001that it is 7 47. um and for those who are just seeing us here live now we just attended a training with the msc that was led by um miss warmer is that how you say her last name i didn't miss her doctor barnum and um she has her own business um directed around equity and diversity she also once worked for brookline as their diversity officer or director um so it was interesting um we got to ask some questions but it was mostly listening so we're here to process what we heard um so i think mary beth has a traditional reflection type of an exercise that we could start out with and then go from there so what i was going to offer there's a kind of a basic strategy for processing new information or
002something that you've heard which is called a triangle circle square processing so it's first kind of going around and talking about what's a question that's circling in your mind based on what you just heard so we could do a kind of round robin on that and then what is something that you heard in the conversation that squares with your beliefs so that's the square the circles square and then the third point are what are really three points that you're going to remember from that presentation so maybe a good way to start is to just go around and and start with what questions are circling in your mind so anybody want to start with that peter what did you get um i i plan on reaching out to dr warnham i was going to i was
003going to write it in the in the text but it's just so hard to type in the text on an ipad but i really want her thoughts about if a proper learning management system can help close the equity gap because um i was recently speaking with a superintendent a assistant superintendent of a nearby district and they recognized in march they said exactly what i was saying they were listening to the school committee meetings i don't know if i inspired this superintendent but they immediately went out and invested in a learning management system for under fifty thousand dollars that does everything that we're trying to do like for instance um it creates a baseball card stat sheet for every student it helps identify equity issues it helps check to see if the curriculum is a mirror
004it helps differentiate instruction it ensures every teacher is consistent along along all across all classes so i want to see if she has experience with learning management systems uh closing that equity gap so so one of the questions that's circling in your mind is what is the connections here between some of what you heard and a potential learning management system right i mean that's just one part of it you know that's it's a system that can help identify it obviously we have the people issue too but good um anybody want to go next in terms of a question that's circling around your mind um i i think the question that comes to my mind um after sort of seeing this what something that dr ortman said and then something i noticed that michelle happened to
005write at the in the chat at the end is um is how to convince our district how necessary this is right it's not what can we get out of it it it's it's trying to make sure that when you know we get it in here that people are showing up and they're actually coming in with open ears and open hearts and open minds good thanks david dana a question oh anna question that's circling around your mind uh yes thanks mary beth i think my biggest questions are what are the financial and operational limitations to execute elements of this work and how quickly can we get it going good thanks julia yes just um i have a lot of i have a lot of notes more thoughts but uh my question is um based on the
006based on the video um and what i know about non-racism and anti-racism it is about action so what do we need to do to op operationalize this work um and what are the steps needed to take and how much is that going to cost and what does that look like michelle um is it the cart before the horse i i'm wondering what comes first we need this but is it part of our strategic plan i mean i think to what david was saying how do we get everybody to embrace this is this before our strategic plan or is it part of our strategic plan um so that's my main thing because it is needed um but again how do we incorporate that with our strategic plan and where does it where does it fit dana
007or michelle dana so it's interesting i love hearing these questions because i interpreted that really differently like i um i think slowed way down like i'm really at like i interpreted that but i love that everybody's questions were so different than mine i really was at a place where i really am feeling like wow i really need to understand better more deeply about cultural proficiency and what that really looks like um you know and so i was really more at a sort of a coming away from that just as a person like i really want to more deeply understand what that really looks like in it so that's my question which is i'm i'm loving that like people are already like operationalizing and i'm really still back there trying to just grasp it so thank
008you yeah i'm the thing that i'm question the question that's rolling around in my mind is kind of like the one that i put in the chat that didn't really get answered is what is the work for us because many of our children aren't exposed to people that are very different from them um we live in a community that's mostly homogeneous and so how do we take that and provide them with the skills to enter a world that's not homogeneous so it's like it's like what is the work that we want to do is the question great thanks michelle and for me one of the things that's circling around in my mind is how does this fit with the other work of the district is this in fact not even work of the district but
009part of who we are as a district um and and just trying to figure out how this fits into an overall vision and clarity around goals for the district it's clearly important but what does that look like and you know is it a strategy is it a culture you know just a lot of questions related to that julia okay i just had one more thing i actually love what dana said because i do think it's my tendency to just jump into let's do it let like let's make a to-do list let's make a project plan but i agree i think that i actually don't know what cultural proficiency looks like um for the district so i i love that i'm just thinking about my notes but i think that is a question i think we
010we definitely need to step back and think about what does educational equity look like um what does cultural proficiency look like and what you know these these very important strategies on the high level what do they look like so i i tend to just kind of jump into wanting to oper up operationalize things um but i did like dana's question i think even stepping back and and talking about it a little bit could be helpful all right why don't we move on to what squares with our beliefs and with your permission i'll i'll share kind of my thinking around that um one of the things that she talked about just in terms you know talked about the difference between equity and equality and a lot of times you you also hear the phrase that fears
011and everybody gets the same thing fairs people get what they need and you know in my career as an educator there was a moment you know there are a couple moments that have stood out and one was some work with junior great books and the way junior great books work is they have texts that are purposely pretty thought provoking um and but they they give all kids access but in that there's a recording of the the story so kids can read it but then the whole class actually hears it so that everybody kind of enters the discussion so if you have if you're a kid that has a need in special education in special education and can't access the text you've got to hear the ideas in the story and i remember i think it
012was like in fifth grade and we were doing a conversation and there was a student that was a special education student um and it was clear in the class that everyone had somewhat dismissed this child as oh your special education you're you're not as bright as us or whatever else and in this moment because access to the text was there was there was there was things that were put into place for the student the level of thinking that the student showed was far and above anybody else's processing of the text and it was pretty powerful to see you know when we thought about what do you need in order to access the learning and that was provided to the student and i remember watching the class be like wow that was really amazing thinking um
