March 1, 2022 School Board Retreat

001welcome this evening uh to the retreat of the tacoma public school board here at our sami environmental learning center um it's march 1st 2022 so mr superintendent would you mind introducing our guests yes fantastic good evening everyone so we are very uh i'm very honored and privileged to introduce two of our leaders inside of our school district this is john keller and john has been with the district uh for a long period of time and has a great reputation of helping us be more innovative and reaching community partnerships this joni hall who is a one of our co-directors here at sami and has a long experience in the district also with different levels and they're here to talk to us a little bit about where we are tonight and what does that mean for our

002kids and uh i'm going to turn it over them i've asked them to i know up a whole agenda to try to be as concise as we can tonight and get them home as well john joni tell us where we are dr garcia thank you very much appreciate the opportunity for you to be here and to utilize this wonderful facility i want to thank tacoma public schools and for its forward thinking and ability to think about innovation and to be able to create schools like soda sammy and idea that exists for all of our for students to have a a little different option that's out there so uh the environmental learning center here this was built probably about five years ago this is in partnership we're here obviously at point defiance park so it's in

003partnership with metro parks this is one of the facilities that we use but we also share and use the facilities that the park system itself has so like the pagoda and some of the different buildings around the park we work down at the marina with students we also have the luxury of having some boats we have a partnership with the youth marine center so we have students that are able to go out onto the water and do research and do that kind of thing i got to do that a couple months ago that's great and this is one of the wonderful things about this building and its design was really to design something was much more if you would like a studio or like a shop in the sense that with concrete floors and plywood

004walls so that when you come into the space it hopefully sends a bit of the message that we're really here to work and to experiment and to make a mess as opposed to sometimes environments send the message that we need to keep it clean and can't really do anything so that was the hope with this and then also be a collaborative space where the zoo actually uses this space as well and we share and then we have a lot of different partners that come in and utilize this space as well and so it's kind of a community space with a gathering area like this so that a lot of people can use it and take advantage of it so joni maybe you want to talk a little bit about the school day and students yeah

005i think that one of the great things about this building is that it is a space where um collaboration and community can grow and have a faith and to make that happen we have tons of partnerships um but some of the really really great ones um happen within the zoo and within the forest and the metro parks and we've got kids that are able to go an internship during their school day in some of those places and our teachers are utilizing the outdoor spaces as well as the indoor spaces and to give kids access to hands-on learning and place-based learning i think one of the examples of that is every ninth grader in our school takes an environmental science introductory class that's a highly rigorous course it's two days a week but it's paired with

006an outdoor education field studies class so that they spend the couple of days that they're in the environmental science class inside doing that coursework but they then take that and apply it outdoors out in the forest out and in the zoo and out in metro parks and down at the water and it's just really been awesome to watch that happen and watch the engagement increase for kids and there's also a huge amount of the ability for teachers to collaborate together and do cross content and cross um course work um so that they can do projects together and between say um our our art teacher or our scientific photography teacher and an english class or spanish class and i think those are some of my favorite things it gives kids a chance to interact in ways

007that are different sometimes than other places especially the piece about being in the forest and being in the zoo it's just it's a different level of community that that is built and i think that's one of the one of the it's one of the pillars of our schools it's one of the pieces that we are very intentional about creating opportunities for our kids to create that family community environment um and i think it's one of the things that um that really really um makes this school unique just does anybody have any questions or comments about that space um i just i just want to say that you know i really appreciate the opportunity to have students um have a passion or learn more about something that they have an interest in um like here at

008sammy um and i've seen a lot of kids and heard from a lot of kids who said that this was a transformational space for them um both sammy soda and idea that all three of them you know kind of to take something that they're really excited about in a space that's not doesn't look like the traditional school and actually feel um a pathway forward so thank you for your creativity and your um dedication to keeping the spirit of creativity and we can increase the life thank you i just want to add a few things um why the environmental learning center versus right so sammy is not a place based school so there's not many schools that i'm aware of that are really a part of the park or is the park a part of the

009school we love to teach our teams our partners at metro parks and say well it's not really a park it's our school campus and you guys just use it as a park during the day they use the puget sound as that space environmental learning center because learning for preschool learning for adults learning for kids and trying to get out of that idea so this is really a unique space we could have never done this without our partnership with metro parks and the leadership of the parks commissioners not only from a legal side but from a visionary side and we would have never been able to do this without john kepler there were a thousand times at least where we all could have said no it's not going to work and john consistently reminds us to

010say yes i hear you but what if we tried this what if we tried this and what if we tried this and then has worked really hard to hire the folks like joni and liz and the teaching staff here because it's very easy to create a box and then live within the box and so what's really special about the environmental learning center is it's not a school the place where the people learn together and that learning like every good teacher has to be facilitated both inside the box and outside the box and we're so fortunate for the staff at sami as well as our early learning partners as well as metro parks that come to try to use the space so if you're out there and you want to use the space if you're watching

011it yes the community and if you're a board member sitting here and saying how do i use this space the answer is yes we got to figure it out and how do we do that it operates all the time so thank you so much i promised them that i would get them out here as soon as possible so if uh there are no other questions right jesse um we are going to let him go thank you so much thank you thanks again for allowing us to use the space tonight appreciate it so um welcome uh director delroy um so we're going to move on to the next part of the agenda which i'm going to turn over to vice president keating who's going to lead us into a collective team um look around when i

012hear vice president i'm like who are you talking about yeah who are you talking about i don't know who's that okay so it's been a while since i got to use my uh team building games so i was pretty excited and might have gone a little overboard you are on now totally shocking um okay so i have some quotes that are printed out here and i'm gonna have each of you you might have to share [Music] and we can also share this before there was yeah this is a good pile thank you i think that is my favorite pile but what about this one i wanted mine to be the first they're all your favorite products you have doubles all right there should be four i only have three okay hold on c this is

013part of the game i only have a three two three do you mean that we only supposed to have three people yeah nope okay and you are missing that one this one all right i can see this okay all right so maybe you can share we can share and then because yeah so let's do that these ones are not my favorite so i'm going to take these okay okay yeah you said the best yeah thank you josh look those are all different right those are different look at that see we did it it already okay so um what i'd like you to do is take a look at the quotes and then select a quote that resonates with you so go ahead and take a moment or two and it could be just something that

014resonates with you in this very moment throughout the day maybe it's a lifelong connection you're all good there's no wrong way to do this that's where you're wrong i promise you i promise and so go ahead and grab the one that resonates with you if you'd like do you want this phone call no no no no and you can share you can have this name i think i'm gonna go with this one i like it okay everybody does everybody have one okay so set that quote aside and then we're going to take a little bit of time and the question that i'd like everyone to just share you know a few thoughts about is how do you want people to feel after leaving an experience with you [Music] say that again how do you want

015people to feel after leaving an experience with you and i'll start as as the model um my intent um when someone leaves an experience with me is that they feel um recognized in their in in my presence um heard and seen whoever wants to go next i will pick you if somebody doesn't know there's not many choices here there's only a few of us so i'm going to go ahead and go because i know as soon as you look up you're going to pick me anyway yeah yeah i'm gonna go next how do i want people to feel after leaving an experience with me uh empowered i want folks to leave either a conversation with me interaction with me better than it better than they did when they were when they came in um i

