001all right good evening ladies and gentlemen this is a call to order for the um educational diversity equity and inclusion committee today's date is tuesday february 22nd the time is now 6 36 p.m in attendance we've got myself committee here joseph skalovic committee member bobby brown committee member erica castillo and we've got um dr mcpherson assisting us on staff okay the first item on the agenda today oh and i'm sorry thank you miss brown we've got mr albert bennett hand on live stream auntie all right the first item on the agenda is discussion and i mean uh approval of minutes dated january 31st 2022 some more a second does anybody have any corrections of any other omissions nope no hearing none all in favor aye motion carries minister approved item number two discussion and possible
002action on free anti-racism training for board members and other elected officials to take place in a bps location we have members i mean we have yeah members of generation 34 generation now kelly harriman and oh my god don't yeah i'm really nervous thank you yes yes please come up to the table hey how are you good hi hi good very good okay well i first heard about this training through the group meetings that i've attended some of their anti-racism meetings and they do very well and they first worked to serve just about a month or two ago and i thought it'd be a good idea they were already offering the training to the board and the city council coming up but i thought it'd be a good idea to lend our facilities to the effort
003since they meet them halfway and help maybe to free some of their expenses [Music] so kenya one of the ladies who wants the lead off telling us about the program sure um well i can i guess i can start hello um everyone jimmy davis my name is jameem davis um and i am the vice president and co-director of bridgefort generation now we are a grassroots nonprofit organization working really hard in bridgeport to create a more just equitable and livable city we use the tools of community organizing do policy research we do civic education and we are really working to dismantle the root causes of the problems here in bridgeport that has been holding us back as a community racism being one of them we have partnered with the people's institute for survival and beyond for
004the last four undoing racism workshops um and i'll let cali go into a little bit more about the program but essentially it's a two and a half day workshop that really takes um individuals through a process whereby they get to self-examine and understand um how we have all been based racialized in the in this country and how we might be carrying um harmful ways of being into our lives and our work in our society right now and then how we can organize together to change that yeah um so the first time that we brought a undoing racism training to bridgeport was in uh 2017. we did two uh back-to-back workshops weekend workshops at the discovery museum and trained about 60 people total um at that time um the workshops have and then we did another
005one in in 2019 at the burroughs community center and we did one in uh at the the university of bridgeport um so we've trained about 130 people um so far and um as jameem said you know the purpose and mission behind it is really to begin to build a community of leaders in bridgeport who are committed to the practice of anti-racism um so that together we can um further the mission of justice and equity in our community the people's institute has been around since 1980 they have trained over 2 million people since that time through their signature workshop which is called undoing racism um and are a national leader um in this work around social justice um the training can hold 40 participants total um and the people's institute provides three trainers to support the
006two and a half days we just are the organizers of the training we don't do training um and uh the um each time that we've held it we've sort of put a call to leadership within bridgeport and this time we're really hopeful that we can get elected and city officials in the room um and so we're really looking for partnership with you all the board of education city council um city officials um to to attend uh it will be free so the workshop is um uh subsidized through our grant we um uh we have uh received a grant to um put this workshop together so it will be free for participants um but we do and we do need a space and we would love to do it in a bridgeport public school location so
007yeah and the dates are on the back april 1st through april 3rd so my question if do do it out of school it still be only open supporting or could that number grow because if we're looking to expand this we may have a larger number can participate no so the um the workshop is limited to 40 people because that is the most um that the three trainers can hold it's a very intense intensive workshop it gets like to me that it gets to the core um and the work goes very deep um and so it's harder to do that in large groups okay um yeah so this would be a workshop that is by invitation and registration only um for elected and city officials okay we are always uh open to doing more training so
008um that is an option for going forward so if it's a question of expanding the training and offering it to other people we can certainly um apply for more grants to bring the workshop back again this will be our fifth one um and they are very expensive uh so having a location um um you know donated will go a long way so this would be for board members first no format and in conjunction with the city councilors okay that'll be like if everybody signs up for 29 slots and then you say also community like community leaders as well okay yeah that makes sense so would this have to be for the whole three days or do you choose a day no you have to come to all three days for three days yep okay awesome
