand how to treat people want to be how to treat people want to be treated by asking people how they want to be treated is perhaps a great way for people to be treated this idea a golden rule 2.0 so to speak we are calling the platinum now by no means then before a fence is taken is advocating the idea of the platinum rule intended to be an affront or insult
115to the wisdom of the great spiritual traditions since there are many healthy ways the golden rule can be manifested and has been useful as a model for compassion and creating peace between people and nations however the upgrade suggestion is based in the hope that we can avoid the potential harm that can be felt and damage done when assumptions are made about others because we are operating from our own individual lenses the plenum upgrade requires us to seek out a deep understanding of others so that we can be responsive to their needs here are a few paths to consider in shifting our language and way of doing things in school the first is shifting from rules to agreements the very nature of rules is about forming a conclusion of how people should be held accountable from
116the vantage point of authority whether it is an individual such as a teacher or principal or the an entire institution creating laws and policy ironically in spite of a power imbalance at play we can be governed by certain roles that in principle hold positive social and personal value for example there are the b roles such as be respectful be kind be courteous be present as well as the don't rules like don't interrupt don't don't put it down don't lose violence all these ideas and theory and intention would contribute to building a healthier community together the thing is as we humans develop our critical thinking abilities beginning at a very young age we become inclined to question the credibility of rules based on our perception of their relevance it is a testament to our cognitive ability
117and emotional maturity as humans to grow more hesitant to blind allegiance to disconnected rules and it is perhaps why the age-old adage suggests rules are made to be broken to provide an atmosphere that fosters collectively unity and builds on the human mind's natural inclination for social connection we offer agreements in our group process of youth equity stewardship community agreements within within a school setting ask the questions of each member young and old what would we each need to be safe to be successful and to be fully who we are collecting these ideas and responding accordingly with a set of agreements is being authentic accountable and equitable across a diverse range of unique needs when this happens to both the individual and collective ownership of these agreements creates the sustainable force every teacher longs for to
118maximize their positive interactions and educational impact in the classroom the increased sense of support respect empowerment and encouragement particularly across difference is a statement to our nature natural human proclamability to connect the second shift is from punishment to restoration the ongoing traditions of punishing individuals for infractions to the expectations and norms of the community has roots in a self-centered socially accepted idea that if it worked for me it should also work for you this is a harsher perspective on a golden rule dynamic of seeing ourselves and others generations have grown up in the school system with a common incentive for behavior being a fear of reprimand as a guiding practice many people have survived and perhaps even still thrived in this climate however this doing unto others what others have done to us policy has
119led to perpetuating tragic racial disproportionality and a national crisis that has been coined the school to prison pipeline in light of systemic acceptance of punitive approaches to discipline the research suggests only short-term impact and lacks evidence of positive social uplift the punitive and authoritarian measures have not shown value in addressing or turning around school behavior and discipline there is no indication that harsh consequences build community or carry weight in developing personal responsibility or community accountability just like newton's first law of motion the inertia behind ineffective traditions can carry on if there is not an external counter-force re-envisioning a new way of relating to one another restoration is the platinum upgrade we propose for a deeply humanizing common sense and research-based practice for visionaries looking to transform our educational institutions in crisis restoration is about bringing
120ourselves back into balance health and alignment to the best version of our personal and collective selves it is the and trans continental indigenous concept where people have found ways to accentuate the necessity of our inner dependence rather than pushing away and calling out those who stepped out of line restorative ways pulling closer and call in the circle of community to to develop a plan of action the irony is some of the criticism of restorative practice which includes being too soft and placing an unfair and impossible burden on educators whose job is to teach is that being restorative is more about what effective culturally responsive educators do anyway these ways can be summarized as simply holding the highest possible standard of accountability for equity inclusion engagement ownership collaboration cultural empowerment and justice for all members of
121our school community the final shift is from the concept of leadership to a culture of stewardship if you could live in a world where all people in key positions of leadership ascribe to a truly compassionate and ethical golden rule and they're carrying out of their duties would you choose that reality without a blink of an eye it is likely many of us would accept this there are great examples of people who shine brightly in their leadership roles but if we are truly to keep it 100 100 many of the authority figures in displaying multiple arenas of power are fraught with actions revealing the personal qualities we laced admire the short list would include greed dishonesty hubris intolerance corrupt ethics willfully endurance and apathy let's just say we have great room for improvement in the leadership
122category as the world at large leadership even in alignment with good intentions to a golden rule ethic can be subtly dysfunctional this occurs when a leader genuinely believes that they understand their constituents whether they be voters for a politician student or a teacher or teachers for a principal because they believe they can attach her personal views onto the people they serve and then make decisions based on that likely false projection this presumption of understanding which is misunderstanding can be remedied with a new vision for those in positions of critical responsibility the platinum upgrade is the vision of stewardship stewardship is commonly associated historically with environmental protection and preservation advocacy but has significant relevance in our school institutions a steward is committed to being informed in other words knowledgeable of those in the community and devoted
123to a caring that requires a deep set of listening skills that build the wisdom and insight through communicating with others rather than relying on personal experience a steward realizes the intersection of our cultural and natural spheres this wisdom is due to being involved staying connected and being concerned with people and all our relations and when we say all means all this must include all human beings animals plants the full spectrum of diverse organisms and the essential elements that compose our living planet using this definition there is no way to be an oppressive or authoritarian steward that would be a true oxymoron the through line to the platinum upgrade whether referring to stewardship restorative practice or agreements rather than rules is the ability to share power with others rather than having power over others the ra
124rara miri people who primarily inside in the barranca de la cobre copper canyon in the state of chihuahua mexico have a term in the content of their language the meaning is essentially that one has more power when it is shared but to truly share power in the educational arena we will not we will need to truly understand one another and the challenge the tendency to believe that anyone is likely to think and feel in the same way we do to reiterate that intentions from the beginning this writing is not intended to criticize anybody who advocates the golden rule the golden rule has a time-tested relevance and appropriate placement within various cultural dynamics and contexts plus none of us should criticize anyone's worldwide unless world view unless we have walked a mile in their shoes if
125we do that you're safe says comedian jack candy who continues because then you're a mile away from them and you have their shoes written by wade all antonio all right just a little something to chew on um and uh i think don't want to go too deep into like the processing of this but i'm just wondering if there is anything that kind of uh resonates it's something that's like uh stood out for you challenged you what's what's on your mind in response to them and i know it takes a lot of process you just read it right no okay so i i cheated because i have already read your article okay okay i did it was given to me um i am going to school for educational leadership and i get past a lot of
126articles and i actually read this article and it resonated so much with me um that when i started my school year we actually talked about that because the kids do know that golden rule and so i did teach them that they um because i always promote in my classroom like there's certain things that kids are automatically taught to do like for example respect your elders and i literally don't believe in that um i believe in you respect people because they respect you and so my role in my class is if i'm being respectful of you and you still am being respectful of you then then you will respect me in return so um i introduced this to my kids this year and i haven't i wasn't there for a long time so we will continue
127to talk about that but that article was amazing i've read it multiple times and um so reading this was a little bit more of a confirmation of some of the things that i had already read so it kind of resonated him it's a rewrite from the original article so there's some things i took out and said to me okay that's well i think like my first thought um you talk about rules verse agreements i think that's really powerful and i know everything's super complex but i also go back to the tangible and like when we're thinking of our teachers you know 10 years ago everybody had a poster from lakeshore that already had here are classroom roles on it and i know for me like i saw a shift in really bringing the kids into
128that that first day like this is a blank poster how do you think we should operate in our classroom how do you think we should interact with one another and i mean at the time like when i was teaching i was still call you know it still said class rules but it was developed from them with them um and for the most part they came up with the same things that anyone would make their poster from but they bought into it and they believed it and they they practiced it because it had meaning to them um and so like in hindsight i'm like i wish i had called them agreements when i was in the classroom um but that that was a shift and i definitely saw it changes everything about the dynamics of your
129classroom um because you're no longer saying it kind of goes back to like you know teacher as a facilitator and not pushing things at you is everyone starts to hold one another accountable down to you know teacher don't answer your phone like the kids will say that you know or like hey we need to stay on on pace um and you remove the possibility of power struggles which i think is huge and that is something that escalates a lot of behaviors with our students because of the experience they're coming from and the way people in their lives might have interacted with them um so i just the rules to agreement shift i think is really important and that's like a really that's an easy shift to make i feel the latest iteration of creighton district
130governing board expectations and consider it agreements i thought of that too i second that yeah [Laughter] one of the things about this report that really i'll use it as a plus is that we have i'm not sure how the other schools work but the creighton academy is one of the newer schools that we have and i think they really focus on these agreements the principal has a set of agreements and um that they have for the whole school and they even have the kids teaching them about agreements with nature as well so it's pretty funny because we're integrating and we're teaching these kids how to take care of the environment how to make things better but also how to agree to respect each other so the way that they do it is you know if
131kids are bullying each other or some situation is kids are actually taught to tell the other person like stop and my daughter does this so i know it works because my husband littered the other day and she was like you're supposed to take care of your environment would you like somebody littering on our front porch and i know that she gets that from school because they consistently talk about that at that school so yeah i'm really glad to see um this kind of article that was written even before you knew of our school and we're kind of in that alignment already so that's something that i am proud of the school district that we do take those things and we're starting to little by little realize not only that you know racial equity is important
132but our environmental equity i mean in our own i don't know if you guys know but in our own school district bpa area has three percent cooler than our south side of the district so the fact that we're implementing these things with the environment urban heat and how it impacts our kids and our community like we're already doing that at that school so i it was a really reassuring thing that we're moving forward and making strides in the right in the right way you can't um you can't extract racial equity out of environmental equity right it's it's it's beyond an intersection it's almost like a superimposition of one element of equity well since agreements tended to kind of was an angle how do y'all feel about creating some board agreements and doing our own version
133of that you'll be all right with that um absolutely i gotta say though because when i when i see just even in the expectations it stood out to me when i saw the word respect you mentioned it this morning right okay then we talked about like that sense of offering respect expecting respect i like that that that back and forth you bringing it up around you know do you um you know do you give respect when you're disrespected you know or do you mirror back to somebody you know or or do you perhaps refrain from offering respect you know like how do you deal with that and i think that's critical because um respect is one of these terms that could mean different things of different people right respect me and look me in the
134eye you know and it's like that's not my cultural background or like you know so just there's so so much and that's just that's an obvious one but i think there's many ways in which it can show up even in a board like this when you got you know 85 percent is that official 85 agreement in in all dimensions of who you are is that that that was a fact sophia presented that as a fact this morning that you you agree you are 85 percent i mean we're aligned in the end goal it's different approaches on how we get there and so in that process piece i think ensuring that we are navigating that respectfully because at the end of the day i i truly as sophia said believe that all five of us believe
135in the same outcomes like we're all on the same side yeah 85 to me is actually a little low i once heard that we have we shared like 99 of the dna of a banana if you're only at 85 you got to notch it up at least get to the level of a banana i don't know how true that is we hopefully there's no scientists uh watching this [Laughter] all right they're probably looking it up back you're a great fire uh starter you want you want to build a fire i don't know if i'd say that because you're buying a starter i don't know that he does have i told you my fire story well i want to hear it now is it uh i know right now who asked you no he gonna tell
136you all right supervisor i don't know you want me to tell you yeah right super fast um first job was teaching first grade oh you're doing it i'll start doing this okay and you know we tried to be super you know adventurous creative i actually had kindergarteners and first graders and one of the things that we did was we were trying to build hot air balloons and there's these kits you can get that are pretty pricey that have like crepe paper you know paper and you use light glue and you can build these things and you actually use real fire to heat them up and they slowly fill with warm air and then they float so my kids built but we didn't buy the fancy kids like we did it with we had our paper
137but we had staples masking tape scotch tape elmer's glue all the things we could do to build these balloons and they were massive and they were beautiful and each balloon was like you know probably from the floor about like that so the kids built him we had like six of these balloons we're like okay launched it so but it was windy and so we're like well we can't do it outside because that would be unsafe so we had my propane tank put it in the middle floor and we made a big circle oh yeah we're like okay all right so but they were huge little kids and so my job was to stand on the desk and i held it up i couldn't see anything and the kids had to hold it down here they
138wanted to fill with heat that's all we're doing the first one and these things probably wait 10 pounds surely it's going to float it'll just gently go to the ceiling and it'll come back down beautiful [Laughter] [Music] here and i was like so i dropped it well then it fell on the floor in the middle of the circle and the kids are looking at it and i'm looking at it and it's burning and i'm like oh my god so journals because we were writers back then got the kids journals everybody out so they all run out line up outside and they open i didn't have any windows in the classroom door opens kids run out smoke boom and we got out got the fire out they used their journals a little bit later the principal
139and the head of building maintenance came walking in all of the carpet was just gone what did you do and the kids are like well we're gonna do it again [Laughter] look at that drawing that was a great profile yeah yeah it's like a one-man performance so that's art i have another one from high school but i'll say that it's hard i'm already thinking about who do we have seen the way they want to buy it's the most natural thing to do all right so eric you want to start putting that those flames together and then i'm on it you know what it looks like i'm a little worried everybody check his pockets for lighters and bunsen burners all right so um here's here's the basic question and you can tell me if there's anything
140you want to add to it but the way that we've framed it is let's read it together in order to help build the community as well that's the idea right so that we're stepping into a place where we're thinking about our needs but we're also putting ourselves through that same uh kind of the same level of are we willing to give what we're asking yeah and and hopefully we can create an alignment in that there may be places where maybe that is not possible and that could be part of an agreement as well perhaps there's something i need that i'm not able to give that's okay so i think there's flexibility in there but if we can offer some thinking and um i think the depth of this question and what we need and we