013and so part of that idea of that you know fear isn't equal that people get what they need in order to access the learning and i that that's an experience that really sat with me and that really resonated with me as i as i heard the doctor speak so anybody else something that squared with your beliefs yeah michelle um i thought when she talked about the implicit bias is something that you have to do and it's your personal responsibility um it it really does square with my beliefs we have a a cultural diversity group that participated in that eclc that hamilton went on and um they led um some book groups last year in the spring and summer and it was it's only when you do do something that challenges your belief systems that you
014can actually change and so you can't force change on other people you can only provide sort of like the vehicle the safe space to do that sort of work so i thought that was you know a good thing like you know those you can't change those who aren't ready to change or willing to change or don't see the need for change right somebody else something that you heard that squares with your beliefs dana yeah so i i it's funny because i have i have seen that um slide before about uh equality versus equity um but for me it just this is just very personal that i when i work with parents it's often a conversation about what about between their own children like i go through this with parents about their own children that like
015your children don't necessarily need everything to be exactly the same because they have different needs and their different children and i really kind of had like an aha moment like i was like oh right of course like i actually spend a lot of time with parents talking about like i just hadn't even though those two things were in my you know world i really had never sort of made that connection that like that's this is just expanding this out to the whole world that like you cannot treat your own individual children just the same because everybody has different comes from a different place and yet it is something that we all struggle with parents struggle with that even in their own home well it's not fair right if um you know whenever i have to
016tell this one four times to brush their teeth and the other one does it the first time well they're different kids so that just hit home for me anna thanks my best um well for me it hit lots of squares i mean i think most people in the community and on the committee know that um these are conversations that i've spent the better part of my my work and life working on and activism and um so it was validating for me in a lot of ways to just uh hear again that it really does start with those biases i thought some of the graphics you shared were really validating that implicit bias is at the top with microaggressions and you sort of work your way down and so i think um and i think a
017couple things that really squared out to me was the idea that the quickest way to equity is through cultural proficiency so i think if we agree that equity is the goal and i think it sounds like we do you know that cultural proficiency is important um but i think that so so that was just validated you know i've been pushing for this for a while and i've been part of these trainings done these trainings and i think it was really validating to just sort of feel like right we're we're on the right path you know this is like a good step so that was helpful um i thought that she kept coming back to data was really important and then if you look for patterns in your data that that's a good roadblock and i
018guess for me it was sort of against squaring with some of what i've been saying too is that um we're we don't have to reinvent the wheel you know she actually i thought it was funny she quoted hillary clinton back in 2016 you know and that was when everyone's like oh wow that was biased like that's actually even later like so it was sort of validating to just you know have this training and their um the level of expertise the number of professional resources that exist so i guess for me it was really validating to reinforce some of the things that i've been asking for and talking about but also that it was um i thought helpful and that we as a district even though it's newer to us it's not actually new and there
019are really well established paths and pattern you know access points into it and i think it takes a little bit of pressure off of us to say we don't actually have to figure this out all by ourselves there are tons of professional resources and districts who have done this so i think leveraging road maps was really helpful um the two kind of emotional things that picked up on you know for me were that when you talk about people having to do the work and why that's important and then sort of putting it into you know a majority white culture that's actually sort of the point of some of this like it's not the job of marginalized communities to teach us what we need to know and i this has come up on a lot of
020conversations and activism of groups in different parts of where um a lot of times you sort of approach diversity of this tokenism of like well someone tell me what i need to know where let's go let's go look at the you know handful of minority students and have them tell us everything which knows like that's that was really validating tougher express that's the inversion of the truth and then in order for us to break down our own biases it's it starts from within and it's it's not the responsibility of marginalized people to solve injustice it's on us it's on us the role of the oppressors to solve our own we created the problem so we have to solve the problem like i think that was important um the last thing was really really powerful and
021i think actually really important as we're coming into sort of this pandemic out coming out of the pandemic and there's been a lot of conversation about the compounding of covid with a resurgence of sort of racial awareness and injustice that everyone's gone through covid but if you're a minority student or marginalized in any way you have the covet trauma and then you have the rape the injustice trauma and it's like even heavier and so one of them she said is you know sort of equating psychological safety and emotional safety is the same as physical safety and sort of recognizing that if kids are feeling unsafe it doesn't really matter how beautiful the learning plan is or how experienced the teacher is if all they're thinking is i'm being judged in this room i don't feel
022safe in this room i feel like other kids are making fun of me in this room i don't know what they're saying about me none of the other good work we're doing as a district is going to matter so i thought that for me was really really powerful to be reminded that physical safety and emotional safety are prerequisites for successful learning so um yeah i thought it was great if that was a great first step that reminds me there's a angela myers is somebody that does a lot of different work and one of the things that that she says is that until you can capture their hearts you don't have a shot at kids minds right that that that piece is so important um somebody that hasn't shared yet michelle um just um that she
023said that being able to de-bias your brain yourself as possible and i know you mentioned that a little bit um you know paying attention to yourself i think that's encouraging because we think as adults you know we're always growing but we think our education stops when we leave school um and any of us we all have children and when they get to be older they are wonderful at showing you how bias you are um implicit and um non-implicit uh and i just think it's really important that there's there's you can't we can change um and that's so important with everything that's going on now um and again with the bottom line of helping our children so that they can be safe and they can feel welcome to learn so i was hopeful to hear that
024it it was a good takeaway for me julia did someone else want to share that hasn't shared that well the two the two things that really um squared with me one michelle bailey you said this complicate your exposure i wrote that down lean into it i think that is so important if you notice that you have some kind of bias or i i mean anything like a belief or um you're thinking that you might want to learn something more or you might have some stereotypes and some myths and misconceptions i absolutely love when she said complicate your exposure like lean into it get to know it um and the second thing i re i wrote it down and i highlighted it we can't rely on people to be good people that's not enough so we
025we know that hopefully people are good people but what i also think um is that we have this notion of racism and actually i watched um the movie selma with my daughter the other day and you know it's such an over that not i wouldn't say it's over the top it all happened but that but she that's what she thinks racism is you know what i mean it's sort of like what she sees in movies or what she reads in the news or what we talk about and i have to say no it's not there are things that happen every single day um that are not this violence it's not just um you know saying the n word i mean there are there there are there's so much that happens that's racist that's not this