009and you're fed your meals yes coordinate that so that would be what um we can you know we can organize to do is the meals and all the logistics right is your grant state funded no no federal [ __ ] federally something no we got asian foundations hundreds that's great very good um how are we going to fill the additional seats nice yeah the community you know i mean how is it going to be set up it's going to be like you say you got a reserve you know cut off so this is you i know we're not going to probably get guys on the board so we need to find out because they're going to be the primary beneficiary of this training so say you're only going to get 20. you want everybody to sign up
010by a certain date so you know how many other seats you need to fill yeah we we've done this now i think four times going on our fifth time so um you know we have a process where we send people like an initial like application we have a due date and things like that and what else my first time just like i said yeah yeah yeah yeah yes yeah yeah see what happens is there's a first round of prioritized um like invites yeah and then uh once those commitments come through then there's a second round um so and as far as your face means don't tell me a little bit about the program i'm it's not it's not gonna be all somebody sitting in front of a room talking about they're gonna be breakout sessions
011or whatever uh no the majority of the time is actually spent together in a circle so all we need is a room large enough where 40 people can sit um in a circle um you know just safely you know in this day and age um but with um the the facilitators bring chart paper and an easel and they bring everything that they need okay so we just need the one that that makes coordination a lot easier on staff but they just have to show up yeah pretty much yeah i have a question oh yes i'm sorry um so so you've been doing this since 2017 these workshops yeah and then um so and you've done it with kind of civic leaders and so forth prior yeah yeah okay um in connecticut or elsewhere in other
012spaces no only in bridgeport or you have worked with other agencies in bridgeport yeah yes okay and how has it been how was it how's it been received oh very um um very well very well you know it's a wonderful experience so the participants uh come in and um you know go through this process go through it together and definitely leave like changed in a way and and and at what i mean changed i mean like in um you know understanding that racism is really pervasive in this country specifically in the united states and that it is all of ours responsibility to um undo it so we and and so people are very inspired to learn more and to dig deeper within themselves within their families within their communities within their work spaces to start
013to really have real conversations about the long-term effects of the racial dynamics since 2017 my last question um obviously pre-coded and post code that obviously post um george floyd may has there been like a a difference in terms of how it was perceived back in 2017 when you started it when there was not much conversation around race and issues of equity and so forth at least not on the agenda not on the public agenda as much as we've seen people have you noticed the difference or anything and how it's been received in terms of um i think just in from the people's institute i think they would tell you that they have gotten much busier okay since 2020. um you know they've they're training national uh organizations you know um like united way like the
014ymca um you know they're uh taking huge national nonprofits and other agencies uh the city of austin for example you know um so i think they would say that their work has become exponentially um larger and their impact much larger for us i think um we the the best thing about the workshop is that it's only people who want to be there right um right so it's not about the this isn't a training that hr you know it's like this is something that you want to do for your own soul in your own community um and that it makes all the difference and so um i think we've we've just always experienced people being very um passionate pre 2020 and post 2020 about uh the work yeah yeah yeah well i continue i'd like to
015recognize that mr bennett has joined the meeting and um i'm sorry he needs to take a seat at the table no no yeah actually if it was smaller i won't even mention it but um do you have any questions just to benefit from that no i did have one follow-up so there's no there's no data tracking or nothing like that since people are just like how so people are just coming you know to to educate themselves but like how do you how do you track anything you know city wise that you know could be shown forth and by this training that's that is not something that is a goal of the of ours or um psab i mean i don't want to really want to talk for them but that's not a goal to to
016track um it is an offering um that um people can take advantage of if they if they want um and then they can use that information um to make the changes both big and small within themselves and in community i think that um you know our aim be right is to uh get community leaders in the room to get city officials in the room to get bored of that in the room and so it may be it very interesting for us later on to look at what kind of policies okay uh come out of the individuals who go through the training um and so that's why we do it but it's not a um go through the training and now what do you do next what do you do next right the reason why i
017asked that's because you're like you know board where there will be i want to make sure that like it's clear to those that attend like you know this is one of those moments where you can engage for your own responsibility in learning this but also too that there's no pressure in a sense um to learn any of the information right yeah so i just want to make sure that you know we share that because i know a lot of people like well whatever what what is the goal like what are you trying to get out of it so that's good to know yeah yeah oh i was just like we there is a real impact so like i can share a story which is you know a different type of data collection but um we