141want to offer in the words that we place around this um is in the context for what it means when we put these words and so if if you feel okay with it um maybe we will ask some questions like when you say helpful what does that look like or you know respect what's what's your way of framing respect this right here is from monte vista this is the student so this is what this is what they put together um some of the things you may want or need from one another might be included here can you read something yeah let's just take this you got uh patience acceptance um authenticity respect i'm gonna save the best one for last love which is a good one too but believe teamwork polite trust hakuna matata helpful
142kindness support thank you there's one here that no one's been able to figure out i think it's a duco and if anyone can translate that it says from here right i think you're thinking of your own community ingredients that is a kitchen and bath wholesaler in fullerton california duco.com okay we need that honesty confidence responsible and dream and the last one i left out was this new word that was formed somehow and i'm like wow we got it we got it we got to call webster's dictionary communication it's a combination of commitment and communication i mean we found it a great communication it means respect it's driven from the uh history of or derived from the history of like duchess duke etc and the expectation of tabao wow so essentially it's in iligano it literally
143means respect or as a verb it means vow so it's probably like a high authority respect because on the mouth just like you know what they were thinking that's different wow okay well there it is google for the win google for the win um so in order to uh support the thinking and collecting and actually i'm going to defer to maybe any left-handers that's a problem you know left-hander on the board i used to be ambidextrous but that was because i broke my right collarbone and came in have you worked on your left lately are you not lately when i taught kindergarten i was still decent at it because i wanted to help kids but it's been a couple years with my left but i can't write with my left because if we had a
144if we had a lefty and a righty so here's what we're gonna do let's um and um take a moment to actually think about this question right so really if we're putting some things around a fire and hopefully there's something we can keep tapping into like a living community agreement we can take things off of it we can add things to it over time so it's a living agreement but to kick us off like what is it that you feel you need from others also willing to give that will help you to feel safe in a space where you could take risks be successful in your work here and be authentic if you wanna use um uh so a strategy if you want if you want to use it all right let's get our scribes
145up so many colors i think one of the words for community agreements that i like is accountability accountability and so heather and lindsay if if you want um you can put the words but i would say if anyone's curious about anyone's contact we can just put the words up and that's fine we can leave it like that we maybe we all understand accountability but if anyone has a question or wants to learn a little bit more let's leave that open so if you all want to ask what do you mean by that we can or can just let it flow so it's up to the group to kind of process so we understand what's underneath if we want that information right what comes to your mind when you say that i mean it in two
146ways i needed it as a self-reflection as a board member like how am i being held accountable and that i'm not doing the disservice and just taking up time on the basis um because there really isn't a way to hold us individually accountable right and i think the only way to do that is by listening to the community i guess but i think that a lot of a little bit more of that needs to happen and also um my role as a board member how am i holding others accountable and not rubber stamping stuff that comes in front of us as the board you know um am i doing my research am i asking the correct questions and sometimes that's hard because as a new board member i've only been here two years i don't
147know all the ropes and ends but that's why i try to take as many professional developments as school board members so you can start learning more about the budget how policy works what does it take to change a policy so i i really like that word accountability and i don't mean it in a negative way it could be something good i could be doing i could have a vision for gardens and not even know where to start but how am i being held accountable that i'm actually out there doing the research and seeing how we can make that go better or you know like with the remodel of the school how are we as school board members being held accountable that our community is actually having an input in that so just accountability and in
148a broader spectrum not necessarily negative or positive that being said sophia um i appreciate that context if there was anything in what you just shared again not offering the context that you feel would add additional support to that contract or if you heard something that you felt like okay that brought up something another word or anything so again and you all have the freedom to to if you feel like something now draws out new concepts you can add that to the fire as well so again every question everything that comes up can draw out uh fuel for the fire yeah and with that for me the way that i've been personally trying to find myself accountable is going into these nonprofits that already do the work in our community and being like okay how is
149this working how does it look like i i don't it's easier for you for us to connect with people who are already doing the work and then instead of creating your own thing you know i think a lot of the times we lose sight of that like um you know we have this one issue let's say teacher pay right and you have already major organizations working on that but then sometimes people feel like they can do it on their own and people start breaking up instead of coming together with already those strongholds that we have so that's how i've been having myself accountable is putting myself in those spaces even though they're uncomfortable and hearing really from those organizations that have the data that in the community because i really do believe that schools isn't
150just the school district it's a school and the community even if your kids don't vote here even if you don't have any kids you're still part of the community and your taxpayer dollars are feeding into our system so their voices and their their problems or whatever need to be accounted for as well one thing i heard as you were talking in order to be accountable on all spheres was like you mentioned research and learning so like i don't know learning maybe trying to think of the best word but i think if we as board members if we come up here and we sit up here and we haven't done our due diligence to understand either beforehand or during the conversation then we're not following through with that stewardship on the flip side i think community
151members and educators you know and all the people that we serve like there's also accountability for them to learn like why did why is your board why is your cabinet making these decisions because there are policies we have to follow there are funding limits you know so i think for everybody it's like taking the time to learn before jumping to a conclusion so maybe education that could be like an educational piece like a really educating harmony may not be the way that i hold myself right accountable so for you going into these organizations or something that you really love to do i don't have that knowledge of like where to start so that might be like education maybe that's something that we want to talk about at a meeting or maybe you want to take
152me along sometimes to shadow you so i think that's definitely educational because you've had collaboration with that yeah because i wouldn't mind doing that right no but it's just i haven't had that opportunity sometimes we don't have opportunities um you know we get so busy with other things in our lives that we don't think about that and that's usually how i am is like i'm busy with all these other things and i didn't have that opportunity but if you give me the opportunity i'll probably do it right yeah i i i'll stick to the one that i mentioned from the beginning respect for the reason that uh be respectful to people's time their money to the feelings to those decisions to the different perspectives on yours to the speech so sometimes uh for example i
153i'm not i'm not religious even though i'm a pastor but but i i have certain things very well rooted culturally probably but then you you see a different person from a different culture and respect their perspective respect uh [Music] when we talk about accountability and you touch that right now so let me put it from from from me like if it was my mistake because i think it's a mistake that because i do things one way and i like him that way and then my perfection is that way and then think of you as if you're wrong because you can do it my way and and i think there comes respect okay this is my way and i'm gonna input into this from my perspective from my time from my feelings from from from me
154and and and that's respecting that diversity we're different but we all need each other because again going back to the fact that at the end of the day we're all working for the same thing but our process and our ways of getting there are different and i think when there's been discord gotten out of hand not just with our current board but in boards over time and in other districts it's because people don't see that like they're not they're assuming somebody's voting a certain way with a personal because of something yeah i don't believe that any of us are but that requires everybody to stop and say okay they voted against her for this but but why they're coming from a certain place i might have different education about it but i don't like the
155word assume that's my only thing too just someone has a better way people are coming in their capacity of positive intention and then that leads into communication too right because with that that i think having the communication is one of the most important things because that's when we can start trusting each other and start hearing each other instead of assuming well she did it this way because because of this to understand right communication for understanding yeah so just uh so i'll offer just a little nuance that you can work with or not um sometimes the idea of a community agreement in a small group can be sometimes it can function well some but sometimes if you say you do a community agreement with a hundred students like we did we did community agreements at monte
156vista how do you get 100 students to agree on something again in a moment like this like how do you have enough conversations to make sure so in some ways you want to think of the idea of an agreement to be an agreement to understand what people need rather than an agreement that like like a rule like we we've kind of agreed to make this a rule for us there's another way that it can be looked at which is like these are some agreements that we are going to practice ways of being that support the needs of the people around us so what that means is you can have agreements and not agree with them so so there is if you want to have a little bit of flexibility a little flexibility where it's like
157you know maybe like i could perhaps say like i don't believe everyone has positive intentions but the fact that i could hear you say that i can agree to practice my ability to relate to your perspective kind of because you've added the part about respect perspective so again it can all work together without having to all agree that these are the things that we all feel passionate about they can be some understandings of what individually people need and we can still put them up there because each of us individually should be also because sometimes what if you're in the minority what if you have an idea that is very different from everyone else does that mean it doesn't get up there so again like just giving you some flexibility as to how you can utilize
158this as a so i'll start that one up i'll put disruption on there and i always talk about that well you're definitely alone on that one i know i am i'm a disrupter and i always say that vocally too because sometimes um these systems have been put in place for so long and you staying silent to them and trying to be respectful sometimes respect them and always work you have to be a disruptive not so respectful person for sometimes people to get out of that mentality and really be like oh crap this is what you really need so i'm a huge believer in disruption i don't believe historically the stuff that's been in place it doesn't work for all people and some kind of disruption has to happen and uncomfortableness has to happen for those
159changes to occur that i believe that there can be respectful disruption and i believe that there should be intentional disruption that's based on education and i also love my favorite word kind is i think you can have a disruption and be kind about about that and climb through all of these um kind is not me yes it's not like a lot of people a lot of people have told me you don't say a lot it's because i've learned to process things before i speak because i used to be very reactive to people and things and i would get really angry about things right off the bat until they would go and find out somebody else's perspective or this perspective and then i made a fool of myself like multiple times so that's why i am
160so quiet a lot of the time because i have to intake all these like this information and try to make the best choice that i think that i can make so it's not that i'm meek or quiet and i literally choose to be positive at board meetings even though that things might be in chaos because that's what i teach my kids is kindness does matter kindness is something that everybody wants and that doesn't mean that like you causing disruption doesn't mean you're not being kind to me but um and and also sophie and i have had multiple conversations about times that we've disagreed and we've both been respectful to each other so that has happened multiple times between us where we're talking sometimes like i don't agree with her she doesn't agree with me but
161it's been respectful and we understand and sometimes i see at the opposite i sometimes i see that respectful disruption is not the answer to though it's been happening nothing's happening and while our bodies are under attack and our family you know at least in my personal experience this is and this is what i say like this is why sometimes things get triggered because of my experiences and i get triggered by it and sometimes it's really hard for me to be patient with the process because it that's a that's one of the things that i struggle as a leader is like this is common sense to me why is it not to some and i'm like i i you know like i'm under attack like see but but but what is common sense but it also
162brings into like like perspectives of where you are sitting and where like maybe i'm sitting right i've been an educator for like over 25 years so i may have this one piece of knowledge right where you're coming from this other place that has another piece of knowledge that maybe i don't bring in and so sometimes it seems very frustrating i think because i don't think we talk enough about it like to understand each other's point of views but yet like sometimes it's attacking instead of having a positive discussion and actually listening to each other and what we're saying and i put trust on there because i feel like we have to trust each other um and i feel like my trust has been broken um sometimes um and i don't want to feel that way
163i don't my kids know at school like i don't like liars and i don't like no people not being trustworthy i just don't have respect for that when i lose respect for people that i tend to just put them off into a plane continuity congruence alignment predictability that goes with um and the unpredictable can be predicted it's predictable um so there's just the notion of goodness and clarity combining trust so when we were out doing all the community listening sessions and then when we were wordsmithing the various goals something that um there were a lot of conversations around with parents teachers um other outside organizations that are within the creighton school district community was this topic of disruption and how disruption is sometimes extremely necessary and like you were saying it doesn't always have to
164be respectful however then what um we kept hearing was well we don't want our school district to just be about disruption because if you disrupt something then you've left somebody's mind right that's not the right word for it um but it's been something's been disrepaired um and so then what came out of it was this idea of we want to disrupt what needs to be disrupted but then we need to make sure that we do repair because we want to prepare our children for the future we don't want to just disrupt something and leave them to pick to pick up the pieces so i just thought that i would add that because i thought it was a really pertinent piece of the conversation and um we we heard from over 200 voices when we were
165doing the strategic planning session and so that's something that came directly from this community and and all of your constituents well i was gonna say like can we add intentional districts like not disruption just for the sake of disruption um but like maybe intentional disruption and repair revolution [Music] cross it all out to me it sounds like you know when you bring a problem right but you also bring solutions i mean that's what it really is like you you have a disruption because there is some sort of problem so solution basically yes instead of just how are we going to solve this problem and if you don't know because i've i come across this multiple times or maybe something at school isn't working for me with my kids like asking people for like what can
166you what can we do to solve this because sometimes you don't know what you can do to solve problems you're asking people to that hope revolution because in mexico for example we have the mexican revolution what is it what is it it means that the government is not independent from spain revolution is within if we didn't attack the government wasn't doing right so there had to be a revolution so one of the to feed off of that and just a little history and the city of i think it's chiapas they have a whole indigenous government that revolution against the mexican government and they live by their own laws and everything and they it happened years ago they're like part of the sapistas yeah they were one of the originals of the mexican revolution and they
167actually lived by their own laws and their own systems because the mexican government wasn't doing what they were doing and it's just crazy because they live like this all separate word but that's where that comes it was a revolution and i think kind of what's funny is like i heard evolution is revolution but that is evolution is a part of revolution like yeah we need to evolve better we need to break down these systems we like and it causes disruption but it's necessary and it can be uncomfortable just like newton's first law of motion the inertia behind ineffective traditions can carry on if there is not an external counter force re-envisioning a new way of relating to one another so i'm hearing all this is like you know the role of the board is to
168be that counter force for productive change and community growth against systems and that's where the disruption happens i mean if we look at it a lot of this stuff and a lot of the progress we have we've made wasn't because the same people were sitting there being quiet it was because movements happened we just went through one two years ago when the black lives matter movement happened historically this has happened in our backyards and nobody was doing anything but a group of people disrupted the system and said enough is enough and has created this i want to say this new trend and i call it a trend because that's i feel like that that's what happened it was a trend that happened two years ago and now where is that where did we leave all