026it's not what's portrayed um in the movies so i think i love that you know we can't rely on people to be good people that's not enough because sometimes people are good people but maybe the policies are not the best or maybe there's um you know there's discrimination going on behind the scenes so i i just think that i i really like that she said that you know we just can't rely on we just can't say well we're all kind of good people so at the end of the day you know we don't need to do this work um so those are the two things that that really squared with me david or peter anything you want to add in terms of what's squared with your beliefs yeah i mean i don't mind i i'm
027very blessed in that i get to sort of do these pretty regularly between my work with city year and then my work within my own school right when i got hired over at salem uh we actually did an implicit bias training as part of the on-ramping and then we do it um at least once a year as part of our regular training um you know in and every time you do this you know this this wasn't really a training right it was more of a an introduction right and and you can even tell because dr wartman you know kept saying like oh i want to go there right so she had this longer training that she was working her off of her slides that she was deciding what to skip and what not to and
028i just sort of wanted to you know like oh yeah i could definitely go for the three hour version of this yeah i thought she was really it was funny because i actually logged in here just gonna say this uh i had to run um dante in a baseball so i logged in on my phone and it was like a minute or two late and she like starts out she's got like all that energy i'm like oh my god why is she yelling at me and then like we're really going i'm like like oh my god like she's got so much energy this is so incredible because in like um you know i don't think that i've ever seen her speak before um so it was really interesting just getting her perspective and i really
029wanted to meet her son but like they i think for me right but something was really important and i was explaining it like as i explained to dante earlier because i had to uh draft him plus the others like an incident in his class yesterday and then i was also talking to someone else from around town or they're like oh what are you doing tonight oh my god this implicit bias training and instead of explaining the difference between you know explicit racism and implicit bias right and it's a very very very big difference right i think in our district you you run into that um you know roadblock that that i said a question i could be we've been having is like oh well you know why do we need this right or how about
030a moderate community um but like i think that's where that implicit bias sort of runs under the radar and you know can sort of end up being kindling for at some point it excretes racism right if it's not dealt with um you know that you you've run that risk right i know that my middle school my older middle schooler talks about like some of the members of um her class and community that do do use a very unsavory language we'll just call it that way um you know and you know she stays away from them but you know and then she'll say stuff to them at the same time and like how much of that is this sort of you know adolescent acting out not you know but like where do we as a community
031and as a school need to sort of realize that that is happening you know and and sort of uh take ownership of that i think that you know even though we are you know uh predominantly white upper middle class um you know community we do have um uh students on free and reduced lunch program we do have you know uh people uh that aren't all you know christian uh faith we have we do have these sub sub groups um within our community that you know do need to be addressed and that do you need to be thought of from an educational standpoint right and so um you know the simple idea of you know assigning homeworks or tests on jewish holidays things like that right so that's all part of implicit bias and and so
032i think that's something that really really why we need to do this i don't think you know we need to worry about how we're going to solve it i think we need to worry about how we're going to start it right and and then and you just keep growing excuse me but like that just that i you know to sort of circle back to that idea of you know that there's a difference between extrinsic extrinsic racism and intrinsic bias in that we have to realize you know what we're looking at here it's very easy we would not stand for a teacher in our district to be explicitly racist they would be removed immediately we can make our great teachers even better by helping them realize their intrinsic bias and making the our educational programs more
033equitable for everyone in the community you know and so that's sort of um where we are and that just helped me sort of reiterate that i love that i actually went through that with you guys today thanks david peter you want to finish this off in terms of something that's squared with your beliefs you know i agree with everything that's been said so and no sense of everything that's i wanted to say has been said um i don't know who else has teaching experience um but i know michelle and david would agree that this has been part of our lives we've been learning living and loving this for years now this is this is part of the fabric of teaching for me anyway um i've i've like i said i've been learning about this living
034and loving it for um years now and um yeah that's it thank you great um last part here just to finish out kind of the processing of what we listened to this evening is the what are three things on three points you'll remember um and again i'll be happy to start off one is that she she started talking about the fact that we don't have schools full of teachers and students but we have school fools a school full of learners and i think really framing that for ourselves that we're all learners teachers are learners administrators of learners students and learners that's that's really important she talked about she started by talking about difficult conversations and then framed it around well really they're necessary conversations and i really took that point away um and then i
035i also like the point that she made about the curriculum that that students need to have both windows in in mirrors i i thought that was a really helpful way of thinking about it you know in what ways does our my instruction expand my world and in what and also in what ways do i see myself in that world and i thought those were three three key takeaways for me anybody want to go next can i just say ditto those were my takeaways hey peter there we go so her definition of educational equity i took a screenshot of it said educational equity means that every child receives whatever she he they need to develop his her their full academic and social potential and to thrive every day and so it's been about probably 10 years
036ago there was a lot of discussion about that special ed spending that special ed spending and um i talked to and someone in the meeting the school committee meeting had said that um parents just want this to all be you know a gold-plated education here in hamilton wineman and um this is this was what i said to them i said no what we want is an education that allows every child to reach their full academic potential and to be happy and so to me um when we go to define equity it's going to be more about that it's going to be more about how do we treat all kids kindly and fairly so that was my big take away from that um the other thing she i felt like she came right out of the
037gate saying what the school committee's responsibility was was or what the issues of this would be is an unarticulated vision and i was like oh my god she's talking to us so like she knows oh my gosh you know us um and then the last thing was um you know i've been reflecting on um you know i go i go to first church and when i'm and our big thing is we have a wide open welcome and what does that mean and it means that literally when they say everybody is welcome there they literally mean it there is no person who isn't allowed to be a leader there's no person who isn't welcomed there's no person who isn't loved there's no person who isn't thought of and cared for and so to me it's a
038that's process and moving a church from that is very deliberative it's a long process they have lots of community meetings and they get a lot of ideas and ultimately in the end the church votes and whether or not they want to be um open and affirming in that way and some churches do vote and they are not really open and departing and other churches vote and they really live it and so i'd like to see us do a process where we're really setting ourselves up to live it instead of just to say it and that takes time and it takes community thanks michelle other michelle thanks um i took a screenshot of um ralph ellison's quote talking about cultural proficiency you know show me how i can cling to that which is real to me