018have a monthly um group that's one of our programs that's called the bridgeport anti-racism collective and so people since we've been doing this since 2017 people who go through the training and come to our monthly meetings and it's like a support group like an accountability group okay to say like keep your commitment and um for example when we did our training in 2021 um someone from fairfield university attended and then they just a month ago brought undoing racism to fairfield university right so the impact it it has an impact for sure yeah obviously i was going to speak to impact as well because there's something that can't be measured in metrics you're not really going to be able to measure this in metrics myself and my journey being exposed to different things changed my ideas
019i was never exposed to certain things my decisions would not go a certain way correct i i i grew up in a household of democrats but i actually grew up a conservative republican so i had a lot different ideas 20 years ago than i have today and that's because i leave myself open to exposure to different ideas different views and different values now say we get the result of this is maybe one or two city councils changing the way they think and one board member changing the way they think yeah now they could have a they could create a new policy out of this new thinking but you'll never ever be able to trace it back to the undoing racism training but it will be understood that any protector is one of the bringers of
020the thing the cycle like this committee sometimes gets frustrating because a lot of the things we're doing we'll never we won't see in our lifetime we're building bridges to the future or maybe the people that come after us could benefit from and that's something to always keep in mind when we're doing this work is that we may not see the benefits but it's there we may not be able to quantify the benefits like when we present the data we could put a whole decrease the disparity impacts by five percent that's something we can admit yeah we can't measure why is there any other questions i just had one question um the people's institute for survival and beyond where are they based out of like where's their headquarters uh new orleans okay awesome so that's a
021very sort of national yeah they do national work national and international international wow great excellent so will will um the facilitators be in person yeah yeah okay awesome thank you thank you oh yes that's the benefit yeah anyhow question hi how you doing hi how are you good to see you around to see you now um for how long this program sorry to ask you and you know i don't know if you say before sorry you know for how long because they say it's free but oh it's two and a half days oh okay yeah three days to flip it over on the other side yeah i just got here yes um and also when you say that i heard you say something for the board members in the city it's not the way they
022can use the pack leaders for each school help another parents um sorry i say that again you know we got in school we have pac leaders we got ptsd pack you know ptso in the future i don't know if you guys were thinking to have this program you know for the school whatever actually they were needed to show they helped you know parents yes yeah so um we said you know there's a first round of invitations and then we'll go to a second round if we can't fill all 40 seats that first time so we'll see what where else we can recruit from uh if we need to fill the full training and we have a commitment to doing this workshop we always say twice a year but yeah you know at least once a
023year yeah and so um there will be an opportunity for the the school the public school community yeah and you know i'm the choice to the family so when that situation happened just let me know i would like to bring it to my community you know yes and then there are apartment committees absolutely absolutely thank you so much no more questions thank you let's disappoint i'll entertain a motion to move this to the full board for approval of providing this space and to encourage board members to attend the free anti-racism training being sponsored by generate bridge board generation now second any other discussion no all in favor aye aye opposed she carries thank you ladies thank you thank you you're welcome to stick around if you like next next up on the agenda is presentation
024of disaggregated student ap participation data as compared to the overall student demographics this is something we had last last month on the agenda but it was just overall that some students take two this is actually report um suggested to me by um was it a ct mirror reporter asked me because i was talking about how much more participation we had i pointed out that that i wasn't disaggregated because some people take multiple courses and some people think well so it was kind of skewed but now we got the data up here and dr mcpherson taking that away please do you want the chat um i mean we can work with you whatever whatever the chart do you have this as well i don't know all the pages it's gonna send this yes okay okay um
025so this is this is a lot of data embedded in here but i'm just gonna i wasn't here at the last meeting but i'm just gonna give an overview of the data that is in front of us okay so there are two documents um one just basically highlights um all the high schools and all the ap courses about this one the first document it highlights all the ap courses that are offered at the at the high schools at all the high schools um and the breakdown of students in grades 11 and 12 who are taking those courses okay by race all right um so for instance you can see at bma currently they're offering three ap courses at aerospace they're taking six there are six courses that are offered um and so forth at basic
026five courses that are offered at biotech four courses at central in excess of ten courses are offered pardon nine courses are offered and i t offers five and these courses vary across the high schools they vary from ap calculus ap psychology um ap english lit composition ap u.s history world history um spanish um world history computer science and there's a there's a right a wide array of rate of courses that are offered in terms of the breakdown with this first document that we're looking at it speaks to the numbers of students by race who are taking those courses all right so for instance if we look at aerospace the very first school it's up the document's alphabetized um there are 69 his it go up some more so you have 69 hispanic students who are