169those talks out you know that's still happening i mean around the corner we had people exercising their first amendment rights that were facing 80 years in prison just for doing that and it was all possibly charged so these are real life situations that are happening to our families in our community and unless we're being that disruption for them that are don't feel powerless or voiceless we're really not doing and i get that as a school board member we have to focus on academics we have to focus but the social worker inside of me always goes go back to the root causes and if we're not being disruptive in what we're doing and breaking down these systems then we're not gonna progress we're just putting on a show basically and like oh yeah we believe in
170this and where are the efforts behind it or where's the actual work behind it it's interesting in that i mean in your comments earlier about privilege i the word that keeps popping into my mind is responsibility sorry that's okay in your earlier comments about privilege and what you just shared the word that keeps popping into my mind is responsibility and it's also kind of in the platinum upgrade right because this is a level of responsibility you know to shift today from you um to have those agreements so yeah and and they gives you that lens of other people's experiences and it kind of ties back into what i said is like that we're not we need to validate other people's experiences even though we haven't gone through it um this morning i read this little
171thing and they talked about um just a racial disparity and somebody said well i don't know what it is to be black i don't know how you feel i don't know this but on the counterpart this other person said well you were there when your wife gave labor right you saw the pain you felt her pain so how are you gonna sit here and tell me that you don't see my pain all we're asking is that you feel the same things that we're feeling and you can you can say and you can't say i understand and i feel but this is why we got put in this position to disrupt those things and seeing how we can make that better because i do feel my community's pain i don't i have food i don't depend
172on people but i know other people in my community don't feel that so what am i going to do to make sure that their needs are being met even though that's not a need that i need or want or or need at the moment i'm wondering if the phrase inclusivity or inclusion or invitation is part of the surrounding agreement here because to be these things in isolation or just in certain groups and what we really seem to be saying over and over is of the whole i don't know if that's assumed or if there's a way for making our community agreement inviting or inclusive i like that because i think we don't talk enough as board members because we have you know we can only talk to one other person and then and there's not
173enough like times like this where we have open to like just open up and discuss things and i think like probably each of us have some ideas that are going on in our head constantly but maybe we don't bring it up with the board or maybe we just don't talk about it and when we're getting when we get in here and we just have this honest conversation then it's like a lot easier for me to like understand um like your intent and where like people are really wanting to go and i probably want to get there with you but when nobody talks about it is like i i don't know how to get there maybe you didn't know how to get there and then we just lose it and we kind of just fall into
174like this pattern right of not doing things so maybe we need like a commitment to meet more often like at these board retreats or something just so we can understand each other i feel like sometimes we come like ready for a fight when we come to a board meeting and then i don't feel like it's as productive as it could have been if we would have just had honest conversations with each other it feels kind of rushed sometimes there is one one thing up and and i i cannot avoid not i'm not planning to excuse myself from what i want to say but i'm explaining uh being the fact that i'm my mind is always thinking about the bible i usually for example when we were talking about uh positive intentions and there are some
175part of the bible says that think of others if you think you're doing good thinking but they're doing the same don't think oh no okay come down and and i will resume to a word that is there but it's love uh but when we talk about for example uh uh treat others as you would like to be treated and you change the word they but then i was thinking okay there's the second commandment as big as the first one the first one is love god in whichever perspective you see god above everything and then love your neighbor as you love yourself so uh here's a situation when when you see someone uh kids i i i was a crushing gun and and and and so i see the kids coming and good morning and then
176my friend tommy said but you tell them again and again if they don't answer to you well girls you don't know what happens at home for example that kid i know him his father left the house and he didn't want to say hi to nobody i know because i went to pray for his mother that's right so but it's okay and eventually after a week or two some girls that they did people need tell me how good morning you look beautiful this morning they look at you where does it come from but i'm trying to to input the love there and and when we do that if we're able to do that then because everything is a good attitude but the only thing that can bond everything together is love is the only thing that
177can mount i can be a oh he's a very educated person he's a very positive person he's a person of integrity but he doesn't love so sorry about that [Laughter] i wonder if there's also just to put out there too if there's any um words in spanish you know they don't translate you know but they have a certain just you know just uh or from other cultural backgrounds that we can put in there like the monte vista put hakuna matata you know so what do you mean because of the movie you know but take it easy so they may be like cultural terms it might be things that we could put up there that maybe could could could work well here we use it for everything right [Music] [Laughter] [Music] oh i don't know what
178that word comes from but we all use it right and it means that you you can mean that you're okay with it it can mean that even if you don't understand it let's pass around step forward and that doesn't really translate and it just means like an active person pushing mm-hmm but yeah yeah like in spanish like it's very common for you to say like meaning like given your own there's some good ones as i'm saying when you bring in other language and cultures like you get some i think i think a cultural word for us is paisano um and i love that because it's really interesting how at least from my perspective like with mexicans especially if i meet somebody that's from the same place we automatically consider that person like part of our
179like and that's a word that how do you i don't even know how you translate that in english but by no means like somebody from where i am some like you're from my home you're something around the country and that gives a sense of the like belonging right and i think that was a really important thing for me when i first came here yeah when i started meeting people who were from mexico like i was i was like they share the same experiences that i have they share the same you know traditions or whatever it is and we were going through it together so those were my questions there's a venezuela guy came through and we gave him to fly to florida i gave him my last hundred dollars and a friend called him from
180from orlando come i have a job for you so he spent fifty dollars to go and when he got there he got kicked out the wife didn't want him so he spent the other fifty dollars to go back to to miami nothing three in the morning he was sitting on outside of the airport and and and he was hungry nowhere to stay in venezuela and there comes a guy from chile he goes did you do anything he goes no no i'll teach you so he took him and he paid a hotel for three days and the only thing that i remember he was you know what pastor we're all migrants here even the gringos we're all migrants here some of us cross a river some across a huge ocean or some of us work right
181here as a slave without but everybody is a migrant and it speaks to creating harmony within your community and the interconnectedness of everything of all people throughout a community as well as our nature are it's based off of the navajo like the four sacred mountains um but i love that word i carry it a lot in my and knowing that harmony doesn't necessarily mean peace and sunshine and rainbows but that harmony is we are truly finding we're finding the beauty in everybody and what everyone brings to the table and we are creating balance and that sometimes you have to do disruption to create that balance and going back to that equity um but that words create a lot for me in my life and i see a lot of communities and students and families that
182it means a lot too and i think one good word too that might be a little controversial maybe would be reparations and reparations can be in any sense it can be how are we doing paying reparations to our teachers for all the hard work that they're doing to our classified staff for the things that they're doing how are we dismantling these systems that historically have affected our brown and black kids and or indigenous kids and how are we paying reparations and how our policies that we're even accepting in the district has a focus of reparations on repairing the harm that it's done for them to evaluate or elevate or get them to the place where they need to be i think that ties to this disrupting i'm just a disrupter guys sorry no but i
183think it's good there's a theme like if we're doing this to the systems that are traditional schooling or doing operations not just on a specific race or a group of people it's literally on the disservice that our american education system has done to old candidates like testing for 100 years beauty and balance you know um yeah so again this is uh this is something that and i i i'm curious if this is something i mean i guess everything you do is public right right so again like i i'm feeling like this can be something that can can live with us there may be words that we want to add more context there may be words on there that if it is in a public space they might wonder like revolution uh hello like what's going
184on you know uh reparat like you know some of these words that could again like trigger something like what's this word that i've never said like i've never seen something like that what could that be so again it's it's opportunities though i think for relational you know relationship building uh and i think it's i think it's powerful um just before we kind of pivot i think towards lunch i think that's kind of where we are so um just again i'll reiterate the question what do we need um to feel safe to feel successful um in our professional capacity here and to feel like we can truly be ourselves that's a key piece of it too right so those three things safe safe successful and to truly be ourselves authentic yeah so again if you just
185think does any word pop into your head when you think of these ideas um i would like um to make an edit to what you just put in on there um i would like to change it to hold space the spaces should be put in place already but how do we continue to holding those faces so these yeah because she put create space and i think um changing it and changing our perspective of already coming in into a place where we already have this space for these parents community members or students how do we hold that space for them instead of saying creating you know we don't that should be created already we should be focusing on how do we continue holding the spaces so we do have that constant communication so we could be
186found accountable you know to answer your question earlier i'm wondering if there's an i don't know where it was in a can perhaps best be protected uh when we are critical or disruptive of ideas and not the character or uh human being you know and you know you don't you you might want to say that idea is terrible to me because uh but you don't necessarily need to say you are terrible uh because you had that idea so i don't know what the phrase is to capture i feel like being kind to capture that phrase okay i'll go back to sophie and we've had talks before and we can be kind to each other and still disagree with each other when we see each other next time there's no hard thing yeah we've talked about
187that because it goes well it's like you said yeah we might put up some of these words our triggers but we're by by putting putting them down we're holding a space to have those conversations by changing our language when we disagree with somebody's idea we're holding a space to do that in a productive way that's not attacking a person and we're using integrity when we're having those conversations you know i will say and i'll be curious with eric and susan and jake if you've heard something that perhaps has been shared with with the board members that you feel like could actually come out come out as an additional agreement because i i've been holding on to one since the beginning which is uh you talked at the beginning when you offered the word respect you
188you listed multiple ways of showing respect that i felt all could be agreements in and of themselves you talked about respect of culture you talked about the respect of like perspective you know you you named it feelings right so like like there are maybe some spaces that we can build just a few few more a little bit more framework because i as i'm hearing you say attacking the idea but not the person to me that goes back to your reference to like respect perspective right so i don't know maybe if there's a way you want to incorporate the concept of the acknowledgement of respecting perspective because perspective does create that separation from the person i was thinking about what you're saying about safe embrace successful and being yourself you're from my perspective a lot of
189times i need to get out of my safe zone instead of oh yes in order to to to keep that uh identity being myself and it happens in in everywhere now so it is either okay i keep safe i keep it to myself and then being successful and this is my experience martin luther king he died he never see what whatever came out of so sometimes we feel unsuccessful because we're not seeing what we're pursuing but uh still keep be faithful to yourself on the mosaic is what i call that a tile on the mosaic you see the tiles over there i put one tile on there i have no idea what it did for the beauty of that entire project but i got one tile and you know which one is it no i
190and yeah but what i'm saying is that might be i don't know which one is i don't know if i made a difference and i have this tile that i worked so hard on this one tile and did that did it make a difference and i don't know until maybe i see it 10 years later and there it is on the mosaic or like when you affect a kid like you bring some positivity in their life and you didn't even know that you did that until maybe after they graduate and they come back and visit you and they tell you like what you did for them yeah and at the time you had no clue that you meant that much to them or you changed your life in that way there was a concert in
191tucson community center and and i see this kid playing the guitar like santana will be jealous so when he comes out and i'm a guitar player so i approach him on the side and go good job he will take your t-shirt wait who are you he goes don't you remember me i don't even know where you are he was you taught me how to play the guitar no i don't play like you because well you play me uh two or three tournaments heroes but you were my teacher in church what happened well my parents got divorced but the passion for the music comes from you don't tell nobody they don't want me to play i don't play like you do you much better so successful maybe when the kid left i felt sad because he
192left i never got to teach him nothing he wasn't even good i had all the kids that learned better than him had a point successful to what extent am i going to be able to see the success i think that's something as elected officials too you have to remember like people talk a lot about this like with the presidency because that's a big thing and like you can't blame or celebrate like a current president's like the state of things for the current president who's you're too in because really what's the state of things is from previous terms and i think that applies all the way down to the social level yeah but it applies all the way to the local levels too i think our school board members can be very impactful but don't always
193necessarily see that impact like the this is another funniness with the seeds we're planting with like the garden projects and all of these things like we may or may not be on the board when all of that comes to life um back all the way to reality yeah i mean like i feel really lucky because like an example is i when i was employee here like and i was a part of the committee making a decision about what school did we tear down and like i am starting to get to see the product of that and that whole evolution but a lot of what we're doing now is laying the groundwork for changes that will take time so it's just something to keep in mind yeah and i think even even without adding more words
194i think we've created so much story and connection you start drawing arrows but i think we're holding a lot of that right just hearing one another so you know um again thank you this let's offer a round of applause [Applause] um so the question now is like if we don't uphold these what should the punishment be get off the board well i think the question is you know that when i think about beliefs turning into actions and i think about how we say it well we just said it modeling is i think number one so we say it we model it we organize for it just the holding space piece we protect it so when it's not happening we go hey that's not aligned with our community agreements or i don't feel that that's aligned
195with my community our community and then we reward it like what a kind engagement or what a wonderful way for us to work on reparations or what uh you know or jojo i feel so you know so those are the five attributes that i attest to in terms of you know statements more than just words model organize for it reward it protect it we have to protect these when it's not happening with love and kindness so let's take a let's take a quick moment is this good time to break for lunch yes okay so let's do this let's like as just a quick like exit for everybody um let's think of uh let's take let's take on the reward yeah we should i think offered so let's reward ourselves with a lunch right now in
196order to do that um let's just go around the table and um pick one of these agreements that you feel like this morning we did a really good job of like collectively like collectively you felt the spirit of that agreement already in practice so so just pick one as we go around the circle i'll start with one and um i gotta go with it because even though not all of us knew it i felt like we had it going was that for me is what i mean i'm so glad it's on this the first time i've ever seen what i lay around the fire it just needs to be around a lot of fires you know so i'm going to say disruption but that's no shocker to anybody i'm going to go with hojo i