016don't know how i do that there's no intentional actions that i do other than listen um first respond second so yeah empowered is what i would always say i probably look at me um i want people to feel welcomed and understood when they interact with me or at least when they leave the interactions if it starts crazy at least end welcomed and understood yes i'd say you know i liked all of those answers so that's all good and i'd also like to when people leave an interaction with me i hope that they feel grouded in their own truth um because uh and passionate about and confident in their patent what they're passionate about and not not questioning themselves more believing in themselves [Laughter] um i would say i want people to feel like they were

017heard listened to and valued no matter what perspective that they that they brought that there was a space created in the middle for whatever there was you know whatever was going to happen was going to happen and there was a space and a place for that to do so and comfortable i like comfort i'm wrestling with that i learned from jamal is this intent versus impact and i'm really nervous about putting out what i want in my intent but recognizing that those that are watching me say well that's not your impact so that was my pause what i hope is that they i put the four things that they're seeing that they're engaged they're heard but not but and inspired to do more [Music] being under the microscope is a real thing y'all watching um

018so okay so this is where we get to um share the quotes and the question that um i want to lead us in the conversation is how does the quote you selected either represent or reflect your hope and intent of what you just shared i read the question again how does the quote you selected either represent or reflect your hope and intent of what you just shared do you want a signal are you going to model it i mean i got it okay so the quote i picked was the need to be right can stop progress before it has a chance to begin and for me wanting people to feel understood it's really important but if i get stuck on well i'm right or there right then we're starting from a place where neither one

019of us can understand each other um so it's just something that resonated with me something i've been intentionally working on is stopped leading into conversations with these are the facts of the conversations kind of opening a dialogue and allowing both parties to be right at the same time and both of us can be wrong at the same time but as long as we can understand each other we can move forward and snaps are welcome i [Music] on the spirit of letting others level up after me i chose don't make worry out of what you don't know and i chose that because i'm nervous about not making worry out of what i don't know um so as a cabinet this morning we spent i think three hours talking about our equity work and being looking at

020our equity lens and challenging our assumptions of what we think we're doing versus what others think that we're doing and it really and in the spirit of the conversation that we're going to have tonight like i worry that if i dismiss it because i don't know it i'm not worried about it then i'm unintentionally not seeing the challenges that some of our community is facing i'm gonna piggyback off that because i chose the same quote um and i said that i want folks to feel empowered after interaction with me and i find it difficult well i can't find it difficult for other folks to feel in power but i find it difficult for folks to feel empowered when they come to me for a certain conversation or for a certain thing and i don't have

021either the capacity i don't have the knowledge i don't have the understanding to shell out in order for them to leave feeling empowered so i think that this course resonates with me because i do the complete opposite i make worry out of what i don't know [Music] um i'd say that a lifelong growth opportunity for me has been learning to listen i talk 90 miles a minute and i think the same speed and it's hard to sit back and wait for to see what someone else who hasn't said so i picked the listening with presence and intent is a skill that gains strength and endurance with practice and uh you're here to that and i've gotten a lot better as i've aged um but i will say that how did that hook up with what

022i said about wanting people to feel after they left me is that they were grounded in their own truth and that they felt um heard and also supported and i helped encourage their passion for them to move forward you can't do any of that if you're not listening so i think that for me this one is super powerful i'll say yeah i chose the need to be right can stop progress before it has a chance to begin and um i it's one that i struggle with at home a lot more than i do in my in my work life i think in my work life i i have a struck a better balance with it but at home with my teenager it's easier we can get embroiled in a battle of who's going to be

023right um i'm not sure why probably because he's 16 and and so my one of the things that i really try to walk through life with is that there's always a third way um and i try to remind myself of that before i go into a conversation that i know might be challenging um and then hope to be able to actually call it up or at least quicker uh when i when i start to feel myself go down the path of needing to be right in order to make a point and there's a quote by rumi that says you know the highest form of intelligence is is the ability to be center yourself and put somebody else at the center of the universe and um i think that if the world in general did a

024lot more of that listening to hear what somebody else's experience is instead of trying to overlay mine on them and letting somebody when they need to be the center of the universe for a while because i don't think we provide that so my hope that when people leave is that they felt like they were heard and that my need to make a point or to be right can take a back seat brilliant is nice um mine um people are more often people more often react to the role you play than who you are as a person um and in my intent of uh with my practice of wanting people to feel be seen recognized and heard it's it's a very big stretching point for me when under such scrutiny and scrutiny that often comes without

025full understanding of the role is challenging to center compassion in myself for the frustration or for the misunderstanding or um even you know the actual real um issue so i know that is a growth area for me um since coming into this role um so the final question let me see we've got a little bit more time um so how do you practice making out of thinking about everything that you've all shared how do you practice making that a consistent reality and in this i would like you to name a specific daily or regular routine or step i have a i have a pal that i check in with once a week and our only goal is is to talk about where we made mistakes during the week so that we can hopefully improve and

026do better and it's also to sometimes celebrate the win like i was actually able to put somebody else at the center of the universe at a moment in time where i felt so strongly the opposite i had an opposite viewpoint of them so i do have a friend that i check in with once a week and we we just talked briefly about what our experiences were during the week i'd say for me um i'm one of those people that actually got some benefit out of the copic situation in terms of how we had to change the way we met and because we were on zoom most the time i was able to mute and it gave me an opportunity to learn how to breathe a little bit more and not interject um and so wait

027i was able to really listen and hear when the person was done versus when i thought they were going to be done like finish their sentence and get going on my thing i was able to really wait till they were done and then unmute and in just that whole process over the past two years has really helped me to not just think about taking that breath but it also has made me focus in on listening so i think um you know there isn't much that we've gotten this positive out of coveting and everything but i will say for me personally that has been a helpful lesson i i spend my day with three and four-year-olds so my need to be right does not exist in my space um and i think it really has grounded

028me and helped me a lot with adult conversations um as a teacher as a professional sometimes i want to be right um but because of like it's just a daily reminder if johnny said the sky is purple we're going to talk about it and we're all going to sit there and examine why it's purple and try to understand him and circle time can be a big chaotic mess but when i have really rough conversations i kind of think back on those moments with my littles and it brings me joy as opposed to like frustration about not being able to be right um but it is still a growth area for me like i totally practice it every day but um still growing in that for sure but i think just having the practice of reflecting

029on my day because i do that every day when i leave one space so i can enter another space i wear a lot of hats and so i think that's just something i take with me into each space i'm going to say [Music] in in order to empower people you have to be empowered so one intentional step that i take um almost weekly i won't say daily but weekly is i talk to somebody who inspires me and that kind of changes my outlook because like i said earlier sometimes i just don't have it um but this week antonio mclemore told me that what's inside of you is already what you need is already inside of you in reference to it he tells the appleseed story and that's what i needed last week in order to

030realize that you may not feel like you have it but you got it um and people need you to have it and understand that you got it so one thing that i do weekly is just to tap in with people who inspire me so i can be empowered and empower others on my best days i try to just take a breath listen i hear all kinds of voices not trying to say i do i mean i hear the voices in my head of constantly this i hear the voice of our partners at all different levels and i hear the voices of our kids and i'm not saying i mean you just you can hear it is not having to do what i want but to try to find some way to help them and so