027taking two or more courses all right so these are all the numbers and then as we read across the document um by race we then get to um demographic in terms of gender right so we'll see for instance at aerospace we have um more male students taking ap courses than you do female bma it's the opposite you have more females than males taking ap courses and so forth if we go down to biotech it's much the same you have more female courses taken uh two or more ap classes than you do males soon as we are looking at um diversity and equity not just in terms of race but in gender as well if we look at central again females dominate um but there was one school as i went through the data and i
028want to say there's one other school and if we go to the it school information technology school all the way down you actually have that's interesting you actually have um more males taking ap courses than you do female significant questions all right so any questions about this document this is going to go okay i didn't do it but this is the information that we got from data management all right they broke everything down um i guess i guess my question would be is um for i see like the numbers go back and forth male to female how are the courses advertised for students um that would be with their guidance counselors how they're offered um teacher recommendations um and so forth that's usually the the how the students basically come to you know be um
029what can i say enrolled in ap class does does um future plans like you know colleges have a lot to do with what they take as ap courses as well so for instance when i attended pardon yeah there were a lot of like um when i was in the nurse i did not nurse when i was a medical magnate there were a lot of classes that ap courses that were suggested based off of the track they thought i would want to be honest i have a lot to do with the chat yes i think that does also have a lot to a lot to do with it again it's it's potential that scene it is student also student recommendations as well student past and student access the reason why i asked this because i'm always
030interested i know one thing that we were talking about is how we present um future teachers for instance in our district you know what are some of the courses or classes and they they may go up and down i'm not sure but like how do we find ways to advertise and to take certain courses that can one day impact them to become a teacher in the district that's just one conversation okay i guess read that problem just to piggyback it on that's one of the things i was talking about heading towards marketing the solutions we will talk to solutions early component in our way we need the solutions and then market towards the overlooked groups right maybe even expand more but let's get into the data a little more sorry no no no no not
031as far as this is actually perfect we're here for solutions but that's definitely where we need to move okay so this that second document that we're looking at basically has charted um the it gives us a visual representation of the data and it's kind of it actually as as detailed as it is it basically summarizes um the percentages of students who are taking courses so again at aerospace um if we look at the the second chart to your let no stay right there on that page right eight arrow students taking two or more ap classes you'll see that 39 of the um students taken to a more 39 of students taking two or more ap courses um are hispanic um and then you have an additional five percent of hispanic students at aerospace take in
032two or more um courses right so that gives you an average of about i guess 40 something percent of students and as we read across we'll see the same thing now the numbers for native um americans the numbers for asians um are low but they're simply low based on the enrollment of those of that demographic of students at the schools um 29 of black students are taking two or more um two or more ap courses um and 21 of students white students enrolled at aerospace are taken to or more forces all right and then as we go across in terms of our percentages um i'm gonna leave that second i'm gonna leave that those two um charts alone because they do seem a bit skewed yeah i i didn't um i got a question about
033the data you kind of helped me get the data together in the last committee yeah this is that's what i'm gonna hope for here i didn't as well you know i i asked for it i tried to ask for what i want and but they were very good about helping me hone in on the numbers that we actually need to be useful yeah because i got a question about the um arrow if you could decipher it i'm looking at like the hispanic at one ap and hispanic two ap and that five percent two ap number are those numbers double do we know if those numbers are double counted are you talking it so it's got hispanic totals i believe it's the total number of hispanics who are taking two or more ap classes which is
034the five all right whereas the um the five percent no well it says hispanic total hispanic total no i am not i i cannot speak to this and in the um [Music] and and and being transparent i got this data this evening so i cannot speak to its entirety and looking over it since i've gotten it um i still have some questions and i'm not going to state them so there's still some questions yeah so maybe we could is it possible to table this and come back to this uh or no it is we could revisit as well but let's switch over and talk about uh data presentation because if we because i this is all on this is all i mean this is how i ask for the data i know i could i