197just love it i felt it the second we walked in the room it was just a sense of goodness in the air no illusion i'm gonna go with communication for understanding because i think we've spent a lot of time on that this morning not just letting people say but asking clarifying questions i'm gonna go with kindness i think regardless of how disruptive something is or if it's even a revolution the difference in kindness is whether you're inspiring someone or shutting them down trust i feel like there's a lot of trust building happening i think the community is on trusting in the board and the board i was hoping we could also hear everybody's reflection on how this was an effective manner to do a self-evaluation as you kind of walked us through the attributes of
198expectations now agreements if we wanted to tweak it so what did you think about this as a method for self-evaluation i thought this method really worked because it gave us an opportunity to discuss with each other on why we do certain things or why our leadership roles or styles are a certain way and it gives us a better understanding on maybe some of the things that some of us were doing we thought that it was bad intent on it or maybe um some of us felt disrespected because they weren't seeing it the way that we were seeing it but having been holding holding the space with this communication i think really gives us a better understanding of the positive intent on why we're doing it and you know just even sharing you're hearing you speak
199that what really caught caught me is when you were saying that you know i say i'm not racist but sometimes that that stuff is like work and sometimes you have to reflect and that happens to all of us on the daily so even that and me and the retrospect this really helped me that maybe not everybody is at the level that i am and sometimes i get impatient with that and i like i said i want everybody to be like hello this is what's happening but it it if i'm not communicating and i'm not using the time to educate or take the or give the other people the same tools that i've been using then i can expect people to think or feel the the way that i am if those are not shared so
200that was a big reflection on myself too that on how to be patient how to know that just because you're not seeing it the way it doesn't mean that you're not doing it in bad intent it just means that maybe there's a little bit more education that needs to come from that to get to that point um we're all at different levels and i think that's what's hard for me um that i want all this to be at the same level right when you know kind of going back to i think what he said when i'm at the level i want all of us to be at that level and i know it doesn't work that way so for me really the communication and the um intent behind people um was a big thing and
201a takeaway and i think um my leadership will be better of it because we have these conversations i think like a take like a practical takeaway too for me i i think as a board we tend to have more discussion when there's something that we think we all disagree about but maybe something that we can kind of commit to is like when we agree with the direction of committee or whatever is going in explaining more like i know i try to do this but i'm like just reflecting and thinking well i could explain more on why i'm supportive of this instead of just kudos you know like i see that you've done this work and this directly relates to this like i think that would make a difference from the view of the public as
202well like um that no we're not just sitting quietly because we're like yes you know going back to like rubber stamping like we're not discussing it because we're not like well there's something wrong with it but having that transparency and being almost overly communicative about why we are supporting the direction this adoption this whatever it might do you feel about me be the word kudos on to the agreements i'm giving kudos well it just feels like it's the spirit of kudos like often of kudos is that something well i think it's offering the kudos and explaining why we're offering it instead of it just being a shallow like good job and we say that even when we're talking about professional development with our teachers like you don't want to just tell a kid like it's
203not authentic feedback or meaningful feedback to say great job awesome it's meaningful feedback to say i as a board member i am very much in support of this plan that you your committee has developed because you have targeted these needs you know you have taken these funds and stretched them in this way you know like being explicit about why we're giving maybe more intentional meaningful things yeah yeah this is what we do if there's a word you want to put up there no i think like meaning yeah like meaningful feedback because like i said i think we we only give we get kind of stuck in a we only give that feedback when we have tough questions to ask or kind of criticism you know but we don't offer the same amount of time and
204discussion when it's we recognize you're doing really amazing work how has this process been for you as a self-reflection for the board to evaluate itself well i think just thinking like i believe that and i have said this like i i always have believed that we've all wanted the same thing at the end i think there's been dysfunction in our communication on how we get there um so i think going back to like heather's point of just being able to to talk about it and being able to remind ourselves that you know my education my experience is different than on health is different than sophia's it's different than yours different than amy's and we're all coming to it with different layers of information and education as and i think that for me this almost feels
205like a recommitment of something i think we started with two years ago but not out of any purposeful means maybe just out of a lack of communicating we've kind of started to feel definitely disrupted yeah this has been like a rejuvenation of like these are the commitments that we made to one another a year ago two years ago and we need to be more intentional explicit in our communication to make sure that we don't steer away from it again are you going to say something sorry you know what i hear everybody saying but i don't see it up at the end of the day all we do is it all goes back to the kids yeah i i agree how are we being held accountable so it's easier for the kids you know how are
206we being disrupted so those systems are easier for the kids um how are we educating our parents so they can better assist their parents everything goes back to the kids because i hear it yeah but let's let's define it let's put it in neon and that's what child centered means is having all those aspects because we're modeling yeah heather what's your reflection on this self-evaluation method i would rather do self-evaluations like this on paper i have you know it's like when you text people when you have good intentions but then when they read it right it's like what do you mean like and then you get all upset right because you're like thinking one way right and then you're like no i'm just like joking like it doesn't translate yeah you say it went away
207in your head and it's really funny but you're like whoops so um i i like this self-reflection because it seems like a really safe place it's all like a safe place for me today i don't feel like you know when i get really like nervous or upset or you know i feel it like right here um and i felt like we were all open and honest and um that we all have maybe a little bit better understanding of like the places that that we come from like lindsay said with the different amounts of understanding of things and where we come from and i just i mean i enjoy doing this a lot and i think that because it's written down because we created it i think we will also be accountable to each other and
208making sure that this is something that we do and if we are not doing it that we will politely call each other out and say you know remember this i'm intending this or whatever so i like the agreement remember you can always call out by calling in and i think you are doing that yeah um i've heard you say the same word a few times it's not up there but perhaps it's just kind of embedded in your statement around trust but i've heard you mention honestly so that's like my number one like um like character trait is honesty because as soon as you lie to me i'm done yeah and i that's that i've experienced that multiple times like throughout my life and so that's what i mean i think it goes with for integrity
209uh i'm sorry but you're about to say i'm a person of integrity according to one rule but because i was trying i always struggled trying to translate from spanish to english and vice versa so accountability is stewardship with responsibility because uh but when i when i first came to the board and it was my appointment by uh being elected uh i remember when i was reading all the paper that i was agreeing it was scary reading that i was uh i needed to be uh to have accountability to the community to to everyone for for being selected to doing this job and and uh sometimes we think we're doing that the things good but accountability means that hey somebody can call you and ask for an explanation and and accountability is a big word it
210is it's not like i'm a heavy burden to have if they tell you if you're not doing your job you have to get down he goes make me no we don't have to make you that's why you have a country honesty integrity you need to get so that's a scary word for me i'm sorry but i like it i like it i'm grateful like at the beginning you ask like do we just want to put words up or do we want to clarify and discuss them and i i pushed for the discussion because going back to most of these words you can put up and if you asked any given hundred people they would have a very different definition of them so it's important that we not only have yeah not only have these words
211as agreements but that we have had these discussions today to agree what those words mean ongoing decisions yeah for us what we came up with does not apply necessarily to everyone listening um and that's okay but we as a board need to have a common language even though we have three languages at least orderly i don't know what it is that's what makes it so beautiful in the dictionary well before we take a lunch recess can we give way to a round of applause [Applause] [Laughter] yeah thank you so much for your insight i think you really the vision that i um when dr lewis and i were talking this is exactly the what i envisioned so i really appreciate the time i appreciate the hard conversations um obviously sometimes these words make us feel
212a little bit uncomfortable but i think it's for the better good and we're doing it out of good intentions for our kids and our community so i think that's the most important thing and now we can go have lunch thank you everybody thank you well first of all amanda and colleen have been our new partners in strategic planning this past 14 months or so hasn't it yeah um a yeoman's job of scrubbing what we've been through where we are you know strengths and weaknesses you know and getting the community input i think we've had over 200 voices this round i think just playing 400 last night and what was interesting is this has just been an interesting intensity of conversation i have so enjoyed the various uh speaking of information that hernandez brought to us
213you've had a couple of updates from amanda weren't you with us in january so actually when actually when we began this process the board meeting was the first meeting that colleen and i had and that yep last summer and then colleen came back and met with everyone i believe it was january and and now i'm here today so our objective last year was to create a strategic planning process that would re-fortify where we are especially after you know not a disruption by choice but you know you know we really have been in a hangover uh of sorts following and we're still bumping along but nevertheless the productivity was outstanding so amanda also two years apart just like they do yeah yep that's so crazy it would be hard to define who was there right [Laughter]
214you don't want to get into that one i'm so amanda share with us where we are and what you're thinking and where this ends up going is it becomes our goals as we break them down so the end of the hour and a half or so that we have together we'll have a sense of what this year will be about thank you um and i think i think where you started when you were mentioning the pandemic and things i think that as we have this conversation it is really important to remember the context of where where were where we were where we are now and therefore where we're headed um because of course the context is very important in keeping all of that in mind um and so initially you'll see on the printouts in
215front of you um i have this listed as the evolution of our tent but based on the discussions today so again more context that we're pulling into these discussions i have since revised this to the revolution of our tent uh yeah thank you yeah [Laughter] and when i'm talking about our tent i'm talking about the table tents right because the blue table tents that that we had at the table when when we first began this last summer um were was the result of the last strategic planning session it was the strategic plan that we had in front of us at all times and um so as we have these discussions it's really it's really looking at not so much abandoning what we had before not so much saying criticizing what there was before and saying
216we need to start over from scratch or build something new instead i i think that the angel you were you were saying in spanish revolution has a very different meaning even than than revolution in english right it comes from within and i think that that that philosophy revolution what's been coming from within and how it how we are using that as an impetus for change is so important to the conversation that we're having today because that's really what we've experienced over the last 14 months we got over 200 voices together we had community and i'll go through this in a moment but we had community listening sessions we worked with the strategic planning team who who drafted initial drops drafts we also worked then with the leadership council who who worked hand-in-hand to also write
217those drafts and so as we're going through this today they're not my words they're not any one of our words they really are the words of the community after going through this process of revolution so i just wanted to pull that in to the conversation that we're having um so as i said though it has been this this revolution um and and what we heard when we did those listening sessions is that the vision of the creighton school district the mission our beliefs who we are all of those align still and you'll see that the table tends that did emily create these okay you'll see that the new table tents that emily created they have the same words the vision the mission our beliefs who we are we heard from everyone these still very much
218um embody the creighton school district and they still very much um are fitting to who we are however let's continue to grow let's continue to move forward let's think about what we need now given the context of everything that's been going on so while these remain the same mission vision beliefs who we are adventurous thinkers collaborative learners kind-hearted leaders we need to think about how do we get from our past and hurdle to our future so you'll notice on the slide i have this this man jumping from from one cliff to the next you'll notice i'm using a camping theme as uh sort of inspired by the table tents that we had um and he's holding a compass right here and the compass is this the heart of who we are right it's our guiding
219light we've come to embody this so these are no longer our goals which is what the strategic plan was it was goaling us for these these are no longer our goals these are no longer something that we're working towards we are adventurous thinkers we are collaborative learners we are kind-hearted leaders so what are we going ourselves then with next and so the answer of course is it's time for a new adventure so what is that new adventure then we heard from everyone that we want a singular priority tai actually gave us taiwan actually gave us the the definition of priority that then everyone really got behind the definition of priority was there's only one priority right you can't have multiple priorities you have one and it's your focus and everyone agreed just like you did
220today when you were talking about the campfire that at the center of everything are the children and so then our singular priority is that children in creighton school district are empowered with foundational skills adventurous thinking collaborative learning and kind-hearted leadership for achievement in high school and beyond so we're still going to carry that who we are with us it's still our priority it's our north star but then we need to think about what does that mean for goals how are we going to get there how are we going to implement this over the next three years and what we heard from all of you at the very first board meeting was very much the same that this captures who we are and we don't want to lose this and now we want more implementation we
221want to better understand the how putting the thoughts into action and really understanding how do we accomplish this and how do we measure the progress that we've made and we heard that from parents we heard that from students we talked with kids congress we heard that um from the learning council or excuse me the leadership council rather we also heard that from other community members that came and joined us the strategic planning team we heard that really resoundingly from everyone we love this and so we put together these goals and i'm calling them the packing list and that is again keeping with the theme in order to get to that priority what do we need to pack what do we need to pack for foundational skills adventurous thinking collaborative learning and kind-hearted leadership we need
222academic excellence the creighton school district prepares and inspires students to graduate from any high school and be successful in their future endeavors we need health wellness and safety the creighton school district cultivates a safe and thriving community through healthy habits social connectivity and emotional nourishment we need to pack community and family engagement into that that backpack the creighton school district commits to building and maintaining relationships through trust engagement and investment in the community and then of course access diversity equity inclusion which really mirrors the conversation that you are all having today the creighton community advocates for equity and justice identifies and eliminates internal oppressive systems and ensures access to learning opportunity and success again these are not my words these are not any individuals words these are the words that came together um from hearing
223over 200 voices and then was actually committed to paper by the strategic planning team and the leadership council that actually um initially it was diversity equity inclusion um and then and then it was overwhelmingly um asked or or put to paper that that we needed to include access um and and interestingly enough to the conversation earlier disruption was inherent first and people felt really strongly about including disruption uh but then the point you brought up about that we just had so much disruption during covid some parents said to us we've our children have had so much disruption in their lives we understand within the context of this goal while why you're using that word but disruption right now we our children need to repair like i said and so then the conversation became how do
224we disrupt and repair what is then the end result of that and that's how they came up with this goal advocates for equity and justice identifies and eliminates internal oppressive systems and ensures access to learning opportunity and success it was really this concept of we disrupt and then we repair what do we want once we've repaired uh and so then i i know i've been hinting at all of this but if if we look back at the adventure since last summer we had the strategic planning steering committees we had three sessions uh one was was cancelled due to omicron the omicron variant um but we had three sessions we had now three sessions with the governing board four sessions with leadership council we also had nine listening sessions um which we held one session at