031on my best days up in the moment even if i'm running from place to place in the moment and just recognizing that being in the moment is sometimes in exchange for people that you care about that are saying hey try to be healthier um you know and trying to create moments so a random way of saying on my best days i just try to not overthink the moment but just home give me an example yesterday is you know i get a uh a email that says there's going to be an emergency press release at one o'clock and you know i can't change everything to be there i have to be in the moment for where i'm supposed to be and realize that nothing is going to change really out of that one o'clock so many

032of them um so going back to the role uh the reaction people have to me versus uh the role i in and we are in versus me as the person um i've got a couple things i have people that um i check in that check in with me and um it's it's been interesting and challenging to maintain the kind of friendships that i used to have so i've lost quite a bit of community um by coming into this role which has been an adjustment um and so having compassion and grace for myself is really one of the biggest ways that i i can keep centering myself in remembering that the response and reaction that maybe i'm perceiving because it's also a perception it doesn't necessarily mean it's the truth or the reality it's often more

033complicated but that i can ground myself in being just gracious and knowing that there's a whole lot that i don't know and that's always going to be the case um and uh don't make worry out of what you don't know so thank you thank you very great that's awesome thank you uh thanks lisa that was fabulous and i'm sure you want to keep these to use them again so we'll just you're welcome to keep whatever those are my favorite ones so yeah let's make sure josh [Music] well um thank you lisa it's always great to start with a little bit of a an icebreaker that helps us learn about a little bit more about each other but also share a little bit about ourselves so thanks for that well the next piece is um is

034the bit about board goals and this is sort of a just a reminder that we do at each retreat about what it is that we as a board decided last august to focus on in terms of our board goals and how and how what they mean to us and their big topics but we've agreed to to work together to address them throughout our time on the board this year so um and they're as i said they're meaty we've got racial justice inequity social emotional well-being and mental health and family and student engagement and last retreat we dove into the family and well still the student engagement piece pretty deeply when we did our question and so uh when we were looking at invited director strozier to to lead this one and um he looked at

035the goals and objectives and and really wanted to dive deep into the racial and justice and equity one so that's what we'll be doing today so before we go into that piece i wanted to see if anybody had any thoughts or questions about the goals how we're doing on them what you know our thoughts on our progression because i think once we turn this over we're going to dive deep and we won't have an opportunity as a group to have a conversation about um how we're progressing on our goals i can't believe how how quickly time has passed but it's already march and so we've only you know we've got only a few months left of school um so just wanted to throw that out there and i'll remind you on each one of these

036we had decided we had some work progress that we wanted to do and the first one around racial equity and racial justice and equity was monitor the implementation of the equity equity policy review team and the policy would be processed to ensure change results from the team's feedback and and i think um actually the that has i think been a very positive experience and in talking we've just done a survey actually of the equity policy review team i haven't seen the results yet but um i i think the feedback that i've heard so far has been that they feel engaged and we've actually done some really good work with our policies and the equity so i just didn't know if anybody had any thoughts on that or comments i think we're hearing animals in the

037background yeah i mean we are next to this year like are they coming yeah the wolf's uh you know howling um the the the one on social emotional well-being and mental health was to work with staff to clarify the long-term vision and sustainability plan for continuing to access uh access to social emotional mental health supports for students and staff once the sr funds end so that has a little bit longer life span but we are trying to um and i know this is something that josh can speak to but it you know it has been a challenge to actually be able to spend the esther money the way we'd like on some of those because just like every other capacity area nurses teachers whatever there is a dearth of available therapists who can work with

038our kids so i really actually want to commend superintendent and your partners and teams in the community our partners and teams in the community that have pulled together to help patch together something that for these for these kids and our and our staff to be able to help them meet their needs now as we plan for how we're going to do this in the future i don't know if anybody had any thoughts on that one ever present one not for tonight but something for you all to think about when i think about these goals you know there's that thing not everything that's measured [Music] don't see these ever gotten goals and so my question for you about tonight but as we move forward and create a ponder is is it okay as leaders to have

039the same goals and view so that's what i've been looking at and thinking about you know as we march august will be right around the corner with us um we'll have to revisit these and so i welcome those individual conversations and what are your thoughts about that and encourage us to have you know thoughts with ourselves and with our colleagues and again and say so what does this mean for us i thought i would say that we have definitely not arrived in these areas have we taken positive steps that helped the trajectory sure that we could articulate those and then we need to articulate them more so that others can see them um i thought that just kind of hit me as you were sharing that josh is like this idea of a mission statement

040right for an organization when you have a mission statement like when the mission statement has been met then the work is done right theoretically the organization no longer needs to exist and so it like for the first time this these goals kind of uh shifted for me in in the per like the framework of a mission statement right or or um purpose mission purposed goals so that that's just something that kind of because ideally you want to eradicate right whatever the mission is so that right or resolve naughty right maybe maybe eradicate and resolve so i think one of the ways that we tried to address that last august looking at these three buckets was to pick tangible things that we could do this year as a group to sort of move us in that

041direction and and we talked about the family and student one uh last time um as well you know thinking about our student listening sessions and also evaluating um our board committees and how that all worked and we've done some of that work this year so i think we've kind of tackled a little bit of each one but as you said josh you're not ever going to go away these are all always going to be important goals but i think one of the things we did do this last year which i think has been helpful is we added in um that as board goals that we wanted to look at our own board professional development and identify areas of growth both individually and as a group and as a result we started this process of working

042with that and we're very grateful to have the bugs to help us be more inquisitive and be more aligned in how we do the thinking so that when we can tackle these things as they come along we actually don't have to start from scratch every time trying to give everybody a baseline we actually know how we work we understand the difference between the two kinds of inquiry and which is more impactful when so i just wanted um and also the other one was to establish a timeline and a learning arc because it doesn't happen overnight and it doesn't happen in one meeting and so hence um hence we're here in our our third second or third second time i guess but starting this process of professional development diving deep on one of our topics and

043i want to thank you all for agreeing to do this because i think this is going to be transformational for all of us in terms of partners in this work so [Music] um okay so um here we are with our board goals and now we get to turn it over to uh beth boggs and corey strozier who are gonna lead us on tonight's exciting dive deep yes well thank you for having me here i really do uh appreciate it i loved working with you all last time there's some very creative creative minds here and to you know what elizabeth just spoke about with um you know these three goals and and to dr garcia's point that there's these are these are challenges that are adaptive in nature there's you can't just apply a quick technical

044solution to racial equity and justice to social emotional well-being and mental health there's aspects of it that you can apply and and get some forward movement on but they're really adaptive challenges which um adaptive challenges are those challenges that often leaders want to solve last because they require a shift in values the shift in belief um oftentimes um there are problems that are never going to be solved per se they're not something that you can necessarily check off a list and so you know in terms of making progress towards them that's that's really fantastic and by the time you've created one plan the world has probably shifted again and now you're into a new set of challenges around the same the same goals and those are the hard ones to lean into so i really

045appreciate um and um have just deep respect uh grateful that my my child get that that's in the stu in tacoma public schools gets the benefit from the wisdom of you all being able to lean into some of those really adaptive challenges and not trying to stop and apply a technical solution so that you can check it off the list because this is the hard work it requires change in a lot of places usually across the whole organization boundaries it doesn't doesn't rest just in one one spot people often resist even acknowledging adaptive challenges or your ability to lean in and recognize that this is yes updating a policy or putting something in place so that you have a framework is really important but then how you actually engage in that um in that work

