001location okay i know the year i know the month i have no idea what day it is um this study session the study session of school district 535 school board is called to order at 5 pm tuesday march 15 2022 in room 137 of the edison building the board acknowledges this site and all rps sites are situated on the ancestral land at the dakota people and we honor the dakota nations and the sacred lands of all indigenous peoples interested members of the public are welcomed and encouraged to view this meeting remotely at youtube.com isd 535 or the live stream video may be found we will be using interactive technology to include one board member attending virtually from a location that has been posted previously and is available to the public and we see her on
002screen present at this meeting our school board members superintendent kent pacquel a non-voting ex-officio member and assistant board clerk ms michelle severson ms everson will you please call the role thank you clerk barlow here director garcia here treasurer mclaughlin yeah chair marvin here vice chair nathan we have no audio but she said and director workmen here and you didn't call me and i'm here [Laughter] thank you director evanson we've got everything at this time we provide the opportunity to say the pledge of allegiance i pledge from which allegiance stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all 2.0 approval of the agenda are there any changes to the agenda remove approval second it's been moved and seconded to approve the agenda all in favor say aye aye [Music] we need to do
003a roll call vote thank you miss nathan for all right roll call vote director amundsen aye clerk barlow aye director garcia aye treasurer mclaughlin aye chair marvin aye vice chair nathan aye and director wordman aye thank you that agenda has really been approved 3.01 equity policy progress check dr pikel uh chair marvin directors of the board and colleagues um this is exciting and i want to for some of you who come to school board meetings frequently you will know this is pretty innovative this is an unstructured conversation that uh i think is going to provide the board and all of us with a lot of food for thought if it flops it's my fault but i don't think that's going to happen because we need more opportunities to be engaging directly in a free-flowing setting
004with people who are out there leading and doing the work so i want to thank you very much i'm going to turn it over initially to my colleague will ruffin ii who's our executive director of diversity equity and inclusion just to kind of kick us off with some introductions and then i'm going to come back and pose an initial question to get us started with some conversations um and then we'll take the conversation where board members and where all of you want to take it uh to really uh take the pulse of our work uh on diversity equity and inclusion so yeah i would love if all of you at the table if you would just say your name and your position and what schools you work with we'll start with romney we'll come back
005this way and by the time we end over here with patrick i'll ask the first question to get us going okay rodney sharp i'm at john marshall john adams engage with socialism i am yahi ahmed an equity specialist i'm at mayo high school uh bamber valley riverside and pinewood i am michelle diaz i am high school and primarily i work with us academic support that has been my main think for a project for the past eight years martinez equity specialist district-wide my name is winnie goaty and i'm an equity specialist at century high school kellogg and falwell and i also help support jefferson and lincoln my name is raja ali and i'm an el teacher at age my name is teacher at john adams and i'm also the co-lead of the employees of color researchers
006natalia benjamin i also teach multi-level students at century high school and ethnic studies this year and i call these restaurants juan perales i'm a fourth grade spanish immersion teacher at gage so again thank you all for being with us here this evening uh since this is a conversation style format not everyone has to answer all of the questions just know that if the question speaks to you please go ahead and answer but we don't want to be here till 8 9 10 o'clock so please don't answer all of the questions right but i do want to start with this one think about your roles in our schools and if we were to ask you what is one thing that our district should focus on in regards to our equity journey what would that one thing
007be i think for starters making like the trainings required not optional that could be a start just just to echo beth i think if we could have some mandatory cultural competence personal and implicit race bias training for current staff but also the incoming staff i think that would go a long way and if i would go off that i would say all staff i feel like sometimes it's just uh certified staff but everyone in the building needs it are we able to engage so are we talking uh pd then okay and uh in doing so what do you think would be an adequate amount of 30 minutes an hour multiple sessions what would you recommend since we're having the conversation what do you think would be what helped the organization uh to include our children
008uh staff and all employees for its mission and community that's a great question i think it depends a lot like on the people themselves like when they self-respect because some people are far farther now in this work than others to be honest and but like i i know some people will say that they don't need it but they actually do um but i don't i don't have i would i would say if you're going to offer not just to be a pd that's like oh come to this at the beginning of the year back to school week maybe continue it throughout the year and every time we have like a pd day tie it back to what they were learning at the beginning of the year so they can have it a whole year or
009even years multiple years i'd like to add something to that one of those is that this book is ongoing so i think just saying like half an hour an hour would be sufficient um it's a little unrealistic um i would say from experience when when i have done pd on bias and microaggressions the the foundation is a good two or three hours just to lay common language basic understandings um interesting overall um just layer of how do we understand things and then we can go from there but usually any of the topics that that have done trainings for people is as a basic two or three hours for any of those concepts as a as a foundational basis you know if i were to jump in um this is a reoccurring theme that we hear
010from staff members as i'm out in buildings and i'm talking to different people is we need to have a basic foundation for sure but the trainings we have to get away from the one and done trainings we have to continue all throughout the school year so people can continue to practice what they're learning about we can't expect people to be a professional in microaggressions in a one-hour training it just doesn't make sense but we can expect them to get a little bit better each time with practice so we have to have some type of foundation and then continue those throughout the school year and just let me interrupt for a minute mr ruffin are you comfortable with people just including board members just sort of speaking or do you want them to raise hands or
011you know if this was my classroom i would say just jump in but we also know that people have different styles so if you're more comfortable with raising the hand do that and we can call on you as well well it's your classroom then i say let's jump in all right good answer so a quick question and i don't know if it has an easy answer for people who are listening and i think we established this pd is professional development so that's the training that people get better district-wide where everybody gets the same thing or more tailored to the individual building i think i think you could do both uh i'm thinking about the example of our safe schools training so in the beginning of the school year during our workshop week we have a
012mandatory set of trainings that we must complete at a certain time period i think that you give the foundational pieces at that time and then i think that you can continue that work as mr ruffin ii had said you would just keep doing the work and building upon our sites need different things and we know that and we know that our sites are at different places and so in order to have a more structured and to be most beneficial then i think you would need to continue that site specific i think if we were to i think it would be really useful to offer like a beginner intermediate and advanced levels of pd around equity um because then people can choose where they're at and then they can advance to the next one if they
013feel like they've been doing the work and they feel like they're ready for that next step i also don't think it should be virtual because it's very easy to check out and you're in a virtual meeting if you're in the room you have to do the work i think we've all got a lot of use to virtual and i can tell you from some of the meetings i go to virtual it's very easy to check out so i think if we do this it has to be a person well i'm you're going to say something i think yeah i guess uh i do i do like the idea of having just kind of three levels introductory intermediate and more advanced training we've had district-wide equity specialist trainings meetings and in conversations with people from other
014sites we have found out that every site is in a different space everybody's in a different place with it i know like gage we've been doing it consistently throughout the year but i'm talking to some people from other sites they're not quite there yet so i think just establishing what's our baseline where do we want everybody in the district to be i think that would be a good starting point maybe picking up a little bit on what you're saying when we first kicked this off and thank you for jumping in first of all we're going to do this we're going to do this starting next fall and we're going to partner with many of you to do it um as i was meeting with natalia and ronda and will last week one of the issues