039while at the same time teaching me a way into the larger society then and only then will i sing your praises and help you to make the desert bear fruit and for me that's you know what we need to do you know to uh to dr uh warren wornham's um presentation so reaching out thanks michelle anna um i think for me the three biggest takeaways as a committee member uh she started off saying we have to do the thing we've never done before and that really conscious deliberative change in practice it's not going to be accidental we have to choose to do the thing we've never done before that was one really high level of takeaway um uh i also really like what you said about leadership and that is school committee members the onus
040is on us to really define a leadership path but then she also used the word um we have to define equity and then over communicate it over communicate it and i think that that's going to be important and it sort of goes back into the third part which is this is going to have to be something that is is deliberative it's going to be hard necessary conversations mary beth i also really like that she put necessary instead of difficult um but that as leaders we have to do this and we have to build it into our everyday practice and not make it tokenism not make it like oh now we're going to do the special thing that's over here so we can take a box to say that we've done our special diversity thing it
041has to be integrated into everything we do in a way we've never done before deliberatively on purpose with leadership and over communicate it over and over and that to me is the those are the high urging goals that we have to keep in mind as we move forward thanks anna dana um a lot of what i my takeaways have been said but i did she it did really hit home the dif define equity i mean she said that a lot of times and i really thought like that's a useful and helpful thing to really think about um defining it and then i like what anna just said about communicating it and over communicating it and um and um and then i i did think maybe one thing that maybe hasn't been really mentioned is that
042that talking about culture and talking about it encompassing the intangibles so like you know that that idea that you know culture isn't just what she sort of said it's not just the holidays or the traditional food or whatever that it's it's deeper than that and it goes to that understanding the heart and the mind of the child and like and yourself right um so those are some that great julia yes so i love a good step by step and and what she said really seemed to me to be the stepping stones um she said define equity for your district cultural proficiency is the tool that gets you there so as leaders we have to articulate a culturally proficient vision um or a vision of equity and then again reiterating where everyone else says implicit bias
043is the work we have to do ourselves and then my last takeaway that i really liked is the creating more ways to hear more voices so you know there's more knowledge among us and it was just what you were saying mary beth with this child that had never been heard before so looking for ways to really encourage children to bring their full selves into the classroom so those are my those are my takeaways great thanks julia david you want to bring it home um yeah i mean although i don't i feel so left up because i i didn't take active notes like the rest of these wonderful people you know i i just think that you know the three things that i want to take away from this are you know i think the really
044re-emphasizing the necessity for this within our district um you know loving the fact that we're seven voices or eight voices in the same you know on the same page for a change in utilizing that strength to move this forward and you know really just looking with excitement anticipation on figure out what that first step is right it's that one small one small step one giant leap you know um type of deal because i think this is um it it it's separate of our overall plan but it's also very very much entwined with whatever our future plans would have hold right so i did i just think that those are three things i want to take from tonight great thanks david and i think about um enough folks know simon sinek's work start with why right
045that that if you're going to really move a culture or make a powerful change that the first thing you have to do is convince people why it's important right like why why is this work worth doing um yeah don't you i like one i'm wondering if our community if we were to go out and say prioritize what you want for to happen in the schools if our community would put this on the list right um but it may be that we need to sort of gauge what the community wants but also help the community understand the importance at the same time and i have heard anecdotally from lots of people about unkindness amongst children and to me this is sort of like the opposite of unkindness is accepting and and being understanding of all people
046and their perspectives and so even though people might not articulate it as being a uh it's a racist issue or there's a cultural you know anti-cultural issue people might might if we can expand their ideas about what this is might see it as a as more of a priority than they do now if we can get there that'll be the term michelle can i can i sort of maybe add add to that in that i don't think the question we need to ask a community is if this is something they want i think this is something we ask the community if this is something they'd like to be involved with in with us right i think this is the proper step to take i think that we voted for that you know um earlier this
047year that this is a direction we want the district to go in and i don't think we necessarily need to seek approval of the community for this but i do think it's something that we you know want to open you know and who knows where that what that is right now right i i i you know i could see sort of a a one hour training like this or you know overview sort of to our teachers as being a really great sort of thought provoker process to to get a ball rolling in as a short-term answer right but i i think that you know hopefully there's there's seven people uh you know here on tonight's meeting you know if we talked about you know hexagonal grid there'd be a hundred and seventy you know and
048and this is the work of the school committee right in in in in here and here we are again um you know and and this is here we are again and we're all alone again right exactly exactly what i you know and like um you know and and this is the stuff that when they're talking about the greatness of the program is us saying okay you know there's a need for this within our district and there's an opportunity you know for us to improve our already you know from good to great something that mike and i used to talk about with hamilton one right a lot as you're looking for taking things from good degree and in and i think that you know we like you know like you talked about your church michelle and
049just talk about what they'll welcome me with opening arms right now you think that that's the conversation we sort of push up to the community is is not whether or not this is you know would is this on your scale of important things because it's a very important thing and we do plenty of things that are very important that we don't get permission you know from the community first uh but at the same time you know it's a do you want to be part of this you know what can we do for you guys can we you know have dr dr worthington or one of the other very many great speakers are out to this you know have a community night a forum you know we we can get there you know get her or
050someone else in here for an hour and a half and do a zoom presentation i think it'd be very powerful in our community you know and then we're a district of of leaders right anna then dana oh yeah you know um thank you anna um i guess i just want to say i i like i i think i see excitement from david about and i feel the same way that like you know we we i we were all elected we finally all agree on something we passed the um resolution back in the summer i i did we didn't get i'm gonna say we got zero pushback we got not a single person that wrote to us and said i don't agree with that we haven't made just about any other decision that we have gotten
