001missing our pizza john i know we normally have some some pizza a little salad we i buy way so much i have some leftover carrots rosie you're all set okay uh good evening everyone today is thursday october 22nd and i call the brookfield board of education board retreat to order in accordance with executive order 7b suspending sections 1-2-0-6-1-225-1-226 of the connecticut general statutes the public will not be able to attend this meeting in person but will have the ability to view or listen to the meeting in real time by way of the brookfield board of education youtube channel furthermore such meeting will be recorded or transcribed and posted on the board's website within seven days of the meeting and made available as required by law so let's stand for the pledge i pledge allegiance to
002the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all okay we have all seven of our board members present in addition we have dr john brill dr maureen ruby and we also can post can't read about ken and we also have nick caruso here joining us from cabe so the first item on our agenda tonight is the equity and inclusion subcommittee and um i'm going to try to share my screen here but we're going to have a discussion to create a vision statement for the district and let me get my screen up here can you guys all see that nope okay so our goals for tonight at least in this especially in this first portion of tonight is
003to create a vision statement for the district centered around diversity equity and inclusion we're also going to review the objectives for the equity and inclusion subcommittee and then in the last part of our meeting we're going to review and discuss the board self-evaluation results so we'll actually um enter into executive for that so in creating an equity vision for an equity vision statement we've uh we're working a little bit backwards because as you remember we initially had planned to have this retreat at some point in the spring prior to the formation of the equity and inclusion subcommittee but since that work had already continued there's actually a lot of work that has gone into creating objectives for the district creating goals for the committee but what we really need tonight is sort of a very
004simple and short vision statement so ideally a vision statement should be something that's around 20 to 75 words should be simple short easy to understand short sentences using as many positive words as possible and using specificity of course is whatever possible so i wanted to give you guys some examples of equity vision statements both in the private sector and from the education field as well so black decker's diversity statement says to be engaged you must you must feel included and valued we strive to build and nurture a culture where inclusiveness is a reflex not an initiative where there is a deep sense of pride passion and belonging that transcends any role business unit language or culture or country and is unified in our shared commitment to excellence innovation and social responsibility we know that through
005experience that different ideas perspectives and backgrounds create a stronger and more creative work environment that delivers better results to support an inclusive environment where employees feel empowered to share their experience and ideas we've encouraged the creation of a variety of employee resource groups including groups for women veterans lgbtq pride and allies african industry developing professionals and more so that's quite an extensive and maybe too long of a vision statement for something i think that might be appropriate for us but as you notice at the end there's a lot of specificity so i just want to i think it's important to kind of keep that in mind also salesforce has a diversity um statement that is uh themed around equality so equality is a core value at salesforce we believe that business can be powerful platforms
006for social change and that our higher purpose is to drive equality for all creating a culture of equality isn't just the right thing to do it's also the smart thing diverse companies are more innovative and better positioned to succeed in the fourth industrial revolution we strive to create workplaces that reflect the communities we serve and where everyone feels empowered to bring their full authentic selves to work there is more work to be done but with the help of our entire owana our employees customers partners and community we can achieve equality for all um i just wanted to use this one because i thought it was um they use a lot of positive words um and some of it actually relates a lot to how i think we want our educational experience in brookfield to be
007but the last two that i wanted to share with you are examples from the education sector so the connecticut association of public schools superintendents or caps states that caps is committed to the success of each and every connecticut child we believe it is our responsibility to support school district leaders remove systemic barriers and ensure that achievement and growth are not predicted by gender gender identity sexual orientation race class or disability and this as dr perl can attest to because he helped craft this statement you know it took a long time to to really get very specific and get um in agreement with all of the terms and and um and what's centered around this idea so um you know i hope tonight that we can we can maybe streamline some of these processes and taking
008some of these examples um you know as as really good examples of where we can start and then lastly i wanted to share caves which states we affirm in our actions that each student can will and shall learn we recognize that based on factors including but not limited to disability race ethnicity and socioeconomic status students are deprived of equitable educational opportunities educational equity is the intentional allocation of resources instruction and opportunities according to need requiring that discriminatory practices prejudices and beliefs be identified and eradicated and i wanted to highlight some of those words because that's where the specificity kind of comes in so without further ado i want to um start an open dialogue in an open conversation about how we want to craft brookfield's education or equity vision statement so i wanna i want