046is is is a lot more challenging um and that's the solutions are going to require probably a lot of experiments new discoveries they can take a long time to implement and um and then often once you make progress on a goal particularly these ones the world has shifted again and the need is different so um i love the peer consulting methodology just as a quick refresher it was developed by ron heifetz and marty linsky of the cambridge leadership associates it's one framework for being able to co-create new solutions and get new thinking to some of your biggest adaptive leadership challenges it takes the wisdom in the room and puts whoever has the question quote unquote on the balcony the balcony is a place where you get to try on new things hear different ideas maybe

047see the problem from a different purview it can work in groups of you can do this methodology what's beautiful is just even having the framework you can do it yourself you can do it with family issues i've done it with my own board of directors at one point when we were when i was wrestling with an issue um they can be done in groups of 800 or they can be doing in groups of six which is the beauty of it it's a very specific model so before we go into each section i'm going to remind you what the what the the point or the instruction is for that section and the reason it's laid out this way and sometimes the challenge with it is that leaders want to go into brainstorming solutions and this gives

048the least amount of time for solution and the greatest amount of time for just lending different perspectives to what the issue might be and what it might entail and so it keeps you in the wonder zone i think for quite a bit longer which is probably one of the places that turns my stomach the most sometimes and makes my hands sweaty but this model allows for that to happen in any group of people so corey has so graciously um brought forth a really thoughtful question and so the first step of this and i'll be your your timer again um tracy i'd love it if when we get to that point the brainstorming things if you would be able to capture them or i can too if you if you would like to like me too

049so the first step is the case presentation um it's five minutes and so corey is gonna have five minutes to present his adaptive leadership challenge um he's gonna name that this is not a time to ask questions or um or interrupt him he gets up to five minutes to explain what the what the challenge is a little bit of the background and then the next step is that you will have 10 minutes afterwards to ask as many questions as you'd like to in your effort to understand his adaptive leadership challenge more fully so corey whenever you're ready i'm going to start the timer and you're not five minutes friend start with the question right yeah yeah all right so to put the question out here uh it goes as such how does our current policy

050reflect our values and support our goal to be an anti-racist school community right how does our current policy reflect our values and support our goal to be an anti-racist school community and here's what i've been thinking and here's how i landed on this question we we all understand that the policies that are listed on our on our school district website are in service of students their families and our staff and i noticed that so policy 311 is our our non-discrimination and equity policy so that allows me to give you some context to behind our question we we haven't updated this specific policy in eight years so it was i guess written in 2014 and and posted in 2014 and there hasn't been anything done with it since then and we all know that the world

051has changed tremendously since 2014. uh in my in my fellowship with school board partners who um it's a national cohort the the uh purpose of that organization is to assist leaders in reimagining policies partnerships and conditions so that dynamic systems of high quality schools emerge improve and endure and and our most in our most recent conversation it has been around moving towards anti-racism and getting out of the gray area and in this conversation a few questions were presented we talked about hey do you believe if you're that your school district is is anti-racist or moving towards it and then the next question was how right um so i took the next step i mean i talked about a couple of different things when we were together in our cohort meeting uh but i took the

052next step to search our district website for for the key term anti-racism or anti-racist and i didn't find anything now i do understand that in our specific case the topic relevant statement is in the work like we know everybody at this table knows that that we leave with equity and i know for a fact where we stand as a district but it brought me to think the public they don't know what we know um and if if they go to our website and can't find something they're left to and assume which is what brought me to wanting to jump into this so i obviously we had a conversation pre-pre-uh this retreat and um our superintendent brought up a great point we we never really arrive at anti-racism it is a constant adaptation like so we

053have to take a deep dive to gather if our policies are relevant and and should we decide we also should decide how often we will review said policies and things of that nature some of that work has already started but we have to decide with the understanding that this work is never complete we have about 12 listed core val values as it relates to the strategic plan the relevant values to this questions and discussion are and i pull these from our website on the page that shares space with our strategic plan just for the public who might be listening uh students first flexible continuous improvement data driven decision making effective leadership cultural understanding equity and transparency some of the other thoughts that popped in my head was if we have equity covered and we have

054non-discrimination covered uh why corey do you feel the need to push this conversation and and the reason i feel like we should discuss this is because being anti-racist is very specific and it requires very focused work and it's completely different from and stands alone from equity and non-discrimination we learned in our last retreat that uh the need for shared definitions of what a topic is often helps us to ensure that everyone is on the same page so in the few anti-racist policies that i have reviewed from school districts i did notice that the definitions are either very close or the exact same which isn't necessarily a bad thing that means that schools are you know taking something that they agree on and moving forward so um i have those listed out you think i should

055read them or should i just you have 23 seconds to do it i read anti-racism this is the one that's common the practice of identifying challenging and changing the values structures and behaviors that perpetuate systemic racism that's my case presentation with seven seconds to go can you repeat that last time yes i'll read the whole thing the practice of identifying challenging and changing the values structures and behaviors that perpetuate systemic racism thank you would you would you like um 30 extra seconds to read the definition of institutional racism because i think it will help frame tonight the discussion that you brought so perfect and then i'll read the institutional racism definition as well it occurs within institutions and organizations such as schools that adopt and maintain policies practices and procedures that often unintentionally produce inequitable

056outcomes for people of color and advantages for white people thank you okay so the next step in the process is data gathering questions so you all will have up to 10 minutes um the goal for the group is to ask whatever questions you need to to better understand the adaptive challenges and the complexities surrounding it and to gather as much information as you can to conduct the brain's diagnostic brainstorming in the next phase so if you're not clear on who the major players are who's going to conduct this work what are the formal relationships are there any alliances where does the senior authority on this live what is the presenter or the policy done so far to work on the problem those types of things so you have 10 minutes ask us ask away as

057many questions as you would like to corey are you ready to get uncomfortable yeah let's get it so do you believe systems in tacoma are racist i think that systems in tacoma are built upon uh racist foundations education system the housing system medical system so when you're including education you're talking about our system to come public school all education built on racist policies absolutely so i have a question i really love the way you ended it which is why talking about anti-racist versus non-discrimination and equity because it's a different very purposeful piece so and i you know i actually had the same thought myself when i was preparing and reading our own policy and underlining kind of what i thought was important that was here and i was really proud glad was here but it

058doesn't address that issue and so i guess my question is what is it this is a question but what would you like to see out of this crystal ball what you have this conversation moving forward what is what is that they are there um i would i personally would like to see an update to 311 um to include uh very explicitly where we stand as a district on anti-racism it doesn't have to look like other folks policy it doesn't have to um really even provide definitions but i think that we should a stance publicly like i know we do this work for sure um but again like i said earlier not everybody is aware of exactly what we're doing so perception is reality if you go to the website you search anti-racism and nothing pops

059up where does that leave so corey who do you identify as the major players the um players that's the ones who have the uh ability um to to liberate students um us as the major players the ones who make decisions on policies because that's our major work um yeah besides the board besides the board i would say uh superintendent and cabinet even students instead you have to choose a department within tacoma public schools that should be working on this which department do you think it would be i would say all of them takes a collective effort that's so broad bro but everybody has a role to play in ensuring that we are moving away from racist policies and practices you know i mean it will be it would be difficult to place the work on