225every school and we also met with kids congress um then we um worked with the community and the district to analyze the input the data that came together uh you'll notice i added to this slide the platinum upgrade rather than operating with assumptions and talking with the board and administration and you know maybe just principles and just at that high level saying what what are you hearing is needed we actually went to the school sites and we asked the parents we asked the students we asked community members who um work in collaboration with with this school to say what do you need and what is important to you that way we're not operating with the golden rule we're and we're instead operating with the platinum upgrade um and then from there like i said we
226we worked to gain alignment around what's important for the next three years that that's where the idea of a priority and goals to get there came out of then we drafted and refined then we thought about indicators of progress and what we're calling adventure planning so we built a plan for the next year um and we thought about indicators of progress how will we know that we are making progress and then we are now um at the point where we are finalizing the priority in the goals with those indicators of progress and adventure plans and then also building out year one goals so then you'll see again the compass is right there as we look to summit the first peak the first year because there's three peaks in this analogy again inspired by the table
227ten what does our year one adventure planning look like and um it's my understanding that everyone has a printout yes the goals okay so everyone has a print out of the goals i didn't want to put those up on the slides because it's it's a lot of words um and so feel free to look over those adventure plans um but but really what i want us to what i wanted to focus on what i wanted to emphasize with this slide is that we are going to start initiating year one really we're there right maybe the year one has begun we're going to be reviewing our progress using those indicators of progress and then we're going to need to adapt review progress adapt then we get to the top of the summit and we will celebrate
228at the end of this year the reason that uh reviewing progress and adapt is so key is what i heard from all of you and from everyone else we talked to which again is yes this is us yes we don't want to lose this and we want to understand what progress we've made and then we want to be able to adapt and adjust to ensure that we are always relevant and responsive to the community that we serve if kovitz taught us nothing right it's that we have to be willing to adapt and adjust and so this this is building in that process the adventure plans that you have in front of you are not meant to be something that's set in stone but rather it's a living breathing document it it's it's actually a google
229doc because it's meant to be revised and adjusted as needed based on the indicators that we are going to be tracking so then our roadmap if you will for the next year is that today i'm here at this governing board uh meeting we will be meeting with goal leads so there will be a lead designated to oversee each goal there are four oversee each goal and ensure that we are implementing ensure that we are tracking our progress ensuring that we are adapting as needed who are the people who are who are those leads and who's choosing those leads who are those leads the strategic planning steering committee is the big body and that is a committee of staff who can sign up we also have all the community engagement and outreach specialists from each school
230and then we bring in at their invitation parents from each school so it's a real broad body and then people take operational leadership of the goals as administration so academic excellence that's myself and dr berg health wellness and safety that's emily and scott um child justice and advocacy that's chris hartsev and lyndon mckeever and then i know i'm missing the next one community engagement and outreach and that's yvonne russell is part of that as well so we've got like the volunteer and opt-in with parents and then we have some organizational alignment for staff and to be clear the goal leads are not the one not not the individuals responsible for doing actioning the item they're going to be the ones responsible for tracking and holding us all accountable to ensuring that we're doing it so
231colleen and i will be checking in with those goal leads um we've three set meetings but we can meet more as needed um and and they will also be reporting to all of you to let you know what progress and how things have been tracked you'll notice if you look at the adventure planning there's distinct measurement tools that we're using to track that progress and there there are distinct metrics that have been tied um we're trying to make it so that it is as objective as possible for us to track our progress um and and also build in that ability like i said to adapt as needed um the strategic planning um steering committee that we that we worked with to design all of these goals we will also be meeting with three times over
232the next calendar year more if needed um and and like uh dr duppin just mentioned um in that in that case it is parents it is other community members from um we have neighboring schools we have neighboring organizations um it's also um some pr principals and teachers and ceos who are also going to be there um community engagement no what would there community engagement and outreach specialists thank you um so that is generally the groups that we will be meeting with um and again there is going to be there are metrics tied to all of this for us to track and there is an open loop there's there's the intention to do the feedback loop once again so that we are hearing from folks in the community rather than drawing assumptions and so the next
233adventure begins um first of all i'd love to open it up to questions also i want us to spend our time today in thinking through as a board we will be we will be asking everyone who has a role in this district what they want to do for the next year in order to help make this a reality and so as a board i'd like to work with all of you today on thinking through what is our role in all of this and how do we want to commit to driving this forward for the next year but first i want to open it up to questions that was a really good one that you asked me yep so um as an example um academic excellence here if you look at it up here at the
234top academic excellence is the goal for the end of three years and then there's the desired results so what we want what what results we desire at the end of the three years then we worked backwards and we said all right if this is what we want to have accomplished at the end of three years what what do we want to have accomplished at the end of year two what do we want to have accomplished at the end of year one and then we asked if that's what we want to have accomplished at the end of year one what needs to be accomplished in quarter four at the end of year one quarter three quarter two quarter one and so then you can see this check boxes if you will are what um the commitments
235are to action and accomplishments for the next year and again these are not something that i designed they're not something that any one person designed it's something that was designed by the strategic planning steering committee and the leadership council and i colleen and i will be meeting here three times with you um and so we will of course be uh we are committing to to exactly that and then i also believe correct me if i'm wrong that the goal leads will be providing updates as well um we're looking at the academic um excellence and i see aggregate passage rates will increase by a certain percentage rate what data are we pulling that off of because just to go back to what he was saying about exact path i feel like the last two years because
236of covet we've been basing are we are doing better because of exact path but that's the problem that i've had with my kids too that it's all stuff that they've already known so we're showing an increase of potentially meeting this 8 to 12 but based off of stuff that they already knew okay so this is state testing this is not going to be like the internal no it's passage rates on state tests so i guess okay so i guess my question with this is we haven't been doing this or meeting our goals for the past five years so what are we going to do differently this time that's going to make a shift change in the next two i also find i guess i asked the reason why i asked who was leading those because
237it's the same administrators or people leadership that have been and we haven't gotten those results so why do we keep going to the same people who haven't given those results in the past past five years and we're giving it back to the same people so really really excellent questions i'm going to try to explain it was sort of a two-part question i'm going to try to explain both parts if i miss something call me out yeah i'll go back so um so part one what are we going to do differently well in part we've already done it we are already by building in this process we are not operating under assumptions we are actually building a what we were called calling adventure planning so that we're turning those thoughts into action and we're thinking through
238what steps are we going to be taking each quarter in order to make a difference here also um this this very process that we've now um that we began the adventure process here and that we are going to be continuing to do with this summit it's it's different it's it's unique it's something that that the district itself built through the revolution um as opposed to something that you know colleen and i or any other outsiders are putting on you to say this is what you need to do so so this was built by your very constituents to say this is the outcomes that we want to see and here's how we want it to be done and so therefore yes you are right to say that it is the same leaders in administration who are
239overseeing these however again they are overseeing them they are not responsible for actually making it happen the making it happen and those responsible for making it happen were included in writing these goals themselves that's why it was so important to have leadership counsel included in that so that principles and teachers could tell us what is realistic what is attainable also at the same time what will push us in order to be able to um ensure that we are closing this gap because like you said we haven't for the last five years um one thought i have with this academic excellence if this is is this written in stone or can we make editor changes nothing is written in stone we can make edits and changes i would i absolutely want to hear your input i
240want to record it it's not me who's going to make those changes though it's strategic planning team leadership council the very folks who are responsible for um actioning these items they are they are the very folks who are responsible for writing these goals so but yes i do want to hear the input well the one of the things is that i think the most important to have academic excellence is how we're um have involving our parents and i don't see that we're targeting anything with their parents or the you know we have 200 parents but how many kids do we serve we serve about 4 kids and out of those 400 4 600 kids that we serve hypothetically speaking we only have two parents or 200 community members involved our community is a broader spectrum
241than that so i guess tying it back to that how are we getting our parents to be more academically involved i think that should be a benchmark that we should focus on too just because the more parents we have involved in their children's education it's the more support that was actually a huge conversation with the strategic planning steering committee that was that we spent a very goodly amount of time on precisely this conversation um and it was actually parent-driven parents saying to us we want to and need to be more involved with our with our children um but we need to know how and so when they actually wrote this um while in the academic excellence in the goal it says that children are are prepared and inspired to graduate from any high school and
242be successful in their future endeavors while it's not here calling out every every person responsible for achieving that the sentiment of this is very much teachers parents larger community and you'll notice in the adventure planning there are pieces about what the responsibilities are for teachers for students themselves for parents because you're exactly right and i think we already have that some in place because i mean i know that our community ad offers even like high school diploma classes and that's a big important thing that we have because we're giving those tools for our parents and then eventually you know they they go on and see but i i just feel like um the parent participation is one of the things that we i mean not just so we i just in general absolutely in general
243and i would like to but now if you're saying that's integrated but i i like i would like for us to be a little bit more intentional of having and crack and line nights are starting which is awesome i know that for the past two years we didn't do that and that's a really great way to get parents involved in curriculum one night because they talk to us about the curriculum we have some input which is great but um i'm wondering like building off of that because i can see why because as soon as you said that i was like well is it mentioned in the community and family engagement piece which supports academic excellence right like i can i can understand why there's nothing in here that explicitly under academic excellence that says educating
244parents because all of these goals support one another that being said in the community and family engagement everything in here is amazing and wonderful but it's i do feel like there's uh like i see the word empowerment but it's like empowerment to decision making i'm not seeing as much about empowering parents to be academic partners if that makes sense like kind of going to what you're saying like empowering adults in the community to be educated themselves as well like there's a lot about relationships and helping make decisions but not necessarily about how are we educating families and so what parents ask for is that they want to have more open communication with their teachers um that was that was an explicit ask so you'll notice that that's included in there um and then they they
245asked to be now that um some of the coded precautions have been opened or adjusted a bit they're asking to be able to be on work on campus more um and so having family nights um there was there was an event that was that was discussed um that that parents would like to bring back um and then you're exactly right with the education piece it wasn't so much about parents weren't saying to us we want you to educate us it was more we want to understand how to advocate for our children um and so you'll notice that's built in there as well i added in power right here though to make sure that we um circle that back and have that that expressed conversation powerful word that you know regardless of topic like whether it's
246advocacy whether it's how i can reinforce phonics like but it's really empowering that they are partners absolutely and then to circle back again sophia you'll notice that this piece about parents participation with teachers is hinted at if you will with the academic excellence because that was a big piece of the conversation and then we really have it driven home with the community and family engagement okay yeah this is this is great though so keep firing away i want to collect everything that you all have to say i really like um just to give a positive feedback i really like access i think um the pandemic really showed us that just because we're offering the tools doesn't mean that everybody has the same access to those tools um and one of the things was wi-fi right
247one of that was one of the biggest things that people struggled with and i'm glad that we have those partnerships but really focusing on like the access like yeah we know this is expected from our families but do they have transportation that's access um are they being fed that's access do they have the money to buy the materials that's all access right and i think that goes back to our main goals of trying to be as inclusive as we can is knowing that not all of us have the same access to things so looking at that perspective is i really like that so thank you for that it's not me it needs to be thanked it's the strategic planning steering committee truly i agree with you what else this is all really great input i'm
248always drawn to anything that is a singular focus so i think when you've said priority having that single priority and having that statement and power as soon as you said that my uh my antenna was like okay wordsmithing yeah a little bit um i feel like the soul in the adventurous thing like there's there's like there's real power in this there's love in this kind hearted uh collaboration but then you end on achievement and to me that feels like a buzz kill honestly and um i'm wondering if there could be some incorporation of impact or maybe social impact you know some benefit to our world that's kind of beyond the confine of the idea of achievement that that's kind of just what caught my attention when you talked about a singular focus it becomes even
249more singular right down to the word achievement because all that is towards achievement in high school and beyond keeping it achieved achieve achieve you just i feel like maybe that's it i think that is such a key point um and i i will absolutely bring that back to the strategic planning steering committee i can also share with you just to give you a little more context on why that is there specifically is that what we heard and keep hearing from parents is we love foundational skills adventurous thinking collaborative learning kite harder leadership that's why we're here that's what keeps us here um you know that core of who we are that heart what the values the approach the philosophy that's what keeps us here that's what makes this school this district so unique and especially
250coming out of the pandemic we want our kids to read we want our kids to write we want our kids to be able to do math and to your point about the the gap right why do we have this gap how do we close that gap and so that's why the word achievement is in there um for high school and beyond because that's what we keep hearing um and again not my words um however i think that i think that your point is well taken and i wonder if there isn't some wordsmithing where we can still include that but like you said it doesn't become the heart and soul of who we are the spirit of that this the spirit and the kind of the natural i think tendency when there is something that's so
251tragic like the gap that you see is to eliminate the magic like so it just reminds me of like oh our kids are you know they can't do basic math so let's get rid of the music and get rid of the dance get rid of the theater and like they need more math actually what they don't need is more math what they need is more reason to be there more reason to connect them to the world so that they have more sense of ownership to do math right so that to me is kind of the in as a the motivation i think excellent point and and when we came in what we learned from all of you is that previous to this last strategic plan things were very like uh about how are we testing