035could definitely tell you that the hispanic total on the left is the percentage that's schools representation in institution population yes mr bennett um thank you mr chair but my question is well how come this panic there's more high and the other ones they have they they're receiving the same you know quality and everything you mean at um yes aerospace so errors you know i respect and i see the other one but i say you know i see everything you put here you know it feels like you know they're more high question is how come you know are they learning the same thing in the student at the same time um so aerospace we know it's one of the magnet schools i cannot speak entirely to your to your question this day that i did not
036do these charts um so i can't what i'd like us to do is to revisit this yes okay in all fairness and in all honesty i'd like us to revisit this as a committee all right to get some time to just dig a little bit deeper because i do have some questions all right but this is what gives us the numbers this first document that we looked at gives us the actual numbers which were current as of um currently enrolled now the the percentages are a bit i'm not sure right all right so i yeah and how about that how about this because you do you do so well with the way the data was presented on a previous committee mail fella and we finally got it honed in let me just let you know
037i'm just looking for something where we can compare side by side i mean this is i mean visually this is great right right but when you're to get the numbers in right so i would like to um you know just yeah regroup yeah you can talk something offline but i'm going to let you actually i will be ahead that because yes i apologize i was look what i'm looking for is to point out the things that we're looking for we can see what we see if we go back to the data like um i mentioned one one of the schools i noticed had a skewer in the male female but i also noticed that there is a skewing enrollment as well but on this on this you said on the enrollment yeah there are roman
038numbers one school got iit got 716 females 551 males grace when we're looking at the male females no that's not i.t that's the total that is the total number of females in in the district and males right at the bottom so i t sub total but then the total okay correct okay thank you yeah that's the entire decision again that's what i expected numbers to read thank you so much for pointing that all right so you got 162 males versus 75 females i mean what we can i think that's something to look at in the end of yourself what we can speak to with this with this first document um is the fact that across the district we have 627 um hispanic students taken on more ap classes we have nine american indians and that's
039because we don't have a lot of american indians enrolled in the districts right asians we have 76 asians we have 362 african-american black students taking one or more ap classes nine islanders white students taken one or more ap classes and then um eight students across the district who who identify racially as being of two or more races taken ap one or more ap classes um in its entirety across the district we have 716 females taken one or more ap classes and 551 students take male students i'm sorry taking one or more ap classes all right so that is a total of oh i'm sorry and of those students we have 134 who are english language learners gives us a total of 1 267 students across the district who are taking um one or more eight
040week classes are you aware of anything about the capacity of these classes these classes have more capacity than they're currently using or they have they have capacity one thing about these courses they are challenging courses and sometimes students will be enrolled in them and will choose to you know leave the classes for whatever reason um you know i know that um i don't have data from say 10 years ago or anything like that but what i do know is that um there was a big push and has been a big push to increase the enrollment of our students within ap courses and also the offering of more ap ap courses and what great can i start taking the ap um typically it's grade 11. i do know that central authors um i want to say
041it's u.s history world history um the ninth graders and has been doing for for some time but typically it's um in the 11th grade so a good time to start marketing would probably be probably in the ninth grade in the ninth grade as well as maybe introducing middle school students to you know what they can access once they get to high school all right mr bennett now go ahead and your community chris i was just commenting okay um that's include especially do us do we have it's not in this they haven't broken it out here okay but that's another um that's another demographic that we're going to look at right yeah okay all right because just because you're special that doesn't mean that you can't take anything right so i guess i guess we could
042leave this here and we get the data together i'll get you after the meeting basically looking for the same thing and then we'll revisit this because all these issues really can't tell this you could see some disparity but you really can't see it straight up right now the way you already have for the numbers to be presented and that's something then you've got them they're easy at the moment because get that effect so motion to table the rest of this until the next meeting one more second there second motion carries okay what's next up on the agenda we're over here we've got thank you okay paraprofessional employee demographic data okay yeah is that on this side it's on the bottom i think okay yeah whenever you're ready just okay for like a whole week okay
043so yeah there are 300 paraprofessionals in the district um the majority of female 84 of them are female 16 are male in terms of the breakdown in races um one american indian alaskan native one american indian alaskan native and black two asians three black and white non-hispanic so 32 percent are black or african american and 28 percent 84 of our paraprofessionals identify as hispanic latino native hawaiian pacific island won two or more races four unknown seven quite 133 percent um this was interesting for me as i went through this data myself um in terms of education um 12 of the paraprofessionals have 60 or more credits all right and i understand that this was an accepted requirement um a while back and um some of these paraprofessionals were grandfathered in i'm just reiterating this of