051uh zero pushback on so i think we have the thumbs up from the community that there isn't resistance that we need to we need to take the lead and say okay we're going with it and and i'm not sure and i don't i mean one of the things that um dr wornham actually said which i loved is she actually said slow down to move fast um or slow down to go fast and that doesn't mean not to do a lot but it does mean that we can take small meaningful steps like a deep step can be small and that i'm excited that like like i'd love to engage the community and bring them in if they're ready to dive in but i think i don't know we're good to move forward and i love that
052like i love that we're ready to start really articulating what does this look like for our community what does you know what does it what's our vision like that would be really cool like what can we dream of if we really dreamed big what would it be what would it look like yeah i think about you know kind of the the work of school committees and setting that vision right and then that that comment about you know defining equity writing setting that this is what we mean by this work could be really powerful anna thanks mary beth um i think i'm going to choose my words really carefully i think as much as i'm really encouraged and feel good about the fact that we're we're all in agreement i do i and i agree actually
053it's not that i think it's that i know the community wants this and has wanted this and has been if you listen carefully especially to the voices of people who have been hurt they've been begging for it for years so before we get too too excited about like yay we're finally doing something good i would argue that there has been a lot of work in this in other ways and other places and i've reminded full of a story you know from 20 years ago where there was a middle school student named hannah roy i think and you know she tried to bring about the adl no place for hate campaign here as a student and she got shot down and it was a really ugly moment in the community and that was you know 20
054years ago and so as much as i i like the deliberative thoughtful process i do feel a little bit compelled to say this this needs to happen now the community is definitely ready in some ways the community and parts of the committee have been ready for for decades and um i don't want our i want to say i don't want to get i don't want to like crush the vibe but at the same time let's not i'm not quite ready to have myself in the back to be honest you know like this is this is a starting point that's really overdue and i think if you ask members of our community who've suffered at the hands of something in the district they would say where were you five years ago where were you two years
055ago where was this you know i think there's this sense of needing to recognize um past hurt to try to make it better i think that's part of it um but i think the community is definitely ready and i think kind of to what i think david was saying is you know there's we're the leaders of the community and sometimes we need to push things through and not i don't to me this isn't a permission seeking activity i think that we've already pledged commitments to it affirmed them i would also argue um you guys know how much i love to quote law and policy but you know if you look at our documents our policies our handbooks our yearbooks like every piece of literature i think the bottom of the um the bottom of the
056website every letter right it says affirmatively we are a district that does not discriminate we are inclusive like there's this very specific language that's woven into the fabric of educational policy so in some ways this isn't really about what anybody wants this is what's about what doing what's right right in the high level of like we need to correct the injustices of the last 400 years of european oppression but we also are compelled to do this by federal law you know like we don't actually have it there's there's no there's no choice here because federal law compels us to do so our moral compasses compel us to do so the community is ready for it and has needed it for years so i just don't want to throw that out there like i wouldn't be
057too hesitant of stepping on toes in some ways because that's sort of the point right like we what did she say we have to do the thing we've never done before and that's what we have to do and i think we have a moral obligation to the community as as the leaders of the district but also um legally we're compelled and just sort of as a point of it's interesting actually listen to everybody talk about it i think every single one in this group has done bias training and some work in this in our professional lives in some way or another you know going back decades right and in the community i remember the first time we talked about um bias training the first night i motioned it there was a woman in the community
058who said oh i do that for my hr i'm an hr director i do that all the time here i'll give you access to the free linkedin platform my company uses it and i just feel like the fact that a lot of what we're talking about is it's not just do we do we want it or do we need it i mean it's literally the required onboarding for every major institution you know professional nonprofit so i feel like i want to frame it in a way that seems palatable but we also have to recognize like there's no more waiting for permission to do the right thing like i think we just have to move forward with these conversations and um i think the community expects it of us and i think they are ready and
059i don't think that's that question at all so i agree with everyone we're we are actually in agreement that this is something we have to do and that's that is exciting like this is this is a night of victory in some ways but that doesn't mean that doesn't mean it's good enough nelly now we have to get moving so if if i could offer a couple thoughts and in terms of some thinking about how to move forward i know um that you know thinking about you know is there an articulated goal for next year and being really clear around that and then you know what is the visioning work you know in the why you know starting with why for the community and that definition of equity really trying to refine that this year even
060before setting a goal i wonder if there'd be some value in you know having a standing agenda item each you know at each meeting or you know at least once a month you know targeted at defining what equity is for the community and put in plans to push that out and then working towards a real clear defined goal for the next school year that the district would work on to move this this process forward it's just a potential thought about how to best move forward um i know it's hard to do a lot of that work tonight but i think a process for how we how we figure out what's next would be an out a good outcome for this evening i don't know what people think about that i i wonder if if not
061to stretch us even even farther but if a working group is needed yeah i don't know what people think about that i know we talked about a communications group um i wonder if we could i'm sorry no i'm done i'm done i guess i wonder again i'm sort of gonna try to splendor to slow down a little bit before we like both of those suggestions seem reasonable to me like both um but i kind of wonder if it's sort of like i i wish that we had the bigger like i want the vision um i'm a little hesitant about the working group only because i love that we this is hard it's difficult to have so many people it is hard and i wish that we could be sitting around a table because i know
062that this would be less stilted and and a better conversation but um so i'm hesitant to i guess i want to sort of slow things down i don't i i love the idea of really getting a clear vision and i don't know if we can do that by splitting up and i also i like mary beth i'm i'm like like i feel like there's a thing there that's close it's not quite there yet keep working on a data again i like having it on every agenda but i feel a little bit like it's still dividing it out putting it as a separate and i don't know how to fix that i don't know like i want it to be sprinkled through the entire agenda and i don't know how to make that happen but um
063yeah but i i would really like us i dream of being able to really answer the question you know if if in your dreams in your vision what would equity look like in a living breathing classroom like what would it look like in a kindergarten classroom what would it look like in an 11th grade you know physics class like i would like to really answer that question and maybe other people that's not the direction people want to go but i that's kind of i don't know yeah i just just quickly i think a lot about seeing here data like what would you see what would you hear in an environment like that but julia oh and then anna or anyone starting yeah anna you had your hand up first okay cool thanks julia um i