009us to think about and i gave you guys a lot of resources prior to tonight but i want you guys to help us help each other figure out what our priorities are for an equity vision statement uh what words do we want to make sure we include how will we be specific and honestly if we want to adopt or just build upon the caps or cave statements you know that's something that we certainly can you know explore doing tonight so i kind of want to just open it up and get your get everyone's thoughts on where we want to start what your maybe reflection is on on some of those statements and we can hopefully see where we where we go and nick also please um if at any point you know you want to
010add anything and or help guide us in this process that would be very helpful as well oh i won't be afraid to jump in great rosa do we have like a a whiteboard feature or somebody yeah i'm going to try to i'm gonna try to just can you guys still you guys can still see that right yeah all right so i'm gonna just use bigger font and we can go ahead and do that so how out of curiosity do we know how old those the the caps and the cave policies are are they just recently done or they've been there for a couple of years bob i can speak to caps uh it's definitely within around the last year and a year to a year and a half at the oldest uh probably about a
011year and a half if my memory serves me correctly i think cabe may be as old as 2011 or 2013 maybe yeah that one's a little older yeah it's definitely older i think i remember 2012 or something so so i guess my question then would be how is it that those uh equity vision statements have translated into measurable actions by those of those organizations i mean they were very specific but it's not apparent to me that then once they did the statement that there were particular actions that jumped out of it and to me that would be one of the most important things that we do is that it leads to what we're doing on curriculum what we're doing on policy what we're doing on hiring practices what we're doing on everything so whatever we
012do on a vision statement ought to be something that leads us to as an organization to actually be able to take action here um it's actually vision statements without action are meaningless right so how i understood it and i've i've gotten some guidance from um dr martha burkina harris on this as well um you know the vision statement should be something that is very high level very simple that funnels down into more concrete um but still sort of medium i guess level objectives and then very specifically down into goals and when i said we were kind of working backward in this process when we created that resolution back in what i want to say rosa yeah if if we could all mute because there's yelling in the background somewhere there's some noise or something so
013um you know back in i want to say it was yeah i think it was june we had um we crafted a resolution where it was it was actually very long where we talk about some of these objectives that we want to hit and then the specific charge for the subcommittee was actually quite specific and you know ideally we would have done a vision statement first and then sort of worked our way down um but because we didn't have this retreat in the spring we're kind of working a little bit backwards but i do have you know um those specific objectives on the future on the upcoming slides and i'm happy to show them to you now if you want just to kind of review them let me get those up yeah so rosa and
014i reviewed the those slides rose i'm sorry yeah yeah actually um it was i had looked at them about two weeks ago but it was good to go back through them again because it was quite an extensive uh i think was our july meeting where we put the charge together for the uh to establish the committee and it is quite extensive it's good to revisit and you know the board agreed on those to go forward so i think it's important and and that might really get people's juices flowing uh rosa for the visioning yeah um so let me get you guys out of the way okay so this is our these are the objectives that we had drafted in our resolution um and so i kind of wanted to just take those because i think
015you know we all voted and agreed upon them and i think they they really speak to all of the specific um you know ideals that we have for the district um and we can go through these you know one at a time what i what i essentially did was i took our resolution put them out into bullet points and what you see in yellow is words i've added just to make them um objective sort of uh statements so we will you know we aim um we will strive things like that um so i don't know if you want to we can go through these we can review them now and then sort of circle back to creating you know a more higher level vision statement if you want would that be helpful i think it
016would be helpful it would be helpful also helpful if we can get it put yourself back into screen show mode because it's small oh it's small okay how's that so yeah i know there's a there's a lot of words here but okay so uh we will strive to see that all students should be inspired to attain and apply the knowledge and skills and attributes that lead to personal success while becoming a contributing member of a dynamic global society we will support the strategic coherence plan intended to encourage the achievement of all of our students we aim to deliver an equitable educational experience to every student in our care regardless of race religion ability ethnicity identity socioeconomic status or gender we will seek out the identification and eradication that was not specifically in there of institutional
017racism and biases that promote barriers to student learning create academic gaps and directly conflict with the core values and beliefs of the brookfield public schools we vow to confront all incidents of inherent bias and racism in our schools and hold that all individuals accountable for their actions we will create opportunities to celebrate differences in others beliefs intellectual ideas and backgrounds we will promote an appreciation of diverse cultures groups and people and perspectives we will celebrate the individual academic social and civic contributions of individuals within our school community we will hold paramount the idea that student parents staff and community voices are integral in building a climate of trust respect and dignity while creating opportunities that minimize disparities in educational outcomes we will strive for continuous improvement and recognize that if that it requires the courage