015that came up was microaggression as a term i'm wondering if any of you agree that that's something we need to get into and how would you define it and what is it and you know i ask that as a person who in most slices of society has a lot of advantage as you cut those things across and it's not a term that is necessarily widely understood especially by people who come from backgrounds like mine and so talk a little bit about it obviously you can tell i've heard a lot about this since i got to rochester and so it's a concept that i'm just eager to put on the table it's one of the themes that came out as a possible focus of the kind of foundational professional development because we don't tell people what
016it is and that it's hurtful and it's not acceptable it's hard to have accountability when we haven't done that so does that resonate with any of you and how how might you define it and again this is just an open free conversation don't you're expressing your personal opinion um which we really welcome i think that um i won't answer all those questions but i ask questions that are kind of paragraphs i'm working on that microaggressions definitely needs to be something that is addressed but you need to lay the framework down first with um you need to like people need to learn more about stereotyping oppression racism um discrimination and how all of that um how all of that kind of manifested itself to begin with in order to start talking about my career thank you
017i'll just i can just reflect on my own experience and i imagine that this is probably true of all the people sitting in front of us is that there's the consistent expectation that we as you know qt bypack or whatever sort of minoritized identity group we fall into have to be the ones to educate rather than people doing that work for themselves and i would say one of the things that i was like picking up on i had question about that could be microaggression leading into macro aggression is if we're partnering with these individuals how would they be compensated so they're not offering free intellectual labor because i think that that's another thing that is a struggle um to see is like yes we come already with all of that knowledge and information and personal
018experience and when are other people gonna pick up that mantle and recognize that we should not also be the bearers of that work so i feel like that i think maybe that's more directed toward you the question of what levels of compensation will be offered and is this something that you're tapping talented individuals for that they would also be able to opt out because maybe that's not something they're ready for compensation will be offered and we'll make sure people can opt out okay yeah i do also want to add that uh where i do think that microaggression can be overt and can be quite obviously uh stereotypical i think but people need to understand that many times it's also unintentional and it's just the way that they are conditioned to think and it's just the
019way that things have been and they've continued on to this cycle and so i think it's really important and one of the trainings that i think would be important is this unconscious bias that we have and in this unconscious decision to make comments or do actions that are microaggressions and that are harmful to to to people and so i do want to make that distinction because i i think that many times it can be just stereotyping but a lot a lot of times and from my own experience it's people that are well-intentioned but it's it's harmful to me thank you i can't speak for the whole board but i can certainly speak for myself which i'm doing right now is i would really appreciate it if board members also had the opportunity to be trained
020in a number of different areas i think the microaggression one um really hits home with me because exactly what you said you know you you've been thinking a certain way you don't think about what you've been thinking about i mean or saying because you haven't had to so you know and how do i match that with what jess just said which is i don't expect you to do all the work but i i have to have some knowledge or information or something rather than well microaggressions are bad well what are they can you give us an example um you know what have you experienced with microaggressions and i see it as a conversation with all of us rather than okay your team is going to come up with something and you're going to present it
021to us and then we will talk about it and get back to you i mean i much prefer this kind of format where we're all sitting around a bunch of tables having the conversation so i really appreciate what you said well i think sometimes microaggressions can be avoided by its staff sometimes so we got to hold ourselves to the same standards that we own our students a lot of times i hear like oh this student needs to be more resilient but i'm like you just called me to deal with this student from your class like where's your resiliency so i think sometimes that is the big thing like we hold our kids here but we only want to go here so i think that's a big thing that would avoid a lot of microaggressions uh
022chair marvin i was just going to mention i was glancing through our policy equity policy uh as it relates to definitions and notice that uh neither microaggression nor unconscious bias is a part of that and this conversation might potentially allow us to develop and expand the policy as it relates to definition so we can ensure that if we're uh modeling a policy that our the organization at least understands if we're going to be called out regarding the behavior we at least know what the behavior is and i was kind of hoping that maybe patrick would put something to music but i know he has a lot to say but but i mean it is interesting uh this conversation that uh and i appreciate the fact uh uh that you guys represent uh a team and
023the experience and perhaps uh not all of it being favorable uh but having the the resiliency to uh in spite of i'm thinking of maya angelou and still we rise and i think the fact that you're before us today gives us opportunity to as director workman has suggested to allow us to be a part of that learning cue as well and and so please we want you to yes we're at the school board but uh we're here to to learn and uh so don't hold back okay uh give us this is your opportunity there will probably be other opportunities in the future but you know we're starting this journey uh you know you're part of a team and and what better way to get the team off to a great start by lending your voice
024and knowing your voice will be valued and uh can be incorporated into the choices and decisions we make moving forward i would love to hear from actually each of you this one put you i'm sure you have a lot of hard days and there's heavy lifting and there's days where you feel like um i'm not making progress but what is one moment micro macro where you say yes i am moving diversity equity inclusion forward in my work maybe with one kid at one moment maybe systemically um one sort of glimpse of where you say yes this is why i'm here this is why i do my work maybe it wasn't a brilliant success but you saw what might be possible even if something didn't happen somebody willing to kind of give us a few glimpses
025i'd invite all of you but as will said it's optional but um i'm just eager to get a sense of i've heard of it from some of you and i've actually observed it a few times but can anybody kind of give us a glimpse of that i can get us started thank you like i said uh my name is yahi ahmed uh i'm one of the newest equity specialists i might be new to my role but i'm not new to the district i've been with the district over 20 plus years i've done school age out here i've done community ed middle school work uh i was a resiliency specialist prior to an equity specialist uh one of the things that in my 20-year journey career at rochester public school district is that you know it's
026no secret that this there's a lack of diversity right uh any building that i attend to tend to be there's one or two of us in it and that's not that many and a lot of a lot of the times that the our school our children the our population the students that go to our district is very diverse uh there's no secret secret in that uh so i mean it's as a district is our mission is to empower all the students uh to give them the knowledge and the skills for them to require uh to contribute uh to the global community um one of the things that one of the ways i contribute is any building that i work with regardless of whether it's mayo high school bamber valley riverside pinewood is to make that
027building more inclusive for all students and all parents especially people that that look like me share similar backgrounds like me you speak the same language as me uh i speak i speak somali fluently that's my first language english is my second language uh so one of the things that and and being that bridge between leadership in any building and the parents right and hopefully creating that that culture have you know helping out with the most of the school with their coaches understanding people from our community what my work what might not work because it is important as we do our job how do we treat every student with respect how do we treat every parent with dignity and so on but also for them to have an access into our building right if a parent
028is it does not have access to that building and then they have to come all the way to the citizen building and then you know we have a one of the greatest language department but then they have to schedule that and by the time their their problem or whatever the issues get to it might be two to three days or four days right but by having a team like this coming from a different knowledge different background it helps things makes it easier right i work with with teachers individually uh like rodney said i've said earlier uh teachers reach out to us when they when they having certain conflict with their students or one night and be that barrier even when that student and and that teacher right and and figuring out okay what is fair
029uh what is uh something that the kid can handle or because sometimes it's important to understand that our children bring a different background different experience to our building and you know we can't educate everyone with once one solution one side's fit all right we have to make sure that we're figuring out each kid as unique as they are what would work for that for that kid and also identified in when kids needs a resource and a lot of the kids are especially because of the pandemic or because a lot of reasons if there was a gap in education prior to the pandemic you could just imagine how huge that gap got just by the by the pandemic but what resources are we affording to these kids to make sure that they they stay caught up