064think i feel similar to dana um in not wanting to separate into a working group um i think actually this has been really productive to have all this uh hearing and seeing the same thing so i'm worried about bifurcating levels of knowledge which we already have some of that within the group and then if the working groups are like i think this is a really important conversation up holistically so i do think this needs to be more of all of us together um i think for me the goals in some ways i do feel like we've defined them a little and again i guess i just i feel like we don't we don't have to be quite so afraid of starting i personally would recommend that you know the the anti-racism resolution really does have
065and again this is that was put together by our governing body by people who have sort of amassed a collective knowledge of a lot of school committees about past practice and other districts so i take comfort in the way it was framed knowing that the people who framed it sit in the same seats that we do if that makes sense it wasn't put together by some other outside body it's put together by locals and you know i feel like within that there are very clear steps that we've that we have resolved to you know we've resolved to providing annual professional development training we've resolved to committing and recruiting retaining the workforce we'll examine our policies and for institutional and systemic racialized practices will incorporate the curriculum if you just look at the resolution as sort
066of a base plate of like these are the goals that not only we affirmed but in some ways our governing body has affirmed too and i take some comfort in that and i think they're good i remember when we first passed the resolution thinking wow this is really strong and awesome and it was so i think i personally recommend that we use that as sort of a goal setting framework and then pick out from it instead of trying to do everything all at once because there's no capacity for that in any level choose the ones that seem most elemental and again i i am a broken record and she said it again tonight we have to start with that inherent bias right that intrinsic bias literally is a starting point so i do think that
067to me seems like a really palatable goal to offer that that training and dave i like your idea maybe actually somehow they're making it more open partnering i will tell you the human rights coalition is talking about doing that like this is something that could be done for the community but i think it has to be done for the schools but the other thing too is you know dr warnham is here there are tons of educational advisors i do think maybe as another starting point is to invite in a true expert to say look this is where we're starting this is our starting point based on their experience and what's going on in the world what would they advise not in a generalized maic training but really looking at our district looking at those those
068data points that she talked about looking at the demographics looking at the fact that you know our equity page on our website literally says like to be continued or coming soon you know like i think there are professionals we could tap into and i think it would be well worth our time to reach out to someone to do that i know beverly's just hired a new diversity officer but there are tons of resources and i think that would be time and money well spent to actually have someone come in and give us a little bit of guidance from their past experience because we do not have to reinvent the wheelchair we really don't i don't i think we can learn there's a benefit i guess to being late to the party because we can learn
069from other people that have already done this and i think that's that's comforting it should help make this more efficient so um i don't know i think the goals have already sort of been defined i do think defining equity would be an important part of that but i do i i would want to keep us all together all seven i'd like to get a little bit of professional guidance and i do think strongly that that implicit bias training is something that should be part number one like that seems like a clear advisable stepping stone julia no i absolutely agree um and would second that we i don't think we made a motion but i would agree that we definitely need to do some more training and we need to focus on the goals and not
070reinvent the wheel my only question just as a new school community member is what is our purview and what is the superintendent's purview um so do we like set the vision and the goals and then um the you know the leadership team actually implements i'm just i i want to know what we are responsible for what and um what we're asking others to do but i do think we i love the idea of using the goals that we've already set yeah i would i would offer on that julia that you know vision is clearly the in the wheelhouse of the school committee right that we're we're where is it important that we had as a district um so that visioning of you know this this question and this conversation around equity i i think is
071spot on in terms of this the school committee um and to have annual goals that may include something like you know like um certain types of training where then what i would say is then you would hand that off and say it's really critical that this type of training occurs and you know one of the things we're in the process of doing is setting up a professional development committee um and then what we would do is pass that on to the professional development committee this has been a goal that has been set for us um and hopefully in you know part of um that buy-in process again i go back to that thinking about starting with why you know there's a there's a freighter phrase around if you're leading if you're leading and nobody's following
072you're just out for a walk right um and you know ensuring that that that collectively we're communicating why this is important you know why we're headed where we're headed and and i could foresee a lot of work for the remainder of this school year focused on getting that message out and at the same time you know to your point in the the resolution has a lot of great action steps but for 2122 where is it that we want to focus you know and if we could end the year with a community conversation about why this work is important um and a set of articulated goals for i think that really puts us in a good position and then that allows you know me to go to this professional development committee and say here you go
073guys here's the plan talking with our leadership team around okay how do we move whatever it is that comes out i think makes a lot of sense anna well i think too and you can probably answer this better than me i mean this is one important goal but i like the idea of we've expressed this as a value set something that we as a district care about but in terms of actually working it into the other types of training that the district needs um you know this isn't the only thing teachers need or want professional development on like it is an important goal it should not be the focus of every pd opportunity so i like the idea of us providing an overarching framework but then letting it and i think to julia's question again
074i'm also kind of a new member but i think that would be in keeping with we set a vision of like these are the things that are important but then giving our teachers who you know are magnificent in their own ways to help them help allow them to self-define and be like okay well these are the things that we think we could do and there can be a conversation around that but i also think you know it's worth saying i i i think just like there were a whole bunch of teachers that took it upon themselves to do the trauma-informed trading right you know mary adam talked about that i mean i'm sure there are teachers in fact i know that there are teachers who have done some of this work that would help be
075leaders so i think recognizing we have some talent already within our teaching pool and some ideas it's again this is not new ground and i i know the teachers are doing this and talking about it so i like the idea of us establishing high arching goals and then helping put it into bite-sized pieces that you mary beth and the professional development team could have sort of helped figure out when is the right time we know we need to do a bit work it into other things because this isn't the only project in the district right now it's very important but it's not the only one so yeah if i maybe just in terms of trying to get to a good end place for for this evening what does it feel like if we took in
076march we we are continuing to do the budget and there's a lot going on there but if we dedicated april for um specific places on the agenda to really get clear on what the district's definition is of equity um and get that that published and the committee agreeing on what that is and maybe how we push that out as an as a an april goal and as a may goal um going through and starting a draft of 22 goals um and then confirming them in june so that the the year ends with the district having a clearly articulated definition of equity that has been communicated to the the community at large and it has one of its 2122 goals already written that relates to how we move this work forward does that seem to make