060one specific department just for the fact that okay what if they don't like what if they don't do it in the way that we expect them to do it and then everyone else is just kind of waiting on their turn it's i think it's a collective effort as a parent i i know that work is being done in this area that is not reflected in the policy so is there are there places where you can um and i'm not looking necessarily for specific examples but places where you can point to that say yes we are already doing this it's just not in our current policy would i would point folks to the equity policy regime yeah for sure because we know the purpose of that and we know that that's built with community members a

061few board members staff members taking part and do they meet regularly i would i would reflect to uh president bombard on how often the equity policy review team meets it actually meets every time that we that we have a policy that we're reviewing and so uh it's not constant but it's very pretty regular um so we've got we had a couple that came up to a create time and then we also have a schedule that we put forward of one that those are what new ones are coming up but when they're being up for review for a different reason but we also have a schedule of the ones we want to take on just for changing equity in general yeah and we decided as a group that we wanted to start with the student-focused one

062um and so that um thousand series or one thousand two thousand so the one that deals with students is josh helped feed them three thousand three thousand yeah so the three thousand series is the one that we said when we have a space that we aren't looking at new policies or revising ones for a legal reason we want so that's where the work has started within the student at the student level it's as i said it's been all different across all of them because we had some that were backed up that we had to pass us aboard and we said we don't want to we don't want to do that and then go back and do that we'll start everything that's coming for the board is going through this policy review thank you i got

063a question so um as a board member you've been here longer than me but not very long what have you done so far to work on this problem what have i personally done because what has the presenter done so far to work on the problem well i'm going to say that the the while corey presented it the focus of this is on the policy not on corey as an individual he said that the board has the power and he's a board director so as someone has been on the board what have you done i've supported the way forward for sure definitely stood stood firm next to director von bright and the equity policy review team definitely brought forth the black history proclamation conversation definitely supported all of our school renaming for all of the reasons

064that they needed to be supported and we'll continue i wake up every day and i come to work every day that's right no i'm just trying to i want to be a good participant so i'm keep on my job [Music] on the issue knowing that it's maybe there's the policy and then there's all the work that falls apart what are your experiences around whether it's your professional is there a senior authority out there on what is an anti-racist school district look like i have not seen a senior authority and i don't think that there are and this is just me because i don't know but i don't know how many school districts are having this conversation right now those that have moved forward have decided as a board to put forth uh the either proclamation

065and or the policy as we've seen in some of our uh supporting documents here so i don't know if there's a there's a authority so much to say um but folks are just deciding that hey we're going to take a stand either against this or move away from this and they're just doing so i have kind of a follow-up question to that so thinking about so our role as the board is in implementing and advocating for policy so this would have significant um systematic um implications so curious about like the buy-in right so if we as the board right our leadership how do you what what areas and or what um groups could we um you have the formal relationships and formal alliances no more like i'm more thinking like who's not at the table

066right whose voices do we do we collectively not necessarily hear from and and not that it's from a place of malintent so i'm just curious if you thought about that as far as which voices do we need to still have the table obviously those those parents who can't regularly attend board meetings meeting the parents of those who are students that are most impacted by us not having anti-racist policies majority are black and brown young people how we get them to the table is a different conversation but i definitely think that the families of our black and brown families who have parents of our black and brown kids who who work later than school board meetings take place we can't attend equity policy with eu team meetings those folks need a space created for them to

067pop in how'd it happen i have no idea and then that makes me think about our community partners and that dynamic with our community partners because in essence we would a policy moral uh yeah i'm not going to award right but by implementing um an anti-racist policy or a policy that was specifically about institutional anti-racism we are we are um well one way you can see is inviting partners to participate and also potentially excluding partners right so curious about your thoughts around if you've considered that aspect i hadn't but it's a great point of view especially since i think we openly essentially would open it up to everyone and hopefully that everyone will come in and you know offer some perspective and if they don't have you know i'm big on if you got something

068if you're going to speak make sure you have something to say so the folks are going to come in the hope is that they can uh contribute and if they don't have anything to contribute then they allow folks who need to get their voices out to get the voices out okay so the next phase is the diagnostic diagnostic brainstorming phase which is 15 minutes and this is the point where the case presenter is going to turn his or her chair around i would say have you go in the middle but then you'd just be staring right into the camera and i don't think that's fair to you so i think even if you just turn your chair you know and look back that other direction or whatever nobody can look outside of it yeah um

069and tracy will so graciously capture all of the questions and conversation you know the brainstorming ideas that are presented so that you have them for reference later the full board will have them for reference later this is not an action step um this 15 minutes is not designed for creating solutions to the problem it is and i'm and i may interrupt if i feel like we're going into solutions um it's really to interpret what's happening in the original question um offer alternative interpretations of the question and illuminate new ways to understand the case so some key questions are what issues or values does this represent does this adaptive challenge represent what are the underlying or hidden issues what are the value choices that people will have to make in relation to this what options are

070off the table in terms of reviewing policy tacoma public schools policy and changing it and what would success look like to all of you and maybe even to to corey and the one who brought the question what might success look like so this is an opportunity to ask questions interpret what you've heard um and their ideas for corey and and probably the board to rent you know i might try this out and see if it works if it doesn't work that's okay to buy the idea love it or to just leave it on the shelf so there's nothing that's necessarily off the table 15 minutes goes really fast so i'm going to encourage everybody to give everybody an opportunity to weigh in if they'd like to and to bring yourself and all of your personal

071and lived experiences with you but it's really all of this is in service to the question which is how does the current policy reflect anti-racist values so corey you're going to turn around for the next basically 20 minutes um yeah okay any questions before i start the timer okay here we go diagnostic brainstorming so we should answer the ones in the box right excuse i'm sorry we should answer the ones in the box not necessarily there might be those are just kind of they they're great conversation starters but maybe there's even more one of the questions that i think was raised earlier is is there a structure already in place that has these definitions that we could that are consistent across alliance on race and equity which is a really cool organization's been around for

072all and i think that if we think about you know can we use these or do we want to say rather than trying to re-invest a definition do we want to adopt these definitions is that a way forward where we can all be then speaking from there and then not have to spend a lot of time and energy on the definitions if we feel that these are good we can then potentially um focus on the how instead of the what just a thought i like the question how does the situation look to other players and what's the story that they tell themselves i feel that i brought it up last month because now it's march but we're 64 diverse community here in tacoma our student population right so i feel that sometimes when you talk

073about racism or anti-racism it becomes a black or white being and i feel that if it pits and us versus them that anti-racism is for all people um and i think that that's that's what has to be conveyed i don't know if that's being conveyed in the way that the question was phrased and so if we're phrasing it in a way that's saying like anti-racism is for all and you know the policy must reflect all i think that that question [Music] it just reminds us that there is an us versus the mentality when we speak about racism when our students speak about it on campus when we as a board speak about it and then who raised the question a person of color raised the question so then we again it creates that inner dialogue

074for those who may not understand that anti-racism is for all people yeah that's great it has been thinking about the experience that we many of us went through over the renaming of stylists and the reaction and response by community members some families some students when we were brought into the conversation of like of racist um practices racist beliefs and trying to keep this as like i lost my question so the diagnostic aspect that i'm wondering about is in part having i in being able to participate in this conversation have a sense of comfort because of how uncomfortable and how harmful and challenging and emotional that experience was and i know that wasn't just felt by me and i know those of us that were on the board that i've spoken to about this so i