030they they make sure that that we you know we're constantly communicating with parents right how do we even communicate with parents do we send them an email do we call them do you know or because most of the parents that i work with they're they're they're willing to work with all of us it's just they probably may be a mis this connection of how do we pull those parents in in the building so they they help us out so we make sure then we we get that we get all our students and equal access right just giving every single kid exactly the same thing it's not equitable every kid has a different need so we need to understand that and the other thing is that sometimes they're in ho there isn't a whole lot of
031uh extracurricular activities for the kids who are struggling right uh they come to school and probably sometimes that is their extract activities and we struggle trying to get them to class because there isn't a whole lot for them to connect with uh in the after school program to connect with to say hey you know what here's your incentive make sure you go to kerry academics and then here's your your your basketball or whatever whatever my kids might be interested in right uh so i think that's something that we as an equity specialist or anybody in this team or brazilians who love it is one of the things that we help with everyone in the team is that making sure that you know all the kids can be successful and give them that resource and not
032only that also give them a representation right somebody that give them a hope somebody that looks like them somebody that talks like them because most of the kids when i walk in most of the building they're confused as to who i am or what i am right a lot of them have they can't believe that i could be a teacher they can't believe that i could be an admin they can't believe that and that is a failure on us right like we said if we try to inspire them to be the best they can be then we have to give them that reason for them to be we have to we got to be able to not only inspire them to make them believe that right and one way we can we can show that
033is by by showcasing that the success and the talent that our community has thank you yeah thank you hello patrick again um so the question was um sorry dr prakal can you repeat the question it was something about how how we do it in our world what's the moment in your work um and yeah he just gave us a lot of them which was awesome like just a moment you say yes this is why i'm here this is this is a glimpse or an example of progress this is where i feel that i'm i'm enhancing diversity and equity and inclusion in in my work in some way yeah um so um this is my seventh year in the district um however i've had a unique experience being a student a former student of this district
034growing up um here uh graduating 2009 um i didn't see myself as a student at rps in a lot of the things that i learned and particularly in music which i teach elementary and at the elementary level and you know play professionally at times on my first my first year i made it i made it a thing where you know what i'm going to find music that represents my students because my neighborhood is fairly diverse at the time uh however that was really difficult given the um given the tools i was given as a college student and then just like as a first-year teacher where you're kind of scrounging for things and very limited resources i didn't know any of these colleagues um or even this group just that didn't exist back then to help
035me um so everything was you know under my own um persistence and wanting to improve so that i have i have lessons that i that i can show my students that they can see themselves in so it started with a song which we say thank you in different languages and it eventually evolved into me going to different schools and then every student that that came across like a different language they kind of perked up and they're like oh you know how to say things like that that's that's that's what we say at my home and it kind of started from there and then i started creating curriculum that would celebrate different heritages and then just go through different music that it's not just western focused but also also highlights people that look like them and
036the more i did that each year especially by the time my kids become third fourth and fifth graders we can have these conversations and they can feel they can feel a part of the lessons that we're that we're learning they can be teachers sometimes too if i don't know things so um that was that's that's been my uh that's been what's keeping me doing the work that i do is seeing having those conversations with third fourth and fifth graders every day about their identities the music the cultures that they bring in at home um however like i feel that that's only unique to me and wherever i teach and um so that's not necessarily something that other music teachers are able to do at the moment i do have the resources to provide for them
037but given the structure in which we are during the past couple years unable to me i can't really share that and i would love to be able to have those conversations with with my colleagues that they can bring it to their students as well so that their student their students feel represented and seen whether it's it's through their heritages or maybe it's how they look like or the the music that they listen to that that is okay to in an educational setting to learn about instead of being having to shelter it just like many of the colleagues or many of the classmates that i grew up in in this district for a while where we didn't see ourselves and so we grew up in a world where we didn't feel valued and so now is
038a good time for us to to change our perspective and grow up these next few years of students to to to give something that we didn't have growing up [Applause] yeah i just want to um amplify that patrick for a second i think what you just said is really powerful here you are a teacher personally creating ways to integrate culture through music and you're eager to share it with your colleagues across the district but you can't do that and live a sane life as an individual teacher we need to create mechanisms that help you and help your colleagues access what you're doing i think that's going to be a hallmark of our strategic plan is saying we have these great things happening across the district and we've got to find ways to actually feather them
039out and then enhance them and you know and sometimes create accountability for for using them so i think it's a great example of how i'm sure a lot of music teachers around the district would hear you saying that and say yes sign me up but we have to create we have to create practical ways to share that kind of resource great i have a question for you would it be helpful for other teachers to be able to observe you in terms of what you are actually doing with your students and how i think it's safer now [Music] i'm a little protective of my classroom and who goes in there no i understand that but i mean speaking so i i guess i'd like to say we used to do this about 40 000 years ago
040when i was a young teacher but the issue became how do we how do we pay for it because the teachers are in his classroom and having a wonderful time but somebody has to be with the students that don't have a teacher at that moment so that was i think that was one of the the things that you know we kind of lost over the years because of the budget so i'll stop there well and while we're on this you started at this and you i we're talking about this patrick about feeling valued we need to make sure kids feel they're valued and we need to make sure that our educators feel that they're valued and i i haven't ever been in your position you are a small but mighty team but we are sending
041you as leaders into classrooms across the district saying we need to change things and you need to be the leaders of change and i am guessing that you pay a price every day you pay a price because a whole bunch of people don't want to change and they don't want to see some someone else doing something that's different from the way it's all already been done and so i'm very concerned that our you know our equity policy part of it is expanding the number of educators of color that we have in this district we'd better make sure that it is a safe place for those people and that we are supporting you and supporting them and making sure that every employee in this district understands that things need to change and if it's uncomfortable it's
042going to be uncomfortable but you shouldn't be the ones to pay the price for that so i don't know if there's a mechanism for forgetting the support you need emotionally physically whatever it is but you know we need to change curriculum and how things are taught and how we hire and and support teachers in every aspect of our education and you have a huge job ahead of you and you shouldn't have to do it on your own so whether this comes up tonight or not i i think you need to know that this district is obligated and this board is willing not just to stand be behind you but to stand beside you and ensure that your work environment is safe and welcoming and that every employee in this district knows um we are going
043to change things and you all of you need to feel valued so anyway the issue is success in your classroom sorry michelle well can i can i speak to something about that because um you know the the um employees of color resource group is a great group um that helps support our staff um and our and our uh what what you're saying is what we try to do as an executive board as members um of the of the the group we want to support each other and we have provided a support for each other we have provided an outlet to celebrate each other through our newsletters and our successes we have created networking opportunities for collaboration to talk about a lot of the great things that we are doing within um our district and so