077sense to folks speaking to that but i don't know whether you were waiting david [Music] no i mean what i was going to say was that you know let's not get caught up in the bureaucracy of trying to solve it tonight right i think that we need to i think that we should sit back i i i do know that marches and i was going to suggest that we try and bring back what our goals look like and putting on the agenda for april right but i i do like how you just sort of laid it out mary beth my only sort of caveat to that would be i think right so like anna said this isn't everything but like dana said this should be sprinkled into everything right so the go in and it's
078not going to happen overnight right so so i i i you know is there a way that we can get some sort of overview training like an hour-long type of pd into to our teachers this year looking into you know potentially doing whether it's over the summer doing a longer break or some you know early in the year pd um of sort of bringing that in so that you know because every time you know i've gone through this multiple times and has gone through every time you go through this you sort of hear something different and see a new avenue that you can bring it in and that's the ultimate goal excuse me i harry potter may and i i don't know if it's just me or if michelle gets as nervous as i do
079but like that's when i see transition in our team so like sort of trying to create these plans when we could have new members onboarding and all this um always makes me a little bit nervous um just because they don't want to ruin a good flow um you know but i like i do like the timeline so i don't want to be i don't want to be negative on that but i also want to you know um you have to hurry up to the slow down to hurry up type of thing too like you know can we dip you know sort of dip our toe a little bit as a district in a little bit this year to get that process started right and then like anna said there's already got to be people in
080in the district that are already on board with this that have already done you know and there are some that are that maybe sort of don't have a negative view but like yeah why do we really need this that i was going to be like oh you know what that was really insightful you know and i'm happy it was not a waste of an hour right we've all been in those pd's before but like the you know and then sort of moving that forward where you know yeah i love the idea of sort of creating uh the overarching plan for the future of our district right but realizing that it's you know um it's the sprinkles here right that's sort of adding everything to make everything more robust there are you know definite needs like
081um you know we're addressed in in our little q a right there that you know we want to make sure that we're not that that things like that is not happening right and then um you'd like to think those are the easier fixes but if they were really that easy to fix it would have never happened in the first place but you know something that we have to actually you know sort of keep in mind so like the the faster we can get started i think the better off we are but at the same time like not just sort of um you know needing thinking that we need to solve the entire problem right away too right so like i know it sort of it seems like it right at the fence a little bit
082um but yeah i i just like to see that but like i said i really didn't like how you laid it out other than my worry about the transition of the team um but i did like how you laid it out very bad thank you dana that's really what i was thinking thank you that was i thought that was really helpful i'm wondering a couple things one i liked that very much of a plan and i i'm hearing a couple of like david and anna i think and maybe julia all kind of suggested in different ways that we might need to reach outside of our community um and i'm wondering and it's really a question for the group like what do we think would be a useful reach out like what what feels like the
083first like i heard anna sort of saying there are other communities that have already done this like i'm just wondering what would that what would feel useful like i have an idea about maybe but i'm interested to other people feel like that would be a useful thing to do because we could do that like that's something we could do that's outside of a meeting right some you know we could reach out if there's a connection and i'd be interested in other people have ideas about who that would be and how that would work well i um i mean i i definitely think that is an idea just to help give us some focus if we feel like we need it which again i think could be helpful um and i think you know this is
084where and i don't know if this this works in terms of like process but you know i have a couple ideas of specific people that might be good obviously the masc has great trainers you know i mean dr warner was one of the people there tonight like there's a whole there's a whole division of masc that sort of working on this so again like i'm looking for we don't have to create it we we can ask for the help from the people who've already figured it out so i guess for me i might reach out to say could we leverage our professional body who has worked on some of us to give us some you know tactical guidance about next steps that they might suggest and then um i do feel like just in terms
085of workflow i think the idea of of defining concrete steps that are manageable so we don't overwhelm the district but also um you know the way you're talking about integrating into everyday life i do think the sooner we start doing this and start working on some of the trainings and the mental internal shift it's amazing what happens when you um and a lot of people say talk about being anti-racist right like how do you and she talked about tonight like how do you train yourself to do that and at first it's uncomfortable but then once you practice all of a sudden now you see the world totally differently and it just becomes second nature so the same way that the biases builds up to be hurtful um anti-racist techniques they also become second nature if
086you actually work on it and it's it's i mean it's totally trainable like it's great to think that at age 29 for the 14th time i'm learning new things right you know like that's i think that's really awesome so yeah i think a little bit of pd for for us from someone who has led school committees down this path before i think that'll be helpful i think it'll be efficient i think it will also potentially help us avoid conflicts amongst ourselves about what to do because people have done it before and i think we can take some advice from them so um i don't that answers your question but that would be my step is get some help from someone who knows look at other modeling and then talk with mary beth and the teachers
087about what's a palatable reasonable ask with but i do agree with david obviously like i wanted to do this years ago like for me i'm like let's go let's go i sort of julia i just we can't move fast enough for me so if anything i'm gonna be like the rabbit that wants to go really too fast so i recognize that in myself that would be my suggestion for next steps so i know we're at time now for nine does does it feel like we'll will move i think i heard that it would that the timeline here makes at least as a place to start to have april be that equity conversation may and june with the goals i heard some additional training for the school committee around um you know potential speakers or that
088type of thing that could be looked into and you know one of the things that we've we've already started we we met with um the the community group that in i know you're leading some some of the students that are involved in that and talked about training for the staff you know one of the things that that i shared with them and principal tracy joined me is that right now people's bandwidth are is pretty narrow and one of our teachers who i noticed is on here heather mass has developed a survey to ask people when they feel like they're going to be best prepared just to really engage in this week this work either this spring over the summer of the fall so she's planning on sending that out that week this week um and
089you know we have so we're making some assumptions about people's bandwidth but we don't know until we ask right so the next step there would be to get some information from our faculty around do they feel like this is something that they can really be present for this year or over the summer or in the fall what's the best time frame to really start this work so you know i can certainly report back on the um results of those surveys does that does that feel like a a good way to kind of close and figure out next steps in fact um at my school a new club was just formed and it's it's starting um on march 1st it's a diversity equity and inclusion club run by students nice teachers and students and i don't