075feel like we have some experience in um going into this kind of a conversation or in in discussing this topic uh so i might be the only one that was in the room when this was developed i i was on the committee that helped develop it from 2011 until it was actually implemented and i thought it was adopted in september 2013. was my recollection but you can add i think what struck me from corey raising this question is how context intent and impact and how we have changed society and what struck me is that cory raised this question the first time which was anti-racist school district now for her now not very good language but this constant action is both right it means the dichotomy of not one or the other but both it is

076a personal place or a thing and it is a continuous action and so i think that language needs to be updated based on who we are now there are even actions that need to be reframed on who we are now so cory's question is how does the current policy reflect our values i think it's there are many values that are still represented there and and support our goal to be an anti-racist i think the supports may be out of date in some places and then i think what's really also is it has to be localized right so i would corey and beth provided us another example with these definitions and then there were some of these practices that they had identified and i'm just getting to that now so i think there are some supports

077but i think in our local context it needs it [Music] i think the options are looking at other models as examples but not to oh we've arrived but are there different things that we can see that will help us be a better version of ourselves i think translating the work that you're already doing too like i know that if there's work being done at the school level at the student level at the parent level at the teacher level and translating that somehow into your policy because as a parent as somebody who's kind of on the outside or has a kid in the school system i don't i'm not going to probably scratch the surface too too deep to figure out to find the information that i'm looking for and i don't really know exactly what's

078being done and it's not that you have to have an action step but i wonder if your values you know looking at whether your values are reflected in what what currently exists um [Music] that to me doesn't necessarily talk to the equity piece and how that's being delivered in a school system as we brainstorm we can ask questions right yeah okay so like a question if there's one that says um what is off the table and from my question as corey explained earlier anti-racism and non-discrimination and equity are separate things so is it off the table to have a new policy specific to this as they are not the same and as someone who would like experience these things i wouldn't want just to be lumped in like oh these are all the things we

079do to keep just everybody in general safe but anti-racism is like a whole different kind of practice so like i would want to see that and especially like you said if we're going on the website to look it up and it's like muddled in between this policy and like section c of policy number three one one right so like how would that make me as a parent feel me as a student feel because the student policy and then how can it be implemented to to the students for their understanding because this is again it's a 3000 series so it's for them so how is it off the table to have a standalone policy i appreciate that i i'm trying to figure out looking at the examples [Music] could be dangerous for us to make statements

080and say all schools right um i was experiencing our team has done an equity lens toolkit that i think gets to some of the anti-racist work in a verb so you know for example uh who are the groups affected by our program's policies and what are the potential how do you intentionally involve stakeholders who are also members of the community affected by our program i think there's some other questions things like that can help us articulate what's happening in buildings to show the potential steps to not be anti-or to be an anti-racist versus this is what we're all doing [Music] i think as an organization we have to get to train ourselves to be more comfortable both asking that and then responding to that knowing that every one of the 57 sites has a different

081vibrant culture i really appreciate what you said chelsea is you know and tying it back to this institutional definition occurs when institutions organizations such as schools that adopt and maintain policies practices and procedures that often unintentionally produce inequitable outcomes for people of color and advantages of white people so if 60 of our population has other than white and we have to be more i think there's an opportunity to be less consistent by how we're asking ourselves are we practicing that and then reporting that back to the community that it's different from site to site yeah it's the kind of the concept of both and yeah that can be this and that depending on the situation and where it's where it's happening and not to take our time there's like 10 seconds for me non-discrimination has

082always felt like colorblindness it's just like oh i don't see color because i'm being non-discriminatory i'm treating everyone the same it's more equality than equity for me is how i've always perceived that so again like i i keep bringing it up we're 64 diverse and i keep bringing that up because if i can feel this way and i have conversations with people of color on a regular basis and they can feel this way non-discrimination leads towards colorblindness as opposed to active work which is what anti-racism is which was correspond at the beginning so i do understand from a policy standpoint it's kind of it's going to look different and every site is going to look different but like what do these words mean to people of color that goes back to that institutionalized racism and

083common definitions so this word non-discrimination how do people of color actually perceive it and receive it i appreciate that i think our world is complex and when this was originally designed there were representations at that time based off the best intent and i certainly am not i think trying to say this was it are you trying to reaffirm that that's a good way it changes as we evolve as a society i think about you know the sro conversation that the board had was in 2018 wasn't even it didn't appear to be as relevant to and at the same time it was always relevant and so practice what is important has to be visited to the community that's in now not the community of the past and that's the challenge with this as a policy policy

084so i have some context that i think is important to this policy um relevant to my participation when this was started so in 2006 the state passed anti-discrimination protections for gender identity and sexual orientation that had not previously existed so in that legislation it was then stated that school districts in the entire state then adopt in their non-non-discriminate non-discrimination policies to include specifically gender identity and sexual orientation so that's where i entered the conversation in 2011 and as a in a community group it was a hib community and so i think like it's really relevant to for us even now to understand the context and the history behind this specific policy and what the intent of the law at the time was so it took from 2006 to when this was actually incorporated and then

085and then passed adopted and passed right like we're still talking a good eight years of time and so um and we have continued to evolve right in those topics and also in the um conversations around racial equity which are intertwined they are not siloed in separate things they are intersections of an individual i don't know where to add a clarifying but i think that policymakers at the time i think this is just an important the word that was often used or the phrase is an umbrella policy that a suite of policies like academic acceleration would fit under their goal at that time was just to say yes there's this work and there's this work but there should be this one place you can find it all where it gives more purpose than we i could

086see those policy makers watching and saying wait a second and so i just felt the need to represent that as this was really an umbrella policy not an encompassing thing where everything should fit thank you okay so now is you've it's only five minutes by design um is the action step brainstorming and the goal for this in the action step the five minutes you get for action step brainstorming is to offer possible new initiatives to maybe throw out some smart risks um and experiments that the case presenter which is corey but in essence the policy try to move the challenge forward what are things that maybe um you can actually start to make progress on what possible initiatives should be undertaken what are low-risk tests of some of the ideas discussed what courageous conversations need

087to take place and i would add and with whom what new partnerships or relationship shifts might need to happen and what are specific and possible goals over the next month to achieve so this is where speed counts because you only have five minutes so rather than explaining why you're putting this forward this idea or concept forward just put it forward so that you can get as many of them on paper as you can during this time rather than a long explanation about why okay so you have five minutes now to start going into what i know you're great at is the action step brainstorming did you just start yes um well one thing that comes to mind is community conversation stakeholder community and stakeholder conversations and uh the adequacy equity policy review team committee we

088have i think something similar to that at every school basically and we talk about this being fluid policies i think in general just should all be considered fluid and changeable at any time so let's just put that out there people know this can be changed and just have these basic our community at each school and some maybe even their own wording school may have a different way towards something we still can have a central policy a couple ideas that may have um i'm just going to throw out a bunch of other ones real is uh somehow encouraging and institutionalizing more tutoring for the kids that are following through so kids are not getting the equity that we think we're getting to all these kids with a bunch of not getting the extracurricular tutoring to do