044a lot of what you were speaking to is part of our agenda it's what we want to do we have many different things that we are continuing to grow and this group has grown um far from the last few years um and uh that's that's what we want to continue to do and with your support and with your help and um with the meetings that we've had with superintendent pacquel and will ruffin ii we've talked about ways that we can continue to grow our group to provide that support to provide that celebration to provide the uh help that is needed and um can speak to you know what we've continued to do and what we're trying to do as well yeah i would like to circle back maybe to the when we were talking about
045professional development one of the things that we were able to do this year was to um invite some guest speakers that that are that do some of this work nationwide so that we could uh grow our literacy uh into racial equity and that was very helpful because then we're able to to have language to name our experiences to be able to to be in a circle where we can heal from harm that has happened and when we look at professional development um you know we were talking about advanced uh intermediate beginners uh we need different professional development and right now we're currently doing it on fridays after school so so we are asked to put in extra time to be able to do that and so to to have a process and a way to
046to carry that work so that we can not only retain the teachers that we have in the district but attract new staff so that it's not an additional time but during the work day um like our peers do and so a shared time when we're doing equity work but that is intentional for our needs uh specifically because as people of color we deal with different racialist experiences that other people in the district don't have to deal with and that they don't have to carry that weight and so thinking about how as we move forward and professional development is is worked around that we have that time to do it um not not during our after hours or during free time but during our work day would greatly i think make it more accessible to more
047members in our district go ahead thank you i just i just this is a topic area that i'm really passionate about and so i wanted to offer a couple of thoughts um superintendent you talked about you know what are moments that make you feel like you're doing the work and i just want to say that tonight is one of those moments for me um because i'm seeing professionals of color at the table and they're they're part of the discussion most of the times they were meeting in hallways you know speaking softly so that superiors wouldn't hear the voices and so this moment makes me very proud i'm also very proud of this board for getting this equity policy in place um policy creates movement so all of you need to know that you have a
048policy behind you that says that this work must be done it's not work that you just have to do i think i raised an issue with mr ruffin saying that i didn't think equity specialists should be called specialists because then people go to you and say you do your specialist work when responsibility of diversity equity inclusion is for each one of us and so um those discussions are happening every day right my my wonderful theory was they should be called navigators because you're going through these waters and you're pulling people on board and and so we're talking about the language those conversations are happening at administrative and cabinet and and board levels in 1990 rochester public schools partnered with um i can't even remember the nonprofit now but they created this building equality together which
049is today's diversity council in rochester so the partnership with education diversity education for students and rochester public schools staff so this is not a new initiative that you're understanding on the backs and shoulders of committed community members who believe that this is important and has been important for a long time um you have the benefit of of knowing we we've had two superintendents of color and i want you to understand that this discussion did not happen at the table with the superintendent of color here it's happening with a white superintendent at the table i think those are important differences to note to realize that the world is changing that that this is the reality we have the opportunity to not have children not see themselves anymore and we need to stand strong in that possibility
050and you need to know that there have been people before you there will be people after you um some of the professional development we're talking about we're talking at at freshman sophomore senior levels but there's an elementary diversity education that has to happen across the district about you know unlearning racism that it that's part of the air we breathe and we've all been taught at regardless of the color of our skin and we have to unwind that learning and set the groundwork so that we can understand a true history rather than just the one we've been fed which feeds that racism we have to open up our hearts and understand that we're all doing this work together regardless of the colors of our skin and we have to just we have to allow our children
051to see a real history i want my grandchildren to see themselves sooner than i did i need you to know i watched blues clues last week and the blues clues guy is a filipino and he had his lola and they were eating pancit and i'm 60 years old and it's the first time i saw a cartoon with my food and my lola represented and so each one of us has that experience that passion that journey and and i'm i'm congratulating you and i'm asking you to continue to know that those that of us are there supporting you if you need us we're here reach out and continue the work but get this development in place stay strong on your policy board members put money behind it and i'll be quiet jess yeah i wanted to
052kind of just merge the two comments together um chair marvel one of the things that you said and miss severson is that you were sort of musing about like how do we lift this work off the ground in a way that they feel safe like how does that get done this this side of the room that's where it gets done like we need to be the people that are protecting and that offering that safe space making sure that these policies do exist um making sure that they have the resources that they need in order to do those things and i will also kind of women history month comment this is that michelle was the first woman of color to be elected to the school board i am the second and we have a very there's
053like decades spanned in between the two of us and i am very white only presenting and so i feel like if we and if we look at our cabinet over there snowy white we also like we don't represent the diversity of our district either and so if we as elected officials and some of our upper cabinet members we don't look like the school how are we going to support them in the in that way too so we need to reach we it's our responsibility to also reach into the community and make sure it's safe for people who look like all of us to even run for school board and be in the cabinet and so if we can't do that that's i mean that's a lot of glass ceilings that we're putting on them to
054break and you know i honor michelle thank you for doing that work and there should have been people in between us and i hope that there's somebody after me right so i i say that to to turn back to the people whose voices that we need to hear and we as rochester have a have an issue you know that we we as an entire community even outside of the school district have so much work to do and january i'm sorry july 17th 13th july 13th that meeting made it very clear how much work we need to do and i would have been terrified of being any of these people walking into our school district after that meeting uh yeah i just want to echo what you're saying um i see a lot of um since
055i started this is my third year teaching so i started in 2019 depend on the and i and i and i didn't really i see more diversity now than i did then but people who are in those positions that are of diverse backgrounds and then and it's not a bad thing they're equity specialists they're in 10 different buildings i want to see more classroom teachers i want to see more kids more teachers who work with the kids every day i don't think we're hiring you know people who interact with our children the same children every day so they can see them like my kindergarteners can say oh i had a somali muslim teacher like i could have never said that when i was in rps so i want to see more teachers in the classroom
056and sure mario if i could just ask patrick one um follow-up question um so you're able to incorporate uh and expand the musical presentation so students could then begin to see themselves and hear themselves and their culture so did anyone lose out or was everyone advantaged and i'll be trying to be more clear if it's not a clear often times we hear well if we're going to do equity then someone's going to lose out so i'm guess i'm asking did anyone lose out or who benefited from this mostly my students and their families that they can go home to and say hey we like we learned how to greet each other and like this month is greek history under heritage and irish heritage so we greet each other in in gaelic and um in greek
057and so you know that's just for my community and at phoenix or rps so the fifth graders that i teach at rochester online and then all of my kids at elton hills and every i'm i don't know of any other teacher or elementary music teacher that does what i do so that's basically one that's about 12 elementary schools that are not getting the same or not getting the things that i am providing in my classroom and doing all that work to represent my students um not saying that my my colleagues aren't doing the work but it's just that we don't have that time to collaborate and i don't feel that i'm able to or we're able to have this conversation we see the same things or we teach the same things to the students we're