018to change long-standing biases and institutional norms and we will develop and implement a plan to ensure that our schools recognize and eliminate racial bias so that was essentially our resolution and what that filtered down into was more specific goals for or objectives for the actual um equity and inclusion subcommittee so this is a this is the actual charge that we gave to that committee um back in july uh can i ask you really quick yeah who who developed those objectives on the previous uh slide that was yeah that was inc that was that's what we voted on in back in july okay i just have a thought um what if we look at the two sample mission statements that we kind of like and do we see if either one satisfies these objectives or needs
019a little tweaking that yeah i think that would be a good use of tonight's time yeah like i was wondering if you could this is could you put it on top could you come is this a document you can alter or not really rosa not that you could i mean the slides i probably well yeah not really thinking if you could cut it well if you guys yeah i mean if you guys have you guys have all the slides right yeah we could just pull it up yeah and then i can i can still keep you know our blank document going if you want to do that can i give a thought on the on the first slide there before you go on this one yeah the one that's currently up sure so i believe
020that the the number one troubling thing to me when we had the kids uh come in uh the former students come in is that they didn't feel safe and i think that should be a word that should be included somewhere in here i it i mean the fourth point down kind of puts it like i i mean i need safe environment right so where you feel like you can go to a teacher with any with any problem and i kind of feel like the fourth point kind of hits on that but i i i do think that safety and safe environment need to be kind of part of that i don't if i'm jumping ahead let me know no that's that's certainly something you know it's i think it's an important word and something that
021we can we can definitely incorporate i do want to just to kind of show you guys the the actual charge that we gave the committee who is more who is going to essentially lead how we will actually implement these particular objectives you know and and guide that um you know that work i think one of them actually does mention that specifically the second the last bullet uh mike that starts to get at that so this would be good for roosevelt maybe if you can go through rosa yeah so this is the charge that we gave the committee back um let me get you guys smaller back in july to support development of instructional activities extracurricular opportunities and field experiences that promote a richer awareness of culture and racial diversity review and monitor policies on diversity
022inclusion and equity review curriculum in grades k through 12 through the lens of multicultural and diverse perspectives establish a clear protocol that records and reports incidents of racism occurring within the schools and holds all staff and students accountable for their actions review and employ mechanisms for example anonymous tips trusted adults i think this is what i was talking about mike to allow students and staff to share sensitive or confidential information that will help the investigation of acts of bullying harassment and racism continue to research and implement best practices and social emotional programs and resources to ensure that every student feels safe in a supportive environment determine where our schools may be falling short in promoting understanding respect caring problem solving conflict resolution anti-bullying etc provide training for all staff aimed at maintaining a safe inclusive
023and equitable learning environment for all students including students of color and support the superintendent's initiatives in creating community conversations with in diversity and equity that will lead to systemic improvements so as we get more specific you know i think those are in there but certainly you know if we want to add a word like that to our vision statement that's certainly appropriate i think i personally really like the cap statement i think it's i think we can maybe build on that it's short it's succinct but like i feel like that's might be a good starting point and then we can maybe add some more things to that i don't know about everyone else i like the cap statement i think i i agree i actually thought the cave one was a little negative the caps
024one just to me seems you know more positive more optimistic actually what i'm going to do i'm just i'm not liking the i'm sure that achievement and growth are not predicted i don't i don't like that phrase for some reason i probably was intended to be predicated not predicted oh predicated i don't know why i looked at it and i it looked like predicted yeah i thought it might actually be just predicted though because those things are predictors of achievement and growth maybe i didn't like it either that's the one thing i didn't like about it but i liked a lot of that what i liked about this is the first one is very simple it's very similar to our make your tomorrow theme that we have yeah um in brookfield so um and uh
025i think it's it it resonates a little bit relative to our other statements yeah i mean i guess the key thing is well and this is kind of obvious so their job was to support school district leaders so we have to think about like who are we supporting are we supporting i think teachers students families perhaps you know that might be if we change some of those words that might um yeah and i'd like to just just briefly share the one thing that uh that a couple of a number of times when we we've talked maureen and i talked about this you know the cabinet and some of our other meetings is um and we've shared a little bit here is maureen uses a phrase you know honoring the uniqueness of all of our learners
026all of our individuals so it's the adults as well as the children um i really love that i think in addition to that we talked about in the uh over the summer at the end of the day we want people to feel comfortable uh might use the word safe but really welcomed and valued so i think those are key words that could be folded into some light you know some phrases that we might want to think about and so you know it's that individual worth and valuing people welcoming them um i like that phrase from one of the one of the companies you put forward rosa where uh it talked about um oh gosh it's just opening my mind we can go back to it later but i'll come up with it there's a lot
027to say but there's some really great ways to look at things um oh yeah it's not just uh it was something that it's uh it's automatic it's not something it's not an initiative it's just something you naturally do as part of right hope for the organization that you welcome people in and uh honor the uniqueness of that kind of celebrate well it becomes part of our our school culture exactly i did like that part too yeah we strive to build and nurture a culture where inclusiveness is a reflex not an initiative my empowerment is an important word too and at the same time we while we're thinking about this we're not we can't try to solve everything so that's why it's got to be high level even though we want it to be specific and
028that's usually the hardest part of these exercises that brevity how do you do that and so i want to get those key pieces in so where do you guys want to change if we're going to use caps as sort of our base where do you want to first make the change i think there's um an issue with um you know we want to ensure that achievement and growth are not predicted by these things um back up rosa i think we're on the wrong [Music] can you guys see the we're on stanley black and decker really oh maybe there's just a delay oh okay you guys see it now right no i still see looks like a decker really oh wait okay hold on let me see if i can okay oh good job yeah this
029is would be better with like a big piece of white paper and post-it notes markers yeah markers so if we want to use i put some of the words that i you know down here in the bottom um if we want to use this as a base it seemed like this was something that was maybe an issue for a couple of us um you know i think it's i think this is the part that is specific but also high level i think we want to be able to specifically mention you know gender gender identity sexual orientation race class disability i think all of those things are um you know those marginalized groups that we want to uh recognize specifically but at this sort of high level so how we do that is sort of you
030know up to us um but i think it's something that we should mention or we should keep in there even if it's not you know this exact sentence yeah and then do you want to just um like change school district leaders to do we want to say is it too broad to say the brookfield community or should we break it down to um teachers families i don't know staff i think we can say the school community community yeah i think so too support our school community don't you think people think the community like outside the school when you say school community like parents i mean yeah they just think parents yeah they probably yeah you're probably right yeah i don't think people think of teach teachers as part of that you know teachers and students
031and i think you know we also need to be very careful you know we it's one subcommittee and we're putting a lot of responsibility which we know is going to be endless it's going to take a long time there's going to be pieces and that there's a lot of process and planning and structure that needs to go into this uh from the committee folks um but again we need to keep it narrow and and this is joy i'm asking you because you brought it up so i think it's a good point are we when we say school community or whatever phrase we use we're talking about the school the community you know in in the adults within that community as well as the students within that community are we thinking very broad into the community
032because there's only so much the schools can do and we're just right very careful number one uh managing our own expectations um of what we can do because if it's too big um we could meet with some very serious obstacles and be discouraged and so we want to be you know focused and specific as well so that still thinks the difference yeah i don't think it should be extended into the community okay yes in my opinion yeah sure no i understand it's it to me it seems way too broad you know we don't control we can try to control we can control so do we want to say you know i changed it to students teachers and staff or are we just you know trying to focus more on the student um i'm wondering if
033we don't even need that part because in the very first sentence we say we're committed to the success of each brookfield student so then if we say yeah we we believe it is our responsibility to remove systemic barriers yeah yeah that's a good point create a safe space and honor the uniqueness yeah something like that individual or something i like what um dr ruby sent to our email that um honors the uniqueness of each individual and embraces diverse backgrounds values and points of view to build a strong inclusive community and to prepare students for lives in a multicultural society yeah i like that too yeah sure let me uh because i like the word honors i don't think you hear that often like you're always here committed to or committed to yeah and your values
034are different yeah valued even putting in great empowered in there i do like that word in power too so how can we work that in and to mike's point you know maybe building a safe environment unless you feel like that you know that's sort of taking care of in our more specific objectives i i i feel like i like both i think both terms safe and welcome should be included to john's point there i think that's safe and welcoming um because i think those are very specific terms and i think that's you want to be as specific as possible it's like uh i mean i didn't know i was on you before but community just seemed seemed to uh i don't really cross it it just seemed too too general strong safe and welcoming school
035community you can say that prepares students honors the uniqueness of in