044our 300 powers um so they're highly qualified as far as i'm concerned 106 of them have associates degrees so that's 35 of them have associates degrees 87 29 of them have a bachelor's degree um three have a high school diploma um eight so almost three percent have a master's degree 13 um they're i guess you don't have access to their education qualifications and 71 of them have a power assessment certificate all right um and as we break that down by race we will see that our our american indian alaskan native has the um power assessment certificate um [Music] our asian paraprofessional which we have i'm sorry our american indian alaskan native and black has a bachelor's that one para has a bachelor's degree um our asian we have one asian power who has a bachelor's
045also our black and white non-hispanic two have bachelors 37 of our black african-american paraprofessionals have a bachelor's 35 of them have an associate's degree and four of them have 60 or more college credits hispanic latinos we have again five of our powerful professionals who have the 60 or more college credits um [Music] 33 have an associate's degree and um 16 have a bachelor's one has a high school oh i forgot to mention that three african-americans have masters um and 28 have the power assessment certification going back to our hispanic latinos um [Music] our native hawaiian pacific islander uh we have one with the bachelors um paris who identifies having two or more are coming from two or more races um one has a bachelor one with a bachelor's degree and another with a power assessment
046certificate unknown one one has i'm sorry an unknown race i guess has um an advanced not in advance an associate's degree and one has a bachelor's degree and of our white carers three have the um college of 60 or more college credits 35 have associate's degrees 27 have bachelors one has a high school diploma four have masters um and 25 have a power assessment certificate awesome any questions about that i'm not just about it the reason i brought this up like i don't know if y'all remember me discussing this whole thing as a giant jigsaw puzzle right this could be an integral piece of the puzzle to the last piece we were talking about at the last meeting with the teachers and lack of diversity of teachers if you could look at this it's still
047an imbalance but the numbers are closer to where they should be then right as you see occasions are not the majority when you hand together all the people of color as opposed to the teaching our teachers right do you like nakano slightly yeah they're like 33 right so um looking at this data and a lot of the teacher programs are for people with um degrees and one of one of the sticking points for the teacher programs is i've heard the teacher residency and things but i don't know if this could be something worked out with our paraprofessionals where they do some of their teaching work in the classroom where they're paraprofessionals and maybe we could they're highly quote there's many of them yeah absolutely and and it's and it's easier for people with the bachelor's
048degrees and there's associate degrees but not impossible for the people with the associate degrees right listen they're they're kind of they're 60 or more credits you're halfway there to your best this is right so the solution should be what what is district willing to do to meet them how can we support them to over the hum you know you know first of all we'd have to find out how many of them actually want to right right that's a good point often times they have changed your life different reasons why not to find out how many would be interested if offered that opportunity and i do know that over the years um there have been a variety of programs that have come on the table for paraprofessionals who wanted to go into the classroom to take
049specific courses yeah and i've heard some i'm talking to various groups that one of the major sticking points the student teaching and going without a paycheck for x amount of years and a student teaching if the student teaching could be done under a teacher in the same room where they were a paraprofessional that might be able to i don't know if it's possible if it was within a regulation that's something to definitely look at because i don't see right now because the state's gonna have to change something because we're because we're coming up to a deficit of teachers that's really worse worse than a fiscal cliff i mean is it there's an education cliff with the teachers that actually needs to be resolved and until something changes whenever you press it mr benahan you had
050a question yeah it's not questions that come in i see this person like a black um black african american 97 expanded 1994 i've seen the back you know everything you say and it's great to have this staff you know what a amazing degree and you know everything we're very lucky that they're still here because they can't go in any place you know and we appreciate that because you know they stay here because they care about education for our children um and i'm very surprised i never see this percent you know so many that someone you know was less committed mr joe you bring that you know do you commit it because now we know where we are you know and i'm very surprised i'm very surprised that we have this amazing people they they stay
051because they care and they want the best education for our children because with all this bachelor and all this degree and they can go any place they want so and i just want to bring that so they're coming and make the chair right and i didn't ask for the data to be presented in the way i just come into now in my head just looking at it there is still there's a disparity in the hispanics i think it's 50 51 to 28 so there's like uh maybe whenever when you look at the number of um wait a minute the demographics you're looking at they have 84 to 97. yeah because if you're going with a population totals hispanic would naturally have to outnumber the african-americans to be equitably balanced not saying that there's something wrong