058also busy trying to you know survive after a pandemic trying to teach music after or during a pandemic actually because it's not over yet um yeah i'd say the things that i bring into my classroom is unique to the sites that i um that i oversee and we have a good opportunity as for people in my profession because we see almost every student in our schools and so that's i think that's really impactful if if a group of us is able to do this work consistently and be able to reach out to all of our students at rps and my daughter's always accused me of well dad you're not clear enough so um and i guess i'm asked dean do you believe all the students that you're able that you are able to see are
059there are there any students that you feel you may lose because you're expanding do you think maybe you're gaining more involvement of more students than you would if you only i think when kids see other i'm just gonna use my um my subject content as an example because that's what i do every day um i think if if students learn that music from other places is music it's it's it's academic it's um it's it's a part of people's cultures it's important it's valued then we don't get into when they become adults they say like oh it's you know it's just fun so and so my music is better you know like you're not celebrating people's differences at that age you kind of just lose them but if my if you know if you even as
060early as elementary you expose them to to non-western structured music or or what we would call ethnic ethic you can say or world music um then you start to normalize it it becomes part of them it becomes part of their experience as they get older so it's not it's not going to be an other ring when as they get older and become understand more understanding of the world around them i think one thing to go up with patrick was saying i once had a student ask me why do we spend seven months on european history in world history but we spent two weeks on asian history so i think it's things like that where we go kind of the microaggressions is i'm sure the teachers don't realize that they're teaching seven months of all the
061european history and ignored all these other ones and then some people will say well take ethnic studies i was like isn't it world history not just european history and i think a lot of our students kind of just roll their eyes together like this history doesn't reflect me it reflects the victors you know and we all know whoever wins write history so i think a lot of our students have an issue with that and that's just one class i can speak of a lot of times i think talk to students that is the one subject that seems to constantly get brought up or in black history why do we only talk about slavery we know we were slaves we get it like what else did we do i think that's another big thing if i
062else may add um rodney um just sparked another thing of why i teach history to in music for elementary wow crazy and they get to learn where they where their music comes from and where you know how their families got to where they are because if in order for us to celebrate contributions we also have to understand how people got here and some of the kids that i say i look around my classroom and they're like second third generation they've been their families have been here for a long time but they don't know their history or maybe their parents don't know how to talk to them about that because they've never had to have that conversation with their families but me as an educator have that unique position in which i can say a lot
063of people came from this part of the world let's say i grew up with a lot of a lot of my friends who i grew up with are you know from refugee from from like cambodia or somalia like how did they they're able to articulate how their how they got to rochester minnesota specifically and now that we're all adults you know we have kids who who are you know who who we grew up with um you know have had kids and do they know their history and how they got here i think that's important too where you know we don't just focus on one because now we are a global community in rochester and it's not just one story that we get to tell we can tell everybody's stories and i think we could do
064that patrick i really like the approach i'm sorry i'm just going to bring in another place maybe after julie you want to yeah i really like the point that you bring in in terms of basically you're talking about more integration of the curriculum and you're doing it through music which is the perfect way to do it but i think i think um don you asked who benefited or something like that i would say actually the biggest beneficiaries of this are all the white kids who don't know any of this stuff and they're having their eyes opened to possibility and wow this is really cool i love your music or can you explain this or i didn't know that your ancestors came from such and such a place and i think it's really easier maybe not
065to do this when the kids are young rather than throwing this at them when they're seniors in high school and you know they a lot of them are pretty well formed and it's really ask me as an adult it's really hard to change the older you get so um i love what you're doing thank you yeah please i disagree with that i think when people like patrick talk about other cultures like the ones that benefits are like it's of color just because we don't see that in the classrooms but we get to kind of find out who we are a little bit because sometimes our parents aren't able to do it you know they're working or whatever and i think we deserve that i think it's a both hand the the powerful benefits for kids
066of color you know if you can't you can't beat if you can't see it and that you are speaking powerfully i think especially to director barlow's point that doesn't mean a loss for kids who look like me that's not at their expense it's the code word that often gets used is if we do the kind of work the kind of great work that's happening for instance in our ethnic studies classes that it is a compromise to rigor that it is that's dumbing down the correct and we have to reject that passionately that's not true it's not a trade-off to have a curriculum that is not imbalanced to sacrifice um precision and intellect and stuff but those code words come fast when we go into these words and so i think i hope i'm agreeing with
067you when i say it's at both end that to dr workman's point yes kids like me benefit from being a class like patrick's for students whose personal identities are being affirmed it's even more powerful yeah i mean i was an rps student as well and i never saw myself representing or anything and i had to do all that work after i was done with rps you know and you know i felt so lost and disconnected and then like here we are saying we need more teachers of color well you're disengaging those kids of color in their education and then a lot of us don't even finish school sometimes so we struggle to finish school or we have a bad impression of it so some of them don't even want to be teachers so we have
068to work with what the with what we have the teachers that work really hard on them i think because they're the ones that are in there right now it's not like we're gonna fire everybody like oh we're gonna get new teachers because we can't we can't do that and we won't and i hope we don't um but i think we just need to really like be authentic come in with like an open heart like you guys say and just learn and like be a carnival for what we did what we have been doing you know because i think that what we're doing is still hurting a lot of kids and we see it every day we have meetings over and over and again and we hear over and over the same thing and it's tiring
069i think that bringing in more classroom resources that reflect the multicultural student body and staff not only benefits the students individually and their learning but the community as a whole as well those students start to feel empowered to make a difference in their community to teach each other and to to go after issues that are inequitable or issues that they see in their school community like natalia and i along with another member at century we run a group and this group has identified that there is no prayer space where students can really there's no designated prayer space where students can practice their religious beliefs where they can pray particularly for muslim students who need to pray five times a day and these students are taking the action to actually um create that and they start
070to find these issues in their community and they start to attack those issues themselves rather than us doing the work we're empowering the students to do the work in their school community in the wider community as well yeah he created something amazing then when i told you that where you created that ability for our students i think i think to be honest uh i benefit from the work that rhonda had started uh prior prior to me by when i got to that mail right uh when i got to mayo the same thing that the century is struggling with is again a prayer space uh [Music] having that you know connection between creating that communication between teachers admins and and students and what does it all mean right uh when i talk to the students and
071one of the things that first thing they mentioned is oh you know oh i used to go pray at randa's office right and so it's like okay that's great but then she's no longer here now so what what do we do right so how do we get you know instead of just having students um rely on those specific staff right so if all students when i'm a mayor or a vet or any school that i'm at if they rely on me then that to me in my opinion is a failure right how can we create a comprehensive plan where regardless of whatever that staff is there or not they can benefit from so i mean that's what i worked at and then you know first build uh muslim club students there so able to get
072the voice of the kids and with the with the building you know the attendance and the administrations uh help uh we we we came up with with a plan that i think that would work for the students work for the teachers and also work for the for the admins uh there's no necessarily one perfect solution it's a progress uh it's an everyday thing things that as as problems arise we improve and so on but that's i think one of the things that that we can benefit having is staff of that have that culture that have that knowledge so because for us it isn't necessarily something that that we went out to school and learned is something that we grew up with right so understanding when we when we come in those buildings we understand those