252what are our scores right so we went from there to swinging the other end now with it with this very creative heart soul reason for being um and and how you know we went from one side to the other now we're really trying to strike that balance so we've figured out who we are we have that we've captured that truly that's why people are here that's that's what keeps them here and now they're saying we want our kids to read write and do math and so what we what we need to keep our eye towards is exactly what you're saying which is we don't want to go back that other way and end up just about the testing scores because if we swing too far with that pendulum then we're in trouble i think like
253when i read this i say and kind of leadership for growth to lead to achievement like i don't want to lose i don't want to be on the opposite end where we're only focused on growth and it becomes kind of a meh you know like but i don't want to go back to like and i know we have to use these metrics we have to look at the state tests um but i don't want to lose the growth either like both of those need to be so the concept of achievement being a potential buzz kill as was described is is makes it you know to me what's the synonym that more heartfelt connects for us i'm wondering if it's social and academic impact seems to be the hoojo because i think achieving like we sitting
254at this table we all know that achievement can look very different for every individual and that achieve the word achievement could apply to they've achieved their growth goals or they have achieved but we haven't used it that way for decades yeah um you know they they're coding and they can leave high school with a six figure you know career that i'll never have um without going to college like achievement looks different but it's a word like i get the buzzkill because i think it's a word that's just it became synonymous with testing state tests and it has the negative connotation and maybe maybe this is the task where we change the connotation of that word or is it a conversation of that connotation is so deeply ingrained that we're not going to change it and
255we need to find a better language in high school and beyond because at the end of the day we want our kids to succeed in whatever way because we know they can treat it right yeah but what access are we giving them to to actually succeed and fulfill that i think that's great yes i think i'll bring all this back to the strategic planning team i love the idea of of success i love the idea of impact i love what you're saying which is do we redefine the word or do we acknowledge that this this word is so rooted and yeah it has it i mean it's it's like a trigger because because the history that that right has such a stigma behind it so do we abandon that word and use another one instead
256i will say a conversation that we have been having is creating a word bank right because one thing that that we heard a lot was like yeah we we love this but could you define for us what adventurous thinking is so that we know if our kids are actually doing it can you define for us what is collaborative learning we think we know what that means but like what does it actually mean for the district and so you know regardless of whether or not we go with the word achievement or find a different word it seems to me like that might be another word that we need to to include in the word bank to to explain what it means for us just like today you've all been sitting around the table and with your
257your fireside chat defining a common language that we will all use that speaks to how we all want to work together how do we define that common language for the back district the piece where four or five years ago we said yeah we're doing this and then we didn't feel like we were actually doing it it was because we didn't define what that looked like not just what it looked like but what it doesn't look like right you know we use examples and non-examples with our kids our teachers need examples and non-examples of adventurous thinking of what that looks like in a classroom through photos through student work through videos like we have to define the language and we have to go beyond just a definition of a language but really define and that's why
258we're going beyond just the priority and that's why we're going to these goals because these goals provide more tangible distinct direction than the priority they help define that priority so that we know when we're going to get there and then that's why we have that adventure planning document that really provides us with the indicators of progress with measurement so we'll know how we are doing and we'll know if we need to adapt so if something's not working that means that we need to adapt the plan so that it does work in order to still achieve these goals somewhat related and somewhat totally different question because we have it laid out by quarters for year one do we have a plan by quarters for your two or is that a we're not going to because we're
259going to need to adjust this exactly we intentionally we intentionally don't have quarters for year two or year three because um what we know is that it will have to adapt if we built it in stone right now what we're gonna do two years from now three years from now we know it's not gonna work right because we don't know what's coming two years and three years from now we we we almost certainly will have to adjust even what we've put together for this year one this year one is this is our plan this is our plan of action and we have these indicators of progress to tell us when it's working and when it's not working and if it's not working we will be adjusting our action items because ultimately we are responsible for
260to use another word that you all use today we are accountable to these goals because this is what our community told us that they need from us so this is what we're going to achieve or let's do to create impact and succeed let's not use the word achieve um and so absolutely these action plans will have to change and we understood from all of you at this table and everyone else that we spoke with that these action plans are really important because we need to have a definitive road map and a definitive tracking device to know whether or not this is working and and i think not only to that too but i think that goes back to holding our positions accountable too yes you know i don't know of any other job that continually
261has something where things are happening and you get to keep your job or you get to keep it even though we're failing and then you get a raise out of it so right i think this is a good way and that's another question too like i i want to make sure these benchmarks and these things are actual things that we can look at him be like okay this is not working it continues not to work absolutely and so and so um when we put together these action plans we actually had each school so the principles were present and we asked each principal to bring what their plans are for their schools and we wanted to make sure that everything is aligned and that what is happening at each school site will help us get to
262these goals and if it's not if something's out of alignment that meant we had to examine it further and figure out if if there's something wrong with this goal or if there's something wrong with the actions that we're taking and so we've made it so that everything is very um married um and in alignment so that exactly like you're saying we can then from there tie everything that we do to this so that's why i'm asking we need to ask ourselves though is this a goal fixed it's it's not but we we so just like we need to adapt the just like we need to adapt the action plan if the action plan that we have set out is not getting us to where we need to be if we're hearing from our community that
263this goal doesn't serve us any longer then we would absolutely need to revise it the conversation seems to be centered around failure so i'm trying to get a sense of failure failure not no not failure it's just it's just about adjusting and adapting in order to ensure success okay so we're not talking about failing shame or direct we're not accountability to the person versus the idea i'm a little confused so we're not talking about we're not talking about accountability to a person what i am saying is that just like um each school site's strategic plan and their goals for the year are tied directly to this so that they're in alignment we want to ensure that everything in the district is in alignment with this i'm not i'm not saying we're not talking about people
264we're not saying for effectiveness again is this a gauge for effectiveness this is a gauge for effectiveness for the district i would say we want to ensure that the actions that we are taking with our action plan are getting us to these goals because this is what we hear is needed and if it's not getting us to those goals we need to look at why and we need to adapt and change now the question is for reality sake they're time bound for to be sure that we've got a sense of urgency about it absolutely i mean yes we need to have a sense of urgency to this because this is what we heard from our entire community that this is what we need and we want to get here at the end of three years
265so so they're absolutely time-bound from that perspective and they're absolutely urgent and so as we build these out that is why we also put together the action plans because we need to make sure that what we're doing is realistic and attainable i just don't want our kids or our teachers to feel failure yeah no i don't want to be lazy and again this isn't about i'm not asking for a retort i'm pontificating for a moment okay um i'm curious where heather and so forth i haven't heard you yet on you know philosophically when you think about a time-bound fixed action and then it doesn't happen in your classroom or with your team or at your school or in the district what's the sentiment in the district or among the teachers or i mean i worry
266so much that so many teachers are leaving the profession um in droves over um what i'm going to go back to the word achievement goals because it was it's beautifully intended it's beautifully intended to want kids to achieve what i want to make sure of is are we going to give a context for um you know the fluid nature of a kid who's out 10 days or the fluid nature of the technology not working or the wi-fi access still being worked on so as these these interdependent variables are moving what's the gauge of we're still rowing in the same direction and that still feels right but what's your thinking on that i'm just curious because i've seen your face over there and i can't quite tell so i have like this internal fight being a
267teacher and being on a board and just knowing the things that that go on so just bear with me and see if i can explain this so achievement we're in the business of making kids better to achieve right so we have to have some kind of something to see how they're achieving so as a teacher i know if one of my students is achieving i know myself but how can i show a parent that how can i show the community that so when we say that we're going to test their achievement off of and you know how i feel about the state test i think they're garbage and i get really tired of them because they're constantly changing and then yeah and then we do use them as punishment because then now we're labeling schools
268right and then those schools feel like oh my god it's an f school these kids are failing these teachers are filling these principles they're filling the district is failing and there's all these like intricacies going on like for example we started like in my districts we started a new reading curriculum and writing curriculum so i'm going to follow this curriculum it's going to be different than what i have been doing and my kids might not achieve because maybe i am not as effective at this point because this is something new right and we constantly have new curriculum so that's like something we're constantly dealing with um and i will try to do my craft the best that i can and my homework the best that i can but then at the with the students that
269i have and with the situations that each of my students have but then at the end they take a test and it's either like hey way to go or oh my god you suck and plainly that's what it is i i mean it is either you feel good about it or you don't feel good about it i like to see my students progress and so we do have something like um what is it that you guys use exactly exact path so we use something called my path which is like the same kind of thing right isn't i ready do i feel successful i kind of do like when i see the end when my kids like tested like at a kindergarten level at the beginning of the year and at the end of the year
270they're testing the third grade level to me that means i did my job because they they either i mean they move like so many grade levels if they're on a fifth grade level they start a fifth grade level they end on a fifth grade level like i still did my job right because they're still like getting the year's growth like beginning from end so i understand this word achievement and then when you talk about success well then i think achievement and success have the same connotations because success how do you how do you rate success and i always make that i always have that that talk with my kids because we i do a college career like day once a month because success doesn't mean you have to go to college success means you could
271go to a trade school and become you know a plumber like my people that just fixed my house and you know they spent like seven days there and they got like 32 right so that could be success so then now we're like okay achievement success like really like what definition are we going to give them and what is what is okay for the teachers to feel about this because if we're saying hey you guys suck because you got you know your school's an f and they feel horrible about it or i just have it's just like there's this like no win situation and then it ties in with the adventurous learning i just don't understand how we can have adventurous learning when you have a curriculum you have a curriculum map and you're supposed to
272follow this curriculum map and not deviate off this path so where is it where is it adventurous where do kids have that choice i mean maybe they have that choice in like the gift program where they're like hey you can choose this or this but really we're not giving any choice to kids we're doing what we have to do so i just get really upset at like the whole like achievement thing it's just very hard so and i think that this is where context really matters and i think that our philosophy and our approach really matters right this is the chord around this room yeah because we can't say we can't say no because we can't say like your school is an f let's change something to make it not an f but next year
273you're still an i i think we need to have that understanding you're right and so part part of this is there's some things out of our control right like schools are going to be assigned to this letter grade right it's not something that we and they have to take a test and they have to take a test right it's not something that we can control so we know that that's there that's right yeah let's let's disrupt that i love that idea yeah but but again so those are those are those are sort of outside of our purview it's outside of our control we can't control whether or not our schools are going to be assigned a letter grade and whether or not we have to take state tests we we know that we do it's
274nature of the beast now we could we absolutely could disrupt it now that that's fair um now if we look at the context though to go back to what you're saying about like the fail versus the a lot of this has to do with our approach and the core of who we are right when we were out talking with with families when we talked with all of you around the table i haven't heard anyone use that language of failing i haven't heard anyone use that language that it's gonna be okay so okay okay and i haven't heard anyone say i mean that we are going to use this as a uh weapon or a punishment um i mean in fact um you were talking about um the creighton academy what they use restorative justice for
275example right and so it is at the core of who we are that we don't approach things from that mindset and that context here is really important we're not saying that um we're creating these goals and we're creating this action plan in order to track our failure or success what we're saying is that we're creating these goals and we're creating this action plan because we're hearing that as a community this is what we want to work towards and we're all in alignment on that and we're going to track it so that we can catch it if something's not quite working like we thought it would and then we can discuss it oh that didn't quite work exactly like we thought why what do we need to tweak what do we need to do differently what
276else can we do but it's all going to be with that playful adventurous um right it's not as it's not as if suddenly it's going to change us at our core because that is who we are and it is part of this i mean it is it is literally pulled through this entire planet this is an important conversation for the board and i say that because when we started a year ago this was the body was honing in on foundation to start and it was actually a great ricochet across the district and the system and the community and it shows up now so we still have this restorative sense of the community agreements we just made about who we are and what the strategic plan is so i would really like to hear a lot
277more from the four of you on your statement of prioritization of gold1 in terms of fixed or flexible punishment or adjustment a sense of of context shifting as opposed to a flame orientation where are we as a group lindsay i think to me when we talk about all this i kind of approach it from and this has to do with like studying that culture and setting that tone when you're rolling this out two teachers two principles to the board as a whole thinking of it like going back to the context and framing this not as a fail or success but as we do when we have a child struggling with something we create a possible intervention for them we try that intervention consistently for three to six weeks we collect data during that point and
278at the end of that six weeks or whatever it might be we say this was working not as quickly as we want we need to continue this intervention or this did not work at all we need a totally new intervention or maybe we need a new human doing the same in type of intervention but it's not driving that right goal for that shot so i think you know i feel better from a teacher perspective from now a principal perspective from a board member perspective about these knowing that this is working a working document and that there is no year or two broken down this much because it's going to change so much and that might mean because like one of my i'll give you a concrete example one of my questions reading through the access
279diversity equity inclusion ones was why are there only why are we only expecting seo lessons twice a quarter for the whole year like i would have expected to see twice a quarter like three times a quarter four like i would have expected to see that expectation increase throughout the year as we get better at what we're doing and maybe it's not right now because we want we're trying to keep it realistic like i don't know because i wasn't in all those conversations um like i'm kind of looking at these knowing that the way that we approach it and know that we need to monitor and adjust the same way we do in education i don't feel a threat of failure as long as you know that everybody's language is that approach and in fact i
280would say that we're protecting against this this fear of failure because that's first of all that's not part of our philosophy that's not part of who we are we're not setting things up for failure second of all it's not how we're going to be talking about and looking at it it's going to be wow this is working really well so what does that mean how do we want to keep building this out or you know this one part though doesn't seem to quite be giving us the results we thought why not what do we need to change what interventions could we do differently how do we want to approach this so it's it's all about um the i mean it's it's all about the collaborative learning really right we're approaching this with adventurous thinking we