089better academically how do we teach structural racism at each age level with age-appropriate language can we do a better job at that um and we just got to hire more by poc staff specifically you know the teaching staff the parents prepare educators and the leadership to have some improvement in the percentage compared to what percentage of students we have of those five pock students [Music] i think a quick action steps for me is a calibrating definition of key terms i think you have a mechanism already in place uh the policy revision team uh our policy equity team i think a good first step would ask them to save the question is this still relevant or ask them to do an analysis to maybe give you something to think about and then i think what's critical

090here is that there's communications updates no matter what happens rebound yeah i'd like um i'd like us to consider uh what chelsea brought up but also i think was part of what cory was saying which is do we want us very specific anti-racist policy um and whether or not it's a part of this or not we you know we meet if someone types in anti-racist in our website something should come up to say what is our thinking on them um and so how does that how do we make that happen and i'm not sure which answer is right if it's merged with this or it's a phone but it needs to happen i think that could be something that happens really quickly because that's something that seems all believed and the question is one of

091the questions what creates conversations need to take place and i think as a district as an organization i think we need to start talking to white people about anti-racism and i think white people need to talk to white people about anti-racism i think often the the burden of anti-racism falls on bipod folks and bypak students at our schools are even talking about having to educate their teachers on these things so i feel somehow we've got to formalize that process even with our staff and i think white people need to teach white people about how to be anti-racist i'm staying out of practices spaces because unless they are attached to the policy so well it has professional development in there over your statement i think there's i think what's important to this as people watch at

092home there's so much more work that has to change so i appreciate what you're saying and it's in there album the school board one from the other school district i think there has to be some key practices that are identified so is it curriculum instruction is professional development the board establishes critical places right so i guess what i'm trying to say i'm not very articulate i think there's the need for certain pockets of the organization that fit under the same area right there needs to be thou shalt have an anti-racist professional development opportunity led by i think that does need to be articulated with the recognition that there are they're not going to be a whole all of them well look i taught for the district your your pd trainings can be trained by anyone

093and all teachers go to them so let me clarify that all teachers go a tv training all teachers go if you're a preschool teacher they have a right now so i'd like to i mean we'd have to unpack that as there's when you do policy though it's like and how deep the board wants to get so all teachers have to go to professional development in some fashion but not all go to the same professional development i don't have to attend the same amount of profession okay so if the board wanted to say in a policy of anti-racist all teachers okay that makes sense okay so we're moving into the next phase um corey gets to turn his chair back around and come off of the balcony friend welcome back [Music] and it's an opportunity for

094you corey uh to really not a time for you to solve the case but an opportunity for you to share what your reactions were to the process um [Music] share what kind of questions you might be asking yourself or thinking about in in your role on the board maybe make some observations about what you heard [Music] and that there's some ideas that you may rent some that you may try out rather than buying or defending against them um and any action steps that that seemed like they were manageable or relevant to you so you have five uninterrupted minutes so i guess i'll start by saying uh at least nobody said i'm not having this conversation grab this stuff and got a body here because we laugh but i heard that this has happened before and

095not here but anyway with some of my cohort members um i appreciated the fact that everybody dove in and and started to throw out some very um good ideas around like what what do we do next i appreciated the the clarifications around like hey this stuff is all different i appreciated the idea being tossed out like hey let's not put it in 311 let's create a policy on its own because this is for students throw it in in the 3000 series um let's see here what what oh josh's final point around uh like how the board moves forward as far as uh making decisions around professional development and how and explaining that clarification that everybody has to go to professional development not everybody has to go to the same amount so in order to make

096this policy stick and for us to get out what we want to get out of it there would have to be a pathway put forward by the board to say this group needs to attend this training essentially i don't want to say mandated by the board but mandated by the policy um what's it like to be on the balcony with your back turned and you hear all these things first of all i don't i don't sit with my back to windows or doors or anything like that so it was nerve-racking i tried to keep myself busy i also remember that uh when lisa did it last time um how she was like wanting to jump in and add context and you know piggyback on some stuff so that also was very hard to not like

097raise my hand or or text someone or anything like that that's good that's a difficult time i would i would like to uh move forward renting um hey the community stakeholder conversation but also appreciated the idea around a school-based a school specific variation of the equity policy review team as it relates to this like a group of students to take a look at this ask them the question to see where students stand on it i thought that was pretty dope as well [Music] yeah so that's that's that's it i don't need five minutes for that okay [Music] um in a minute yep okay good i'm good okay um and so now it's time for the group in a five minute block to debrief and thank you for sharing all that corey i really appreciate it

098um and that's for you all to kind of go on the balcony and reflect on what do you how do you think you did on the consultation were there other things were there places where you feel like maybe questions that you didn't ask or um what what did you accomplish what are things that maybe you avoided that wish you wished had been brought up and were there any default behaviors that that you observed what could be done to improve consultations in the in the future so it's really a debrief of the process not necessarily the the um uh the question itself so you have five minutes for that i would say it was uh more efficient and streamlined from the first time right just like any new tool like we didn't have to i didn't

099notice like there wasn't sort of a need to remember like when we were in certain blocks of the process like we i felt like we stayed in those areas better i thought it was actually maybe it's the topic but it was really much more focused than the last time i think we've evolved not just in following the boxes but also refining our thinking process um and making sure that we do a little pre-work and have the questions as last time it was similar we were all kind of swirling so i see a definite development how we worked on this project thank you corey i think that um play off or add on to your comments if you made about um really an anti-racist institution community whatever it may be raises all ships right not just

100the five hot people but it's hard to convince those people that chips are already sitting high that they should um come along with us so i think a little bit of the elephant in the room is there are saboteurs and people that feel like this is all nonsense we shouldn't be doing this everything's fine in this country we've got to know those people exist and how do we get by and convince folks that this is good for everybody one thing i really noticed and really appreciated chelsea was your ability to ask really hard questions and to speak from your experience in relation to the process and i just want you to know it i really appreciate it i think it added a ton to the process it shifted my thinking in big way so thank

101you thank you um i will say for me this is the conversation that i've been having my whole life right i feel very uncomfortable having this conversation in front of others and also um knowing that there will be no action taken from the conversation because this is not an action this is not a meeting where we take action right i know that we're going to take these conversations it'll lead into our work going forward but right now we didn't get to think bam here's the decision we're gonna be more anti-racist so um i feel also that i'm grateful that cory was that everyone stayed in the room and was willing to have this conversation and me personally like i said it was uncomfortable for me but it was necessary i feel that that's why we're

102elected to this office to lead these students we have to be a voice for them and their lived experiences and we have to bring that truth to these conversations and i don't know like you said all ships have to rise but man i know that they'll be flat as you talked about earlier the the role and then you as a person my role today was to be that voice for this particular group of students but me as a person i was uncomfortable but i'm happy that we did it thank you for sharing and you don't have to feel the time just any reflections on how you felt like it went and i think [Music] i think the board represents five different perspectives and if you do a good job of trying to gather this conversation

103about multiple perspectives you know in our community one that i struggle with is who's white [Music] in a poor community so and do we see racism amongst white populations to white populations but now we are do i think that's always happening yes so these ideas for me that are a struggle is to recognize that we always have to be applying this plan uh i just and i think there is an action i mean like how do we not look at our policy yet this conversation yeah or a new policy right i think it's just like that but i i think it's also very important that we recognize them at least for me i recognize that i am bringing my own perspective on my own life experiences i was ironically having this conversation with another accountant