073students who struggle because once upon a time we were just exactly like them and fortunate for them we didn't have that opportunity but at least in our own way you know with the support of in any administration all the leaders and so on with their support then we can make the difference for those kids but if it wasn't for necessarily for her to start that work prior to me i i now then it would have been for me to start from scratch but that's one of the things and they will collaborate trying to figure it out you know how to especially ramadan is coming up right uh everyone all the muslim uh people their faith is gonna be up high they're going to do the best they can you know to fast every single day
074they're going to do the best they can so what does that mean for students who are young enough but really wanted to fast and want to participate in quiet they want to participate in music they want to participate everything that they're supposed to do but at the same time is there any accommodations for that right so that's why as a staff we you know we get behind them and making sure that they're successful in their journey because it means the world to them for them to have that space it means the world to them because one of the things that for us to create an inclusive environment is to make sure that our students feel like they belong in that building and one way we can do that is give them the resource that they
075need give them the opportunities that they need that these doors are open for them that we're listening them that we're hearing them and we're we can problem-solve together could i ask way back when the district began with equity specialists that the model at that time was sort of whoever the equity specialist was at a school work with the kid who's being a problem and i i'm afraid i mean this was several years ago i'm afraid the model was make sure that kid starts acting like every other kid does change the kid i hope that's not happening anymore and i understand that so here's the and it wasn't the fault of the equity specialist i mean i think that was the model in place and we heard from some of the people who were doing the
076job that it was backwards um but how much time are you spending with individual kids with groups of kids or with teachers educators in terms of helping them understand helping them change how being being the voice for them i mean is it more individual kids more individual teachers groups of kids groups of teachers um i love running groups i really enjoy working with the students and watching them kind of find their voice and empowering them and doing that so i spend a lot of time with groups of kids but i also meet individually with students who may need that one-on-one time and need that additional support separately but yeah there are some schools that it's still that's still the model like if it comes down to like discipline or the student as being difficult um
077they pawn that or they try to pawn that student off to me and i might be the only person that has a connection with that student in the building so sometimes that's okay but like rodney was saying earlier that staff member or that teacher needs to be more resilient and dealing with the child for lack of better words so i'm not going to put you on the spot and ask you i'm just going to suggest though you can volunteer it uh i hope you feel empowered in a respectful way which you always carry yourself as to say that to the staff member and if you don't we need to get there to the place where you do feel you can give that feedback so so i i tend to make them sit with the student
078with me and we talk to the student together because i feel like part of my job is to help them learn how to navigate those situations when a student may be difficult and direct that's great that's great but i still also want you to be able to give the feedback including to me if i need it so and sometimes for me i think it's important for us to be there and sometimes some of the most difficult students i can give an example the other day at one of my schools i was working at we had a couple difficult girls we're in the bathroom for 45 minutes something happened and we were quick to jump on them i was like hold on let's wait a second was there anybody else in the bathroom and there were
079two other girls in there just as long as they could but these two girls were always in trouble so we were quick to say it was them and my whole point was maybe it could have been them but we don't know because there were two other females in there the same amount of time so sometimes i think it's important for us to be there but i don't like to meet the student for the first time in the office like i don't like to walk into a building like oh this student here's a student in office let's have you meet him and i've been doing this long enough to where i feel comfortable to be like no i'll meet this student another time i'm not saying i don't want to meet that student but we're not
080going to meet under these circumstances like the first time you see me is it going to be when you got in trouble i would like to say that i think that that needs to be on administration i'm not nothing against the equity specialists i think they're doing a great job but i do think that it's the responsibility of an administration to let the staff know what the equity specialists are to be used for not to be called when you have a disruptive child that you need to be handled um and so i think it's really important that those roles are clearly defined um they are distributed um to everybody as it as uh in the staff you should use them when you need this and this and this and this and this um they should
081be a part of the conversations they should be a part of the staff meetings they should be a part of the the culture i know that they're at several sites and it's like a lot of work um for you guys but i do think that it's really important that that message is communicated to the staff so that they're not just used when you know there's a student that needs to be met with in the office for the first time and maybe that needs to be part of the professional development of the process of you know big picture things versus you know help what the particular situation um and you mentioned administration so it's been going around in my mind how to ask this and whether it's appropriate or and how you may want to respond
082to it but i get my question kind of came back when patrick was talking about how does your admin respond to your approach to things you talk about three different sites i know you have a specialized area can expand district-wide to look more creatively at curriculum or not um well i can't speak for every admin or every site that i've worked on however my site has gone through our third admin it's beautiful every admin has their strengths and every admin has their own priorities so but it's it all comes down to guidance um just required guidance on what we need to do as a system versus what you're allowing admins to do or giving the parameters to work with i've been fortunate to have very supportive admins in my my seven years of my career
083here at rps and um the only thing that um that i've had struggles with is starting those conversations beyond my classroom like with adults with my colleagues like how do i how do i talk to my how how do i feel comfortable talking to my colleagues about my experiences as a one of the only educators of color in my building or in my department how do i how do i feel like i'm not doing this work by myself or how do i feel like um basically like you know having to shoulder everybody's um everybody's had expectations of me being the only visible person of color in the classroom or in their school career i guess so um yeah that framework has it's been quite a journey um to get there um and yeah it really
084depends on you know the resilience of our own admins too and how they're able to deal with those curricular changes or your choice my choices in what i teach you know within the parameters of you know our state standards and what we have to do as educators does that answer your question it does very much and i'd be interested if anybody else has thoughts on that while we're on the topic of admin um there are a few schools where there are staff who are trying to move forward with particular like certain equity initiatives but it's being blocked by admin so how much i guess leeway do staff really have to just go ahead with an idea without the support of admin you know and not be in fear of backlash or i don't know you
085know retaliation from admin you know what i mean like they're actually trying to like one school in particular they're trying to um create a gsa but it's being blocked by the admin um and they want to go forward with it anyway but are afraid of retaliation so what i guess how would we address that loud like for us of color like for a latina i mean i would say there's no other way of saying it but this way it said without words but it said loud and clear where you don't need to there's there's no doubt in your mind that this is what's going on and at least for me and i won't get into everything that i can think of um i have stayed in my position and i love my position and i
086have seen i know of other that that have mentioned things to me um in the staff that of color that do continue to do this work do it because they absolutely love these kids and they absolutely love the equity work it is that important to us so there's that fine line of they have to do this because of them so how do we do that i also think it's how you feel at your building that you're at when you're at three different buildings like when i when i started this job i was at 10 different abilities so now i'm down to three and i thought it was going to get a little bit easier but it's almost a little bit harder if i'm being honest with you but sometimes with we don't the resources that
087we talk about it can be the hall monitors like those are my biggest resources and we go through them so easy because what they deal with every day it's not worth it for them it's not worth the pay for them and i can speak for a john marshall we have a lot of all monitors of color and the kids love that they're their relationships but when you talk to them they're all like probably looking for a new job next year why because they're like it's just not worth it so when i think we need to invest i think there's support staff too then like we have to make it work they get the worst of it like whatever admin gets in the office the all monitors and the securities are way worse in the hallways