281are learning about all of this collaboratively in order to build foundational skills and we are using kind-hearted leadership as evidenced by what's in the fireside you you started with a question and that uh helped heather express something that you didn't talk about it was hidden to me but i can see it here exactly what she was saying it means try it view it that's exactly what what it is but what you were saying uh now the the only thing that i see very important is making sure that not only us but the teachers and everybody understands it because if let's say we we talked about it okay let's we want to feel very happy and if she's one of her teachers and she wasn't here in this meeting and she doesn't understand it she was
282oh my god so we we need to be very communicative with what we what we're understanding right now whatever we're understanding right now let's try to make it very clear to everybody i would like a teacher too why are you living together because i don't want to be dealing with failure so we talked about it in the meaning yeah but i wasn't in that meeting yeah and that's another thing that you bring up a really good point that we as a board i think and i'll speak for myself but i think collectively we do not want that culture of fear or retaliation because that's exactly what the opposite of what we think we're not doing these changes or we don't put our input to cause fear in our teachers or support staff or anything we're
283there yeah or anybody no anybody but you know we need tangible information to tell us what is happening what's not working and how we can move forward from that in any aspect but i don't ever want anybody to feel like they're scared or anything these this is why we have these open um sessions so people know and i really want that culture and i know it's gonna take some time but we're not here or when we show up to the classrooms or when we show up into the schools it's not because we're there to say you're doing that bad you're doing that bad it's to say how are we i don't know what i don't know i don't know how to help my biltmore score or my excellencia school if i haven't even had a
284tour of that school so i i can't help and i don't know what i don't know in those areas and the more integrated the more talks like we have the more parents i'm hoping that that's a big thing like going from 200 maybe raising that by like 15 next time like the more conversations we have the more we're working together and i know it sounds like a little you know like rainbows and butterflies but that's really how it works how can we blend then how can we come up to to uh to a point where we we can advance with this no fear without lowering the bar without i don't think you have to do that as a teacher i think as a as an individual teacher and maybe this is this is my when
285i say it it feels like it feels like a punishment because i feel that way myself like i feel that way myself that i didn't do the best for that student and so if it comes it it may not even come from the district it may just come from the state from the legislature right i mean that's where a lot of it comes from right so i already feel like a failure when you know the best of my students maybe you know are just proficient or maybe you know and so if you if you look at a lot of i think the majority of teachers wants what's best for their kids and they'll do everything that that they possibly know to make that happen i don't think you have a lot of teachers there are
286some you know a lot of teachers going out there like intentionally not teaching or intentionally not doing what they wanted to do as a teacher um but i think they feel that that's their ultimate judgment right there's that one test at the end of the year that's that ultimate judgment and then when you get those scores back as a teacher and i said that at the board meeting with when we had the presentation for the scores like those teachers are already beating themselves up those principles are already beating themselves up and then the district starts beating themselves up and then we're hearing a bunch of stuff from you know the legislature saying you guys suck right and what i would really encourage for us is to think about ways that as a board we can
287add to our community agreement supportive and encouraging because where the trickle is from the davis is on um either a lack of support or a lack of encouragement that every single person needs and that might be a community agreement we want to add so that that beating up culture that is subliminally dominant but i haven't really been hearing that though i i don't think i haven't been hearing that from my community that they feel like they're beat up or failing but i have heard that they don't feel heard which is opposite but not that they get a sentiment from us that no no we're beating on them or we're being i don't get that at all no i think it's really messed up the staff is just you know and whether it's subliminally by herself
288in her classroom but that aspect i do get i get i hear that from every teacher which but they just care so much yeah and i'm thinking as a board if we added support and encouragement agreement that would really permeate the culture of the staff and but then i think we also need to define what does that look like in action because we might then not just want to do awards yeah i mean we we might like have to think of ways that we can like like stop this like change this right like how do we talk about it as a whole group that's why i like the word success because that word already is setting up the sentiment of we are going to succeed our kids are both successful it just needs to go
289in with some tweaks but our kids will be successful when they graduate high school and above it's not that we don't want exactly and that word success i think sends that message achievement is saying that we're not at that level eventually we will how about we start looking at our kids and our parents like they can they have it we just need to work on these goals to provide them the tools to make it a little bit more easier to navigate because this education system is i've learned so much in education the last two years that i have ever happened my whole life it's a very complex um whatever you want to call it you know it's super complex there's a lot moving parts to it but i think success is like we're gonna succeed
290we might have to make those tweets and not necessarily achieve because i look as achievement because maybe it's so stigmatized on how we've been throttled to it but to me achievement it's like i'm not there yet but eventually i will achieve it no we need to show that we are our kids are successful right now we just may need a little bit more support but they will succeed and just to achieve on a test but they might be successful just getting a job and living and it might be successful but that one percent that no and that's okay uh i i want to make sure that i'm not speaking over anyone and that you all are getting the opportunity to speak i just want to discuss this and you've been living it yeah so i
291just wanted to make sure you guys are somebody yeah and so i i just something that i'm noticing is that i i think that this sentiment is captured in in the fire right i think that the sentiment is captured in our new table tents it was already captured before and so i want to make sure that that i reiterate what i did at the beginning which is we're having this conversation from a strength based perspective we are not having this conversation from the perspective of we failed and therefore now we have to do this that's not what's being said at all what's being said actually is we were so successful that this is now the very core of who we are and we don't need goals for this anymore now we're looking for what's next
292and so i want to make sure that that that's always in the back of our our minds that this is a strength-based conversation and i don't think that the word failure is something that i've ever heard in all the conversations that i've had um and and i don't think that anyone is is looking to [Music] set us up for that to be a conversation i really think that we are continuing with this strength based mindset and like i said i think that it's very much about we're approaching this adventurously and we're collaborating together to learn and we're going to learn as we go and then we are going to adapt and tweak in order to remain responsive and relevant to the community that we serve and in this case what we heard from everyone is
293that at the core of that community are the kids so we are going to adapt as we go to be relevant and responsive to our children so that they can be successful however it is that we define that whether it's getting the job or going to college does that sound right does that feel right yes and i think it's just going back to we're talking about like intentional feedback and stuff like as in order to not have anybody feel vilified or feel like they're being punished or whatnot like that is our responsibility as a board through every presentation every discussion we have getting you know quarterly updates on how we reach these and being able to recognize okay we reach these things are we ready for these actions and accomplishments in quarter two like is
294there something we need to adjust and just being very open with the public that like we're we're here to help monitor and adjust those interventions if they need to be and that is not a negative thing that is a monitor like that's what we need to do we need to monitor and adjust and that's growth and that's solutions based that's strength space that's not you didn't do this and the board's going to come get you and that just comes from us and our language and our attitude and that that's permeated in every meeting and conversation right you are not you are not the big bad board right you are kind-hearted leaders and we're learning collaboratively all together we are going to adjust as needed because this is an adventure just like the the mountain this
295is an adventure that we're all embarking on and we have this road map with that adventure plan for the next year to help guide us but that doesn't mean that it's set in stone it's guiding us to like actual action and accomplishment possible yeah um i did write them down because i was like we're gonna go 57 places um so like you brought up curriculum nights and events like one of the things when i look at the action accomplishments to me these are supposed to be measurable and it's not that these aren't but i feel like one measurable component on the family engagement piece could be like some a lot of the other ones all have some indicator that has a number a number of lessons a number you know a percentage and we don't
296have any numbers quantifiable numbers in this so just a possible suggestion to bring back would be could we quantify how many community events or family events are happening throughout the year because that's i feel like an easy measurable thing and that's this is the only one list of actions and accomplishments that doesn't have a single quantifiable quantifiable um my other thing was and maybe this is just an oversight but on the last on the health wellness and safety um quarter four says ongoing use of kerosele's referral system and expanded use of southwest behavioral but like that's not meant those two partnerships aren't mentioned at all in the first three quarters i think that can be totally quantifiable as well well and i it can be that the same phrase ongoing use of the referral system
297can be in every quarter so i was just curious why it's not how like why it's not an indicator because i did see like in some of the other ones you have some of those same ones that are yeah repeated i don't feel that southwest behavior on carousel shouldn't only live in fourth quarter great plane like yeah and maybe that was just an oversight and there's a lot going on here but those are just my like tangible really good suggestions really good point anything else like that and then i want us to turn to as a board um we were talking about you know being supportive i'd like to know how you want over the next year to work in support of this plan any other i have something that's just on my mind i
298hope it's within what you said certainly well no and and i want to i want to hear more about this too okay so um a little bit of a philosophical question so um working in auburn school district in washington they have a design for their equity work it's called equity mountain so you go on a hike you start and you loop around and um i like the analogy and then you you get to the top but what happens when you get to the top you gotta come back down and hopefully you're not backtracking you're not you know falling you're not you're not you know you're not you're not uh digressing you're you're still on an adventure so just a couple things that i'm curious about initiate review adapt review adapt celebrate at the top just
299wondering if there's a way to philosophically because i feel like the problem with this feels to me that you don't really get to enjoy it till you get to the top and that to me feels like it perpetuates this idea that equity is something that you achieve i think equity is something that you constantly have to stay reflective in and you have to sustain and to have check marks on equity benchmarks can be very powerful for accountability but it could also be counterproductive to sustaining a sense of equity so that people don't begin to think that it's just something that okay i'm done yes we did that and now we're on to the next it's like the next so like how do we stay in this like how do these check marks become less of
300something you check off and something that we maintain and so so so maintaining sustaining and how do we incorporate maybe more of the joy of the process and not just the end result because to me that's what's missing here is that we're on a constant hike and we're hiking all over that mountain and all around that mountain are waterfalls and caves and multiple things you can get into it's not just the top right you may get to the top that's another stop but then you come back down you go the other side of the mountain and there's more things and then you take another hike and you see other you take another trail so to me i just feel like can we add some of that nuance it may not be necessary because again because
301i'm not part of this process it's the context right but those were things that were coming up for me as like when you are always a trail you've come this far and you're continuing or you're revisiting yeah and like i added in like celebrate on all the review products right right right as you're reviewing your progress as you're adapting as you're doing this entire process there will be celebrations along the way there will be base camps um and we will be celebrating at every base camp no there isn't an end the reason excuse me the reason that we added the check boxes which interestingly enough this is the first time i've put check boxes on a strategic plan the reason that we put those though is that what we kept hearing from everyone is what
302do we need to do to action this how do we know that we are accomplishing this goal how do we know that we are accomplishing adventurous learning and so that's why we added the check boxes because we were hearing from folks we need something really tangible to say we're doing it however it's not to say once we've checked that box off we're done but absolutely not and especially when we're talking about equity it's not a box checking exercise ever um so so maybe we do need to adapt that maybe maybe we need to adapt and think of something else instead of that because i i hear you and i don't think that the box checking is the right sentiment but that that's the re i can i can tell you the reason behind it and
303i agree with what you're saying yeah i i really appreciate that perspective because i think that's where people become stagnant right you feel like you accomplished you did this you checked off the list okay i'm done it's all good we're all good gravy and then but it's a full circle especially when it comes to equity right actually is a never-ending issue never always going and we don't want to be complacent and i think that's where a lot of the times we're so used to doing the work we've been in it for many years that we start getting complacent so yeah thank you for bringing that because we need to make sure that we're consistently going yeah and that mountain hike right we're not just going to the top and like okay my job is done
304absolutely from a tangible like instead of a box can it be a little mile marker yeah like i know that seems silly but i think it it goes back to the context and the purpose of this and a visual image has just as much positive or negative connotation as a word i'm wondering if the four choices might be for every indicator we're in it we're revisiting it we're letting it go we're redefining it and then it's not a done it's a element of i think what we're all doing here is we're um we're providing an example of the fact that once you uh commit to having a frame of equity um everything is just way harder it's so much easier if you take the equity out of it we have check marks like why can't
305we just move on with check boxes like again so like congratulations everybody like great equitable conversation just getting harder and harder we're never going to get anywhere so thank you you're but you're you're right it's so true even like i was gonna use the analogy of like base camps right if you're hiking mount everest if you get to base camp one that's actually a huge accomplishment so you're not at the top of the the top of the mountain but you're gonna celebrate my dad that was seven people and only two made it to base camp sure and also we have to acknowledge the fact like if we're talking about equity and we're talking about hiking mount everest like that is you can't get any further from equity when we're talking about it yeah well and
306and who even has access i guess where i'm going with it is who even has access to mount everest right so like that is not a great analogy when we're talking about about equity at all so right but yes but metaphorically so there are going to be a lot of limitations to this analogy the reason that we selected the analogy is just because we had the table tense before and so we really wanted this to hit home that like we are building on our successes thus far we are building on the strengths we are we are looking at sort of like the phase two of where we've where we've been we're not trying to throw out what we did and start with something new so we also could after today let this analogy go we
307don't we don't have to use it fast today it was just okay but i want to make sure also that in that analogy that we're not creating another monster right being creating a situation where then we're questioning access and the leaves being development and growth of the tree and then the apples were the fruit of our fruit by no means the end because then the tree goes through the cycle again and that was kind of the metaphor we used in the old days who chopped the tree down my question who picks the fruit it's still living it's a mountain that's a whole other conversation yeah now it's found so right now it's an orchard so uh really really good feedback anymore before i ask all of you what is your role in supporting this work
308moving forward [Laughter] i'll talk to you offline about what it should look like instead of a box i like where you're going with this i'm just like you know like we got to this point and then mm-hmm and then and then and then it's a cycle i like someone's on the trail so then i usually tell you what is your role as a board i don't mean you as a person but you as a board what is your role in moving this work forward i'm gonna take off the stickers i think part of it is like hearing the progress that we're making because i think you have it written down by quarter but i feel like if we don't get a report quarter by quarter and we just get it at the end of the