052with recruitment or anything but it's something to look at just like when we looked at the teachers it was a it was what was it 11 to 51. i think the numbers have changed since that last data maybe we should get that updated as well right but remember you have some that haven't identified so correct you've got seven that are unknown right sometimes when people are two or more races it's where they fall right yes i'm not well that's tell me what you're saying but i'm just saying that yeah no that no doubt this is just something to look at but everything else seems to be basically within line of the demographics from what i remember right let's just definitely start to look at and i don't know maybe we could research a little more
053on programs for the paraprofessionals right would be a good they would be a good source of people and maybe we could research on how to get more if there is an imbalance hispanics into paraprofessional a better reflected student body is there any other questions this was not really an action item [Music] what's the next item on the agenda [Music] discuss impossible action logistic why diversity celebration i thought of this because the work we're doing here is going to be extremely hard a thankless task 95 of it's going to be self-criticism of ourselves the board the city and the problems that we have but we do do some good right and i think it would be great to have an outlet to send celebrate what we're doing right and it's a diversity great diversity the great
054diversity within our district and it's just something i wanted to throw out there is we could have like a year-end celebrations highlighting our rich diversity in uh school district to the extent that it exists so i don't know what that looks like feels like i i i just know that after bashing people at the head for so many times with that and this and that this and that that it needs to be acknowledged in areas that we're doing right and that we are trying and that there is an effort being made and i think there's some value in that i agree i mean i think it's worth doing i it's just a matter of what it would look like because in my head i'm maybe i'm looking at it wrong i'm like i still see
055a cultural day yeah i know it's more than just cultural so like it would just really need some outlining as [Applause] yeah i agree with you i think um diversity is is there's so much that falls under the umbrella of diversity and and here in bridgeport we're so um you know blessed to be of such you know racial and cultural diversity but there's a lot more that goes under that sort of umbrella is kind of hard to all be all encompassing for one major event um i wonder if there is any level of standardization in terms of which holidays heroes and holidays that we celebrate um district-wide are you aware of anything of the sort like i know lunar new year just passed um obviously now is black history month next month is women's history
056month and um i know that there's some flexibility of course um school by school in terms of what those celebrations might look like but it might be a it might be worth looking at um just in terms of like you know how we have our our academic calendar and which holidays we're recognizing in terms of days off i think it would be good to maybe look at um like create a diversity calendar for for um as guidance for the schools to kind of follow and you know um that way as a district we're acknowledging different you know you know celebrations throughout the year and it becomes a little more intentional intentional annually rather than being this kind of one big moment where like we're diverse and you know yeah and a good idea like the
057idea of the account i guess it's like an idea from that uh mr bennett um center when he had the parents up there you got the flags representing every kind almost every country i don't know that's the best i was saying like like when i when i think about the way what i'm envisioning when you say it it's like kind of like what we did in college they have a cultural center but what ms erica is saying is that diversity is it's not just one thing exactly so it's going to be kind of hard we just have to really explain and understand where we're trying to go with it so that it doesn't just turn into people just showing up with laughs right because it's more than just absolutely yes and it's like like if
058there's like points that we want to accomplish by posting this day like you know um that'd be something i think we'll be looking into it like if we're trying to from a board perspective like how many of our did we rise the number in sats or something like that for students of color i'm just awesome right um if that's something that like we have like a a point that we're trying to aim at and then we can celebrate around those major points versus us walking in with a bunch of flags right yeah i'm thinking like miss castillo brought up is good definitely year long shouldn't be more than one day but also thinking along like maybe like a parent convention with several similar to the parent convention we have several breakout sessions like careers career
059diverse careers but diverse people and i don't know just like i said when i started this i have no idea what it looks like i still have no idea what it looks like it's gotta look like something but it's not the stuff that i feel that needs to be done the more you're talking about the more it makes sense like when you said like hosting something like that that brings awareness to diversity on all platforms i think that's doable because it makes sense does that make sense yes like it it kind of makes sense like hosting something where parents staff community can come and learn about the diversity that's within our schools kind of like what jim and kelly are doing just on the other the other side of it does that make sense i'm