088so sometimes they get the worst of and i think they're very underappreciated and we got to find a way to compensate them more because i said they're my go-to isn't like i walk into the school and the first person i go to is the office i usually go find one of the security pairs like what's going on in the building today they're the ones who know so i think we have to find a way to make them feel more important i i really really appreciate that if i could i just want to sort of say i'm going to wildly oversimplify this but there's there's two pieces there's what we might call capacity building which is where we started this conversation which is professional development helping people do it better especially work directly with kids but
089the other piece and and ronda just pointed out leadership just did to michelle pointed to policy the other piece is the is the policy and systems piece and we can't do it without both we can't just professional develop our way to equity and we can't just policy mandate our way and so when you raise these you know being a school leader being a principal is a unbelievably challenging job right now we all know that we we need to build those people's capacity support them and we need you know expectations and evaluations for myself included and so getting the mix right um it's the policy and systems piece though is it is important and especially at the district level that's a lot of our piece of it we in rochester and all around the country today
090are appropriately lamenting the lack of teachers of color it's widely not known that until the brown versus board of education case we had tens of thousands of african-american educators educating in all black schools all over the country and there was an incredibly proud tradition of extraordinary academic progress among african-americans and when brown vs board of education was passed which was intended to promote integration racist systems kept all of them from getting their jobs they almost all lost their jobs every school was led by a black principal black teachers and they they all so now we say wait a minute we don't have any educators who call it that was a system issue that three four decades later we're still grappling with because we had a system it was intended for good purpose of integration but
091it had a counter countervailing consequence of taking a whole amazing tradition of african american education that talked about the teacher as warm demander like i'm here for you but this is this is this is uh we're where we're really going to learn and taking it out of our schools so we need to be looking for the system piece even as we are doing the capacity building the professional development piece and we need we need both sides of it to help each other see the other side as we're going so i really appreciate you raising raising the point when i say i hope equity specialists can speak to that i really appreciate your point ronda about yeah but the leadership needs to set that table so that that's not one person being difficult that's like that's
092the role that's why we're here to help kids and we haven't named that as clearly as i think we need to and i think gene's point about the history of the i haven't heard that history of the position quite the way you described it so that's very interesting to those of us who are kind of new once again you're just implying that i'm old just want to respond to a couple things because um i think what patrick is doing in his classroom is representative of a lot of the work that's happening but i also want to acknowledge that that takes a lot of time and building everything from scratch and so when we're looking at systems and how things need to happen so if we look at the policy right under the requirements point two
093it talks about ensuring that cubicle materials are free from values and reflect the diverse backgrounds histories and narratives of students in schools and so how do we make that possible so that it's not just people who are invested in this work personally but that it happens for everybody and that is something that each staff member is capable of doing right if we are given the tools i can look at my curriculum and i can decide yay nay right like i don't need to to call central office or to look at my principle and decide should i should i not like we we are all responsible for this work um and at the same time right what is the process so that we know exactly how to go about this and so i think that's something
094that would be important too as we're looking at implementing these points that that it's clear for staff members to to how to go about this because we look at the policy and it's there the the work that we need to do is there and so what will the process moving forward and then i want the other point that i wanted to make is we've been talking about microaggressions students um and that's part of the first one right like provides a safe learning environment where all students are welcome and where abusive language and conduct are not tolerated and when we're looking at how our students feel how do we value them how do they come into the buildings like that's our priority if they're in a place where where they feel welcomed and where they feel
095seen because of what we're teaching we know that they will achieve better that that is one way that we can reduce the opportunity gaps um but again right how do we make that a reality for each of our students and then we can look at all the students that need more uh more supports right that have more severe mental health needs that have maybe housing is not stable or food security insecurity is a reality in their lives and as we build the system to support those students then we will help them all move forward but right there's different approaches to that and um we're still working on figuring out how do we have staff trained so that we can make that point number one a reality in each of our classrooms across the district i
096kind of articulate that in the sense that's kind of what's going on in my head that i think we need that professional development in the really long term so that the teachers in the classrooms recognize i need to do this for my kids resources and curriculum i work in the elementary el world and we don't have any curriculum we come up with our curriculum and it's kind of sometimes a blessing and a curse because i can do what my kids need then i have to come up with everything and it's i have to come up with everything but then i can do whatever i want like ramadan is coming up and i can do a ramadan you know thing so it's like i don't know we need in the el world and i don't know
097how it is in middle school high school but in elementary we come up with it all by ourselves so yeah yeah well and i think looking at that timepiece right because stuff is already stretched out i don't know if you've talked to teachers lately but time is is a luxury these days right and so when are we going to do it how are we going to find the time to do it and how do we make it so that you know people working on this can can help their peers to implement it with fidelity and so looking at when does this work happen because it's back to school week is not enough to to get this off the ground i just want to jump in real quick there's been multiple times throughout the night where
098i turn the mic on [Laughter] for one i i really love how we're hearing from the professionals the people who are on the ground working with the students and i just wanted to take this time to say thank you to all of you um publicly because it is it takes bravery to come and do what you did tonight to come and talk about what's going on in our school district in the way that you have knowing that you have to go back and work in some of these same buildings working with some of our staff who may not be on board working with an admin who may be blocking some of the things that we're trying to accomplish so i wanted to thank you for your bravery it is highly appreciated and michelle i'm glad
099you said this because the example of the work happening tonight for me this was it this was it and you know that a lot of these things have been happening behind the scenes for so long for so long like i've known these people for years and they've been doing this forever individually tirelessly the only one in the building doing this right forever you've been doing this but now i think as we know better we do better right and now we have carl i'm coming back to you carl bakken who years ago said we have to figure out how to keep our educators of color because they're leaving and this is where this idea of the employees of color resource groups came because a person learned and he decided to do better right and now we
100have a space where all of you don't have to work by yourselves anymore you have a support group you have a support network right all of these things have been taking years to put in place and i'm sitting here imagining where we're going to be years from now because it's only going to get better but i do appreciate the school board for listening and even asking can you be a part of the training like that for me is progress help us learn and then director garcia just for saying hey if they're going to do the work they need to be compensated because we know they're going to do the work already because they've been doing it they're doing it at night natalia ronda been talking about let's do this over the summer already without compensation
101because for us for them it's not equity work this is the work this is what our jobs this is what it is there's no separation between the work and equity work like this is what needs to happen so as i'm listening to you know just feeling so proud this is why we need more we need more of you in all of our buildings advocating for our students advocating for our families and also showing others how to do so as well so i'm gonna stop because i'm paying attention how much time i'm talking but thank you for being you and thank you for showing up tonight and i look forward to learning about the great work that you're going to do in the future so thank you and we have six minutes until it's 6 30.