309year then i feel like it'll be either a shock or a yay but how can we also be supportive in the movement through the quarters and so but that's my question is how can you be supportive well i mean that's what i i guess that's like what i want to get at so i want to know so based off of your your checklist um like what is like let's just say your quarter i just picked this one whatever it is um if it's to configure mass notification system create accounts and provide access and initial training i want to know how are you doing that how has it been done is it satisfactory where you are like has the training gone on uh complete review and updated safety plans then you should have some safety plans
310to show us right like we should see proof of these things happening and if they didn't happen that's fine but is that now being moved into quarter two like how are we going to make sure we get to this one next and so every school is going to have a different safety plan and every etc um and so just to set up the expectation we won't necessarily be coming to the quarterly board meetings with every safety plan for you to review what we will what we would what we would be doing though is saying like you said we accomplished this in quarter one or this is being rolled into quarter two and here's why you can also provide progress uh yeah yeah you could just say like all you know has a safety fully implemented
311their safety plan one school is working to revise theirs right done right just having those actual indicators like i agree like i i would like to see and it can be board updates some of these are a little bigger than that like more complex with that and maybe that's what drives some of those presentations versus which of these can be delivered to us in uh we've met this here so kind of as you're planning as we're planning the agendas but as different departments are planning presentations pull out you know which one of these can be just here's a report versus here's something we really need to discuss the ins and outs of how it's going on another okay let's get an update halfway through the quarter instead of at the end of the quarter we
312have a seven hour board meeting yeah like i don't want that either i don't want that either but i just want to know like you said yeah all the schools have a safety plan like that's enough for me to know but i don't want to be kept out of the loop because i feel like too often we get to the end of something and something has gone wrong somewhere and then we didn't get to that goal right i mean it's like with the kids when when we're doing goals with them we do it you know week by week or day by day or whatever and we have it written down and we modify it and change it as necessary and i think that's important at getting to this collaborative learning and making sure that we
313are supportive from the top down this culture of support it's going to be very important that there is transparency and that there is the progress throughout because like you said otherwise if you're just getting a report at the end of the year it's going to be really hard to be supportive of the process if you weren't part of it and understanding it so but so to refine my my question a little bit again i'd love to hear how you want to be a part of that process so that you can be the supportive active participants in this role so um with me what i realize really helps and i think i i am super privileged i guess in that area that i'm a parent and i'm a school board president and being in those curriculum
314nights seeing how it's working i'm not there telling anybody you're doing this wrong you're doing that right but part of being support is being there and having that communication with the board right so if one school's having a curriculum one night be like hey these are the curriculum nights that are going on that school wouldn't you like hands-on how that's looking like i said i at times when there's no communication or where we're not invited to these spaces the school board members we're all adults and we already know like when we carry our school board hats and when we don't but part of being a school board member is knowing what's going on hands-on i can only come back you give me the information and assume all these things but because i wasn't part of
315like when i was going on or invited to curriculum tonight or got invited to the soccer game at one of the schools you know like you just don't know what you don't know and i always go back to that so maybe having a little bit more of not so much involving the school board members a little bit more and things that are going on um just because yeah the calendar because like i drove by papago um earlier this week and there was a bunch of cars there and i was like oh i wonder what's going on there it was a curriculum tonight and i could have just run up there yeah things like that because then that gives us like uh because we're only ever invited to district-wide events we're only invited to community council
316to the district fan event it was amazing but that was a district event i would love to be given a list and especially because i am on multiple boards and i'm very busy i sometimes feel like i can't get to the schools as much but that's because i'm only given a choice of like these four things in this semester and if i have conflicts on three of those four nights i feel like i'm never there if you said lindsay here are all the events that happen in every school sports games is a great idea like there's athletic schedule here are the curriculum nights here's the family literacy night and i had all that on my calendar then i could sit and make it to every school at least once at least once and then the
317like building off of this like i know i know it can be like four members of the school i cannot work my schedule around here is when school board visits are on these two dates let us know if you can make it i can look at my calendar and say okay a couple weeks from now i can take this day off of work can i please request that i can go do school visits with or without anybody but if i can take a whole day off work i need to be able to build on my schedule it can't be here is the date what i think i'm hearing i wanna i want to be in the schools and i've been to like two in the past year and what i think i'm hearing and this
318is me checking for understanding because i don't want to make an assumption here and tell me if i'm wrong what i think i'm hearing is that at a board we're very high level and so perhaps if sometimes it feels like there's some pressure from the board perhaps it's because we get these progress reports right where we're where we hear where the school's at as compared to last quarter or last whatever and then we react and we respond on well that's great or let's improve this or you know what what have you um and then and then we sit down again i think what i'm hearing that you all really want to be more involved in although sophia i'm hearing that you are already very involved in this level but as a board um you want
319to be more involved with this table tent you want to be more involved with this this heart the core of the school you want to see the mission in action you want to experience who we are you want to have those experiences so that you are part of this versus just someone who from the outside looking in yeah it's literally am i am i hearing that right it's been asked of us teachers and staff and families and parents i mean board members like they never visit our schools or they're never there like they it's been asked not just of board members but of superintendent of all district leadership like so how can we break down those barriers because i understand like we need to post quorums there needs to be i can't just show up
320but i should be able to see two weeks from now i can take this day off work let your schools know i'll be popping in and out like and we can post if other board members want to join and i know that can be done because other districts do it so but you're right i want to feel this i want to see it i do want the reports i need the reports but even if we get reports as more frequently up to the quarter point instead of the year at the end of the day that's still a report of nine to ten weeks right and it's putting words on paper that may or may not fully express what's really half of that and and i'm not hearing anyone say we want to get involved in
321the nitty-gritty gritty in the daily operations and we want to micromanage something added on my plate right no thanks right what i'm hearing though is we we believe in this vision this mission beliefs the who we are just like you amanda heard from the parents from the students from the teachers from the principal but we're the only group that doesn't actually get too late because basically right we're not right we don't get to walk that talk because we're just here in this room and we might get to have conversations about how we want to interact and define what that's like with the fire but we actually want to be able to see the fire burning at each of the schools not lit literally [Laughter] like if we set up events where it's like come meet
322the world that is a very different tone and that's where you get the loud voices who may or may not be pleased versus that's not this culture-building piece exactly versus if we are just sprinkled in like oh hey they were able to show up at this soccer game oh hey they were able to show the visibility part i think it's the little things and then you're feeling it yeah i might be speaking out of turn tell me if this is a terrible idea i'm just kind of falling you committed to going to a certain number of events before the next board meeting and then brought a story back i talked to this parent i talked to this oh i already have a teacher i'm certain you knew because you know we're so involved um but
323i think that would be really interesting because i think that this gets to what you were talking about um with the we don't want this to feel like the big bad board is coming and talking about failures but rather we want this to be that the board embodies the very pulse of of who we are and that we are a part of this we are collaborative learners and we are supportive through this process so by going and being there in person at these various pieces it'll do two things one it's going to show that you're very supportive because you're showing up um and you're going to be able to have more informal conversations with your constituents and then then two it also enables all of you in real time to actually experience what it is
324that you're hearing others come and talk to you about at this table and i also one thing i think we mostly forget about it shows the accountability of us we were knocking on those doors and expecting them to show up for us where have we been the last two years you know and i think that builds a trust within the district too that we're not just looking at our parents as something that we're tokenizing at the moment for what we want but if we consistently are being visible consistently being seen consistently bringing these opportunities that builds the trust with it the trust will follow and it might take a long time and it might not happen even when we're on the board but if we're bringing these to light one of our students who decides
325to graduate you know and then runs for office this is what we have implemented and then people can just swing right into it i'm not it feels like it's a win-win because it feels like it's going to help all of you and it's going to be supportive of the school yeah so how does that feel to each of you what i've been asking for the last two years that's exactly how that feels how does that feel to everyone else yeah like i just wanna i i see all these great things on all the facebook pages and i'm like oh i wish i'd known about that i feel like i feel like you're less chatty oh no no i mean do you like that idea and i'm mindful of it yes i know we have ten
326minutes so how do you feel about that right yes okay so then they're going back to what you were saying which is so yeah we want to do support but i don't want to just write down the word because what does that actually mean i'm hearing that this is the first step and just like we are going to be reviewing progress and revisiting and celebrating as we go through the process and adapting as we go with the plan i would like to when i come in the three times over this next year check in with all of you on this too and that you're holding us accountable to that what we've told our community that we would do and we haven't been doing right we are going to support this strategic plan by supporting all
327of you and showing and by that we are showing up that goes a long way showing up can do major things to people that's sometimes all they're asking for they might be saying i'm mad at this i'm mad at this i'm at this when in reality all they're saying just show up so you can see so that was everything i had on the agenda for today i feel like we got through a lot in very little time are there any other lingering questions thoughts ideas anything that i need to bring back no i just think that this is a very great way and i know that not everybody sometimes changes they're not comfortable they're not anything but one thing that i always go back to this district and that i do love because i have
328a lot of communications with other boards other districts and we really do have this as our core values i mean sometimes we may forget about them we come complacent life happens we all have our lives but i truly do believe well i mean i just shared a story with her and i think i want to end the story um i do a lot of door knocking and i was out in tempe and knocking on somebody's door and long story short he goes we got into the conversation about me being the president here he goes creighton so he takes me back to his backyard and he has one of the original bricks from and it has the crayon from the original creighton school before it got redone and his story a part of it was like
329he's like i just found that and but he goes the fact that i found it it just gave me a sense of like you guys have been there forever you guys are one of you know the earlier schools i know phoenix l takes the president's over that 150 years but you know he's just like just that sense of community i guess you can say so it's obviously ingrained in us i just think that there's tweaks and things that we need to do and i also appreciate all the hard work that everybody does i know sometimes what we say it's not taken um very nicely but it still gets done and i'm appreciated of that because it it takes time and it's a growing pains for everybody it's been growing pains for me um and i
330know all of us but this was really great from how we started and how we ended and how we all do have the same vision of just showing up for people and i think when people start seeing that in the community and our teachers and our parents and our administrators start showing like oh they're at least coming and visiting and they must care i think that opens another realm of like trust and how we really can start working collaborating together um i'm very pleased with how productive we were this morning and i think kind of learning a lot more about each other and then um this afternoon i think we have like a plan for action um and ways that we can continue to move forward um so i thought overall it was a really
331great day yeah i mean i i want to be in school for um and especially because i think when we're only invited to these big events and it's like oh i have to carve out this three hours versus like okay i can stop by this on my way home like that's a very different culture and i want to have that culture i i ran for board because i wanted to still feel connected to this district and there are a lot of days weeks months where i don't necessarily um so i think we've we've recommitted to a lot of things like i said that we talked about a year ago two years ago um and i hope that we can continue to keep those relevant and in our faces and and make some actionable deliverable changes
332i think like this is going to help keep us more informed and um hold us accountable as well as help us hold others in the district accountable and just setting that culture for everyone we have a clear path we've defined it let's let's do it [Laughter] we were thinking the same thing to see everybody working together for for the same good this is going to be my last year i'm planning to go back to to apply for as a crossing guard do you have an opening she's ready to hire you yeah yeah tired i i i i love it i i it's something that i have a lot of kids that still remember me and i love them and uh but it's crazy because i became a us citizen in 2016 and and i knew
333nothing about anything of i don't know i thought that being a used citizen was being able to cross the border and say you're a citizen that you mean that's it i know there's a lot to it or the vote voting who is that guy you just read it you have to know who you're voting for and it's a lot and then becoming a governing board really all of that italian was only about fighting with the girls and trying to get something done anyways uh it's been a pleasure and i i've learned a lot and even as as a i'm going to the end uh i remember when it all started i came one day my neighbors come knocking on my door saying we need you to come and speak for us you became a youth
334citizen yeah because people know us that i talked to everybody and they go we need you to go and represent us and because they're trying to change the times for the kids to go to school that we want you to go you're good for fighting pastor they go no i'm a pastor i'm not a fighter i'm a lover but i i came to that meeting and after hearing everything i got very angry holy anger and i come to the to the mic and i said you know what this is unfair you guys already know what you want to do what is this meeting about you guys already are telling us what you're going to do and what do you think what do you think that does not bear and i fight him i get out
335of here next thing you know people come we want you to become a governor no i'm going to be sleeping on the other side oh man no no i'd rather be down so finally i coming to con fulfill my dream of being down again i've been able to fight them and they cannot reply they cannot say nothing back to me i'll be here every meeting girls [Music] yeah i i gotta do that you want a revolution here i am where i am so and anyways anyways i love this i love this and i i speak my mind you guys laughed but i is the truth i speak my mind that's it you know i think what's super helpful about this is the biggest struggle attending board meetings listening to conversations is trying to distill signal
336from noise right so because when you work with a governing board you have five individuals but you really only have one board so being able to figure out like where's board direction versus where's one person's opinion all of those types of things what was super powerful today for me was hearing where the board's unified because it creates a very strong sense of that signal right and so that it was helpful to me and not just empowering the work that we do but inspiring uh my reflections for today really is hearing the board and the support of the teachers and staff as well as the parents in the community to support our children and to support their academic success and their social growth and success with with the community and that that's inspiring and that reinvigorates
337me thank you for the harmony of ideas i also have gratitude for hearing all this work amanda from everybody you guys really brought us you know years plus you know 18 months worth of work easily for us to process and for us to work through and tumble with a little bit so sophia excellent leadership great agenda development great communication i appreciate everybody so much i hope you have a wonderful rest of your saturday thank you and with that we adjourn what you