104today and said you know i lived this being a mixed race kid my whole life [Music] from tracy california all the mexican kids over here and all the white kids over here we're going to have a boxing match and chris and josh garcia going where do we go right chris was almost smart enough to walk away and so i think it's i hope we also give ourselves grace to recognize that there is not one way to do it and to me the only wrong way to do it is not doing it at all yeah yeah i appreciate it good work it's not easy i mean these are the conversations that make your hands sweat a little bit and um probably will cause a reaction yeah not just in this room but it will cause a

105reaction in other places and so really you know i think about lisa's icebreaker and how amazing that was don't make worry of what you don't know i mean how timely was this um and i know it's because you're really smart that you you planned this tie-in people more often react to the role that you play than who you are as a person and i'm guessing that's going to come listening with presence and intent is a skill that gains strength and endurance with practice and the need to be right can stop progress before it has a chance to begin these are all really relevant to this conversation and the work ahead for this award i wrote them all they're wonderful thank you thanks again for having me and thanks corey for i know that at you

106asking that question was much harder than it would have been for a white colleague to ask a question and i just appreciate that you and in service to this group that you you asked it i know that there's a class to that thank you everyone i think i think that really was a magical night um from beginning to end and i and i think um in the answer shall see it where do we go from here you know we can't make decisions tonight but i'm sure my head's spinning i think i've already got some things written down that i'd like to talk about with all of you and so we can have some of these conversations individually just to kind of stir it a little bit um one on one and then you know we

107will come back you know have a study session and we're going to bring it up during the board meeting and have some time to talk about it we will do that sooner rather than later madam president i appreciate you recognizing that we can't take action tonight but i do think and i do think and you did great both hands and i do think that there is an opportunity for the individual board members to do a little homework and think about maybe two or three action steps that they would like to consider and sharing them with your president and vice president and not that those will be decided but then they can start to collect some of those action steps see um what is the next space to take action so decisions to be but that

108may be a good spot to think about this conversation from your own individual perspective what would be two of the reaction steps that we would like the board to consider and um when so not long after i was um joined the board i had attended the equity conference for nsca in dc in january of 2020 and i attended a workshop that was around a district that i thought was in louisiana that has done this work so i know there are examples because the the board directors and the superintendent like they were presenting um so i and i have some of that like i've kept the information that they distributed for that workshop so i know that there are also examples of maybe part of like the next step is for us to interact with other

109board directors who have already gone through this process in their own communities it could have been louisiana or tennessee i can't remember but i those two states stand out in my memory so i'm going to look up and see what i find and then definitely cross-reference it with what information you have well what i was going to say earlier when i um but i will say it now because it's one of those types of things i was curious um about the album i'm not sure how you say the school district in north carolina so i went on the website and they have a very um robust website about this inter-racist policy and all these other things and one of the things that they did in this gets this sort of what you were saying chelsea

110is that they set up student driven uh student equity advisory teams um at different schools which you say the seat s-e-a-t feet and so the kids had a seat at the table and it's they each school had their seats and um and they thought and then these were generated at you know things that were going on around equity and racism the kids were calling it out and getting addressed at this school level so i just thought that was a fabulous idea that that i think we should consider thinking through how we get the students engaged but also you have to have the the teachers and the principals and everybody on board as well so that that it is a nurturing process so it sounds like it might fit in well with our seo the child

111approach to school so anyway just one of those things i wanted to bring out because doing some research some of these things are pretty cool i think that back to what lisa had brought up at the last one retreat and how do we involve youth voice and so it kind of like it all becomes like a part of the process we i'm not sure half galvanized our definition of energy you've got to get a definition for right and that may be the first step before we start to develop different structures i'm not suggesting that we do it alone but one of the aha moments that i've had why this other example is they're very clear about right wrong or different their definition they have an identity and it was grounding for me to understand that

112i'm not there to judge my work i'm here to look at our work steps and without and here's so i just encourage us to even think about your action steps not assuming that we're all talking about the same thing yeah language is so important in this work you know and hamad kanley you know so brilliantly uh taught me it was an epiphany moment for me as a white person that that privilege isn't what you have it's what you don't have to navigate every day and so all the definitions you know um just just to check where you're coming from on even just not just equity but the things that underlie that is a place that you may not yes you're responsible for the 6000 series of court policies but just even in a safe place

113to say okay do we have something that addresses this because it may be in another policy there's that's a very helpful practice as you go through as your action steps and so please if there's anything as you're looking at our own policy if you have questions you can always reach out to myself or to the staff and say hey tell me is there anything on this because we may not call it the same thing but that also gives you some maybe informing your own development okay so um racist institution that exists in this world right so i think the state calling that out and saying we will be striving to be in the best anti-racist school district we can be and working towards that and then also just knowing that perfection is kind of impossible

114so we'll we will work to get something good but let's not spend forever trying to get the perfect product and let's get something out and we revise it later i think corey and i are some conversations even the idea of how often this policy if there is a policy that's developed for our policies revised in the idea of culture how often should it be i've seen policies where they call that out at a minimum every five years this policy will be visited so i think that gets to you know this understanding that we're constantly growing [Music] but if we don't find ways to institutionalize us looking in the mirrors and think that we're doing more than we are to me which gets to the whole heart at least why i um bought to be in

115this seat is to be a part of institutionalizing these pieces in in the roles that we are responsible for governing and because there is no guarantee for how long we have these positions yeah and i want anything that i contribute to to live well beyond whoever sits in these positions whoever sits in these needs so i think we've got a plan for moving forward i like that idea josh will you know have everyone think about do some do some research do some introspection and um send to lisa and to me two or three action steps and also i'm going to add to that if you have or have been struggling through a definition of anti-racist racist school district what that might look like what kind of phrases you think are important in a definition um

116send us those too and then we'll just hatch what we get together from all of you and figure out a strategy for moving forward both as a group but also internally and i'm thinking that we are probably going to be having lots of more policies coming lined up and coming up with the equity policy review team so i'd like to be able to just add that to their agenda to talk um you know at least get them thinking about it so we'll do that in you know we'll lay out a timeline and some patents pathway for that so um i'm thinking if maybe uh we've got two weeks i think until our next board meeting oh it is next to the next we don't decide that tonight no no we don't have to say that

117tonight i'm just saying so you know sometime in the next couple of weeks you know get us your thoughts and as soon as we get something from everybody i'm going to hopefully get you guys before she can jot on the plane and then um and and the goal in terms of ultimate time as well we uh our next retreat is in august is that right tracy yeah so so we have our next retreat in august so we can be thinking about what we want to continue to have conversations around with this process and we'll ask someone someone else to do that next time so thank you corey for bringing us this very needy topic and um for everyone for participating honestly and with um integrity i really appreciate that it makes a huge difference when

118you can see everybody's leaning in and no one's sitting there like this going online you know so i appreciate it and great and again of course thank you for all your guidance and time and tracy yeah but we don't thank you enough you're amazing holding us all together and feeding us taping us kevin and spending your evening doing this so it takes a team you've got a good group josh though so is there anything uh last last minute things anyone wants to say will we adjourn the lady aids are playing tomorrow night at nine o'clock um unfortunately our t-birds [Music] list mr neal make sure that you have any questions it's nine o'clock right now last game nine o'clock in the last game [Music] all right with that we are adjourned thank you everyone and

119we'll see you next thursday you