060sorry the calendar yeah yes definitely in conjunction with everything absolutely because it definitely needs to be ingrow and believe because i speak to some teachers who won't do like um special lessons for black history month or hispanic heritage because they interweave it throughout the year and throughout the whole history curriculum yeah this is actually where we need to get to as a society have everything integrated with actually no need to because this is like okay we recognize it now it needs to be interwoven like you said yeah mr bennett yeah i'm going back where miss miss brown say when you say not only like well doesn't mean explain me a little bit so i can be because you know i can give you a sample you know like for example i'm saying like let's not
061do something that's just culture co culture specific because when people think of culture they automatically think of food they think of country they think of flags and things like that that give them pride which is fine but as we look into diversity like you know it's more than just coke it's more than just culture it's it's it's male versus not male versus female it's male and female it's black hispanic whatever it's more efficient educating more so people understand okay i got you more in depth so that we like you know it's good that you said flag and food and everything and celebrate you know the country that's wrong whatever but it's more educate more the people faculty won't know what we're trying to do so if you had if it's if let's say it's a
062i don't know a diversity week you know diversity fair whatever yes you would have maybe um stations whatever where yes okay this is one concept of diversity of local cultures and flags and so forth and here's another concept of diversity when we look at um students especially right now yeah the black history month yep so like i told my parents and i saw and and any person with black history month but what what how they come from how the star you know not only because lexi africa and america you know black history month can be any you know any country anytime you know he's part of that you know someone think about black history month or individuals that have paved the way if you think about it it's more than just them being black it's
063like how many of them were were college graduates how many of them were students that went to college how many of them were sorry yeah you know so these are things that i would hope if we did do something big that these are some of the things that we will tackle on because then that also educates this the community on you know where the where there's a lack and where we can fix it you know that's kind of what i'm thinking but i understand that and uh and i'm thinking of careers is expose the kids to people who look like them and who are doctors or lawyers or whatnot or what have you besides the thing they get did a really good thing just before covert had a whole it was during black history month
064a couple years ago did a whole um career here you're over a hundred and something professionals from the black and hispanic community um i wanted to share something that my colleague shared with me like maybe a month ago on a totally unrelated issue but just for the sake of adding it to the conversation i think it's um important so um it's basically it's called the stages of multicultural curriculum transformation and so it's sort of this light assessment of where you think you might be in terms of really um embracing diversity into into curriculum so and it breaks it down in stages so stage one is curriculum of the mainstream um stage two is heroes and holidays which is like you know you've adopted so stage one you've adopted some um like sort of eurocentric things
065into the curriculum um heroes and holidays is you know we celebrate certain heroes martin luther king or holidays um i don't know try to think of a cultural lunar new year you know um stage three is called integration um and it's when teachers transcend heroes and holidays adding substantial materials and knowledge um and groups about non-dominant groups to the curriculum stage four is is structural reform so then it becomes much bigger than just you know just um an individual classroom but really like this is something that our our whole community our whole district at large has adopted and then you have stage five which is multicultural social action and awareness which is the like ultimate stage of being inclusive and you know and what have you i mean we're we're sort of um at a
066at a a bird's-eye view level of the district um but like you said i i do think that bridgeport is sort of at an advantage because we're we have such an abundance of diversity and that goes obviously beyond racial and cultural but also with all other elements of um diversity that is just naturally a part of who we are part of our identity as a district and so then it it becomes structural it doesn't mean that there's not opportunities for us to be intentional about improving but we have that ad benefit of us already kind of that's that's the authentic um lived experience of a lot of the people that live work and study in our district so anyway i'll share the link with you guys if you want to take a look at it
067and look at the different stages and the explanation of each level but structurally i feel like um culturally i feel like the district is in um good shape in terms of being welcoming to different types of people i think i think something like that can be useful to guide the event i'll send it to you and you can kind of chew on it something to think about since this idea is like is basically in its infancy yeah right i don't know do we want to put anything towards the full board yet or do we want to work at like decide what it looks like and yeah we need to put it around as it has to hold them together yeah i agree before because you know let's like iron it out as much as possible
068before them weighing in yeah you know the board members are watching we're going to be looking for some money sometime in the future so get ready lots of money lots of money i'm a financier i can't ask for lots of money is that the last item no you contain a motion to adjourn second all in favor hi thank you very much everyone motion carries you