102any any last thoughts anything you want to share or let us know or i like to kind of get a little bit of everything hear things out before i can kind of formulate my thoughts in a way that makes sense i really like what was said by ms garcia and ms stevertson about seeing representation in the classroom me personally it's my fifth year here with the district i've gone to school in minnesota my whole life small towns i never in my life have i had a teacher that looked like me a matter of fact it wasn't until my first year here back to school meeting seeing uh superintendent munoz at the time i was 29 years old it was the first time in my entire life i'd seen somebody that looked like me in a
103position of authority a position of power a position of a respectable position and i never experienced that before um to me it was powerful it was really powerful it stuck with me so just knowing that as an adult seeing somebody that you can identify with feeling the way i did i i it was illuminating for me it was just something i'd never experienced before so just knowing that i keep that in mind when i'm doing the work that i do each day with my students because i know that just being in the building being there just being present it's worth something for them it's it's really important to have representation for our students and it's part of our it's part of one of our equity statements is reaching out and hiring from all walks of
104life i think that that's that's a really important initiative because it's what's going to keep kids pushing forward on you know in the times when they might have other priorities that maybe takes over you know doing your homework or continuing in school i've got 10 nieces and nephews and part of the reason that i do what i do is because i want to be an inspiration to them because i know seeing people doing what you think might not be achievable it's worth something so i really appreciate some of the things that were said talking about the retribution that some people feel that they might face i think that that kind of ties back to some of the microaggressions that that we were talking about because that can look like uh exclusive exclusion just being kept
105out of the loop just maybe not being being filled in on what's happening just being left out just being ostracized just being other in a sense and it's damaging and especially when you're already fighting an uphill battle it just makes you kind of question things and i think that i'm really thankful to hear that that's going to be a part of the training moving forward and just getting everybody on board just getting everybody in the know of what that looks like and the impact that it can have i really like what was said about uh seeing the value in all staff of color um rod you were saying uh all monitors that's the stuff that really resonate with the students but you see the turnover rate for them and you notice the difference when those
106individuals leave and are no longer there for the students that that's detrimental to the students so i think that just seeing the value and having representation in our staff is just uh it's to everybody's benefit thank you very much i promise you i could say many many things about um academic support but i will say this it means so much to me because i was that kid and i've said that once before but i've seen the success with my own eyes the students that i work with did not believe they could do this these were the same kids that could not do a chemistry exam they could not do an algebra 2 exam they did not know how to write a paper but when they were paired with a national honor student when they got
107to know the teacher that they kept skipping their class and when they had somebody i promise you i i do not judge them when they just simply got to know me and knew that i was not going to scold them or judge them or say where were you [Music] i actually was really glad that they were there and i was just wanted them safe it became different because that was me i didn't have one soul except well actually two person people that did care but i still didn't get it i've seen the success and what i do in my little formula is not perfect i'm sure other formulas work well but that's the reason i stick around because i see myself sometimes in little people there and when they go out i want that little
108seed to go out there and so hopefully they come right back so it really does matter so hopefully we keep things in there just two quick thoughts we i feel like we need more course offerings that are culturally representative um be it electives or be it um required courses i can think of so many students who would take a black or african history course or a course that's related to their cultural identity or their cultural upbringing or even offering like a african american or black literature course history course whatever the case might be we could do this with so many subjects and we don't have enough of them if students are able to elect which electives they want to take for the year or the semester they should be able to pick from course offerings
109that reflect their cultural identity and then i'm not necessarily sure if sros are technically employees of the district or not no okay we pay for them so okay sure so they would i if they're going to work with the students in the rps district they also need to have the same training that we would require for staff and i think that's highly important offering courses um just ask sorry you hear me just asking our students what they want to learn about too i i teach ell students but this week um i asked them what do you want to learn about an el class and sometimes in what they write down in their journal is about math and science and sometimes that scares me because i'm like that's not what i teach so i have to
110do a lot more learning to teach you that but i want to know that you know sometimes they want to learn about different things and so you know offer them what they want to learn and then ask them what they want to learn and they will tell you right away right away you know i know we're we're near that point and i i've made it through most of the night without a random reference to research but i can't like go all the way out of jail gotta do it sure trust me this doesn't seem like it's about equity but i think it's actually really a key insight um this is going to seem really obscure in the 1950s when nations were emerging from colonial oppression in africa latin america southeast asia the question was how
111do we help them develop and the main theory at the time was what was called balanced development and if you were going to help people grow you had to do everything at once in order to avoid bottlenecks in the system so you had to build schools you had to build plumbing you had to build roads you had to build economic development and for 10 years that was the theory and then there was this political scientist this brilliant guy named albert hirschman who came along and said that will never work what you have to do is find the one change that will create pressure for all the other changes so if you build the roads someone will be able to start a business and the business owners will push for the schools and the schools will
112push for uh equal rights and it changed the development field to some extent and i think for us here the question in my mind is like if we try to do everything here we have to do everything here and you have to do everything to develop a country too but where do we start where i think the board started with the right first step which was the equity policy and that put this in motion so now in my head i'm thinking it's not going to be one thing but what is just for the sake of leaving this lingering in our minds because it's in mind like what's what's the thing that will create positive pressure and capacity for all these other changes that we need to see happening here i don't have that but i
113would invite an ongoing dialogue about that it's sort of like what's the thing we could do that would start the dominoes falling over in a good way um and so i would i think maybe that can be a continuing uh subject of conversation um uh here and also with all of you thank you our next meeting when we invite you back we're gonna have a lightning round and everyone's going to have to come up with here's the first thing that we need to do right now well and i would never i was going to jump in before you started speaking and just say that i think we have um a lot of good conversations in this district and a lot of good information presented to the board but i think sometimes we forget to close
114the loop and say what did we learn from this meeting and what are the next steps so i'm wondering is there some way that we can be presented with some concrete action um that comes from either you or will or or somebody that says here's what we heard here's what we're moving ahead on at some point and close that loop i mean not that the loop will be closed and we'll never talk about it again but i heard a lot of very concrete things tonight i heard we need to be looking at our staff development who who does it how often do they do it we need to follow up on that i've heard we we um we need new courses we we want to offer more more um relevant coursework and that's those are
115all things we could act on if we get them written down and do some study and incorporate them so who who's going i think the good news direct robinson is every single thing we've talked about tonight is encompassed in the draft of our strategic plan that you'll have an opportunity to vote on in june okay and will we be able to maybe um close the two loops together and have a conversation about what things might not be in the strategic plan planner absolutely and that will be work in progress and some of the folks here have helped shape that plan and uh we'll continue to have the opportunity to do that going forward that's no strategic plan takes care of it but that is um all of these themes run through that plan because we've
116been in this dialogue for an extended period of time so none of these well the richness and the specificity of this i agree it was invaluable these are themes that are very much at the top of that priority and so we would invite uh any one here or watching on tv and kathy when you get back into the country if there are if there are themes from this conversation that are missing from that plan i absolutely agree we we should have that discussion and we should um we should revise that strategy i see kathy's hand up dear marvin yes oh good you can hear me i just want to thank everybody for providing their personal and real and practical input into the conversation tonight because when we worked on the equity policy it grew from
117the personal experiences that people in our district had and the dissatisfaction that they had with the work that we had been doing on equity so while it it's in a formal policy language wording it really did come from what people experienced and the changes that they felt needed to happen and the equity policy provides for the board to review it on an annual basis and this year that timing is in june so i am hoping um not to put another thing on mr ruffin's plate but if the equity policy in any way does need modification to help project your work forward or if there is additional language or additional provisions we need to hear that so that it can be included in our conversation about how to make the equity policy better because people come
118and go um but we want the equity policy to really provide those pillars going forward to make the work strong so we'll be talking about the timing you know the equity or the policy committee meets monthly and we can talk in a little bit more detail about the timing about how the board wants to review that policy but we definitely want to get the input from all of you who are here tonight and other staff from um who are impacted by how the equity policy is implemented to make sure it's it's moving the work forward but thanks for tonight thank you and last week one more thing this is the one thing that i came into this meeting with and i never said it but um i just we just finished conferences at cage and
119so i've been working a lot with our bilingual specialists and i wanted to know i've heard a lot of them say a lot of different things about what their job entails how much work they do and i don't know if their pay is all that great and and their space and and and their resources but i just want better for them and i and i and i want the board to meet with them more maybe the the interpret um superintendent to meet with them more because they do so much uh i just think they're underappreciated jeremiah one more thing i wanted to recognize if i could it'll just be a minute um i did notice tonight that three of you told us that you were graduates from the district i have never heard anyone come
120here and tell us that before so there might even be more of you but i really appreciate that and we need more of you so we have a number four can we get can we also involve students in this conversation that next time excellent yeah because i can't tell you how grateful we are for who you are what you do for sharing this information with us and and especially for those of you who are rps grads for coming back you're just you're making us a better district so thank you it is 6 40 and we are adjourned