090know if we have something like that or we could encourage something like that in our schools yeah actually there's one both within the high school and then a community group as well so yeah all right thank you well thank oh dana did you want to finish it i'm sorry i'm sorry i i guess i um and maybe this is this is i'm gonna throw it out there because i guess i'm wondering if if what we're looking for for us when we're talking about what we're looking for i'm wondering if what we're looking for is maybe um not so much of a training but maybe a facilitator to now to help to that we could maybe go to the masc and and say we're in agreement about wanting to take the resolution that we had and
091put it into action and we're enthusiastic but we know this has already been done before and is there so i i'm just putting that out there is is that what we're looking for is a facilitator to help us get the process rolling rather than like unnecessarily a training is that i can't i agree i heard from david training i agree from that i heard from anna facilitator i think that those two things go hand in hand um i mean is that kind of david i i also heard you saying more about like community training but um well no i mean i i think that i i i there's people out here who've done this before who have done it in very similar communities let's go find that person and have them walk us through it
092rather than wasting our time you know that's and that's what i meant about the school specific focus like i mean clearly the masc has people that i do i think maybe marry back to your point about a structured facilitated conversation yeah not so much like we attend the training as anonymous people but we have someone to specifically come work with our committee who's led this process before and yeah just to pick back up and mary beth said you know um there are community groups you know our group is one there's a couple other regional groups that are doing some similar programming outside of the schools that i'm sure members of the population the community will hopefully attend um but i think that it's also really important to to sort of own this right like we
093are still the public schools we're the school committee we have public tax dollars these are publicly funded things so i think that bridge is really solid i mean it's nice that there's a lot of people that wear different hats here you know michelle you've got ties to the church i've got ties to the the coalition you know david's got ties to like we all have different ties michelle is an accord you know like we all have tons of community ties that i think we could go to in some ways or make aware but ultimately for me as a i guess as a value proposition we're the elected school committee for the public schools and we have this responsibility to the public and it has to be on us like we have to drive this particular
094part of the bus as it pertains to the district and i do think peter yeah i mean there's there's an awesome group of students right now that is blows me away like the kids are doing such great work but again we can't rely on the kids like we're supposed to be the leaders and that's okay to say that too but it's partnerships but i do think we have to take leadership so yeah i think if if people are open to bringing in someone from the masc or someone they recommend to a meeting in april or may or whatever timeline seems good you know moving forward i to me that feels like a really good next step because they'll help us figure out the next step after that all right i'm not sure but i think
095we might have a plan the only thing we don't have is we i think we do actually need to sort of say who is going to make that phone call i think because all of us can't yep separately phone calls so michelle oregon is our hall i call the msc person so i think it's her excellent [Music] i do want to just make people aware that um we have a meeting on the third we have a meeting on the 10th and we will be having a meeting on the 17th which i think the 17th is going to be the workshop it was things are looking up for the budget we may be able to prove it on the 10th the 17th was a placeholder so it looks like um hopefully we won't need it for
096approving the budget um so we'll see if we can get workshop in there about goals and um mary beth's um do more best formative thing because we had missed that so so just keep we definitely have a meet on the third yes yeah third 10th and 17th yep um and just before we move too far away from the take away so michelle's going to reach out to the masc and then mary beth is working with um heather mace to about the survey and bandwidth that seemed like another hard actionable takeaway that we'll maybe circle back to i just want to make sure that's those are sort of the two main things right i know dana really well was like what's the action step and i think those look like two actual things we just agreed
097to so that's and when was the definition of equity i loved that when you said that mary beth yeah i have that down for the april school committee meetings so i think you know we could do a draft in the first meeting and then finalize it the second meeting of april and then we will be in the range of starting to define 2122 goals in may and june so this would be one of them and again that gives us the time to do both drafts and a final version before the end of the school year thank you and i i think it there i'm sorry i feel like i'm just joking i'm sorry now go ahead dana and then michelle no i i just think it's real it will be important to get to that
098point of over communication like it is a really important and difficult thing for the community to understand that like when we set a goal for the district that's a big deal like we will need to communicate that to the district that like it's it's not just like oh they said that right like it's yeah i think one of the things dana that can be really helpful i have a number of colleagues that actually start every school committee meeting with reading the district goals i think here's what we decided that we were going to do this year you know this is what we're focused on and it does help remind everybody this is the work that we're engaged in um so that i would agree with that michelle did you have a just to clarify the
099date so we're looking probably possibly for march to have some type of training facilitator to come in and help us with our um resolution april well you talked about the i wonder just in terms of thinking and you you may want to do this earlier but there is a workshop scheduled in june for like june 16th would that be a time to block off a substantial part of that workshop day or time or a piece of that to have a consultant or would you prefer to have somebody in the meetings and i can can i go if we're going to be setting our goal on equity in april would it be better for us to have a a training or facilitator come in before that i i think it's good any time but i'm just
100saying before we set that goal probably yeah and we were thinking so april would be just the definition of equity um so maybe in alignment with that having somebody come in in april before the actual work begins in that sense well and if i can offer i feel like the defining of what equity looks like is not the same as what are we gonna do to move our district to being a more dei focused district so i think defining equity feels like something we could do before we have another person come in to advise around actually then making that actualize because i think just based on everything we said tonight i think we could come up with i think i think i think we could do that ourselves but then how to turn that goal
101into action is the part i think we could use some help with so i'm okay doing the goal setting in like first part of april but maybe you know i don't want to wait till june that feels too long to me i think if we could get some consultancy in later in april or early may that would feel good to me personally i'll reach out find out what's available and we can report back at the next meeting all right so just one final recap um april will look at ending that month with a clearly defined definition of equity to share with our community may there would be a consultancy first draft of goals and june finishing the the 2122 goal related to dei and then again heather is taking the lead on the staff survey
102but we'll report back as to what we find when that goes out what do you think plan dana oh [Laughter] i want to just stay with you guys like i said it's not 1am we can't do it i moved to adjourn second looking for anna and michelle horgan's on the bottom of the screen yes julia yes yes yes either yes david yes yes all right see you next wednesday have a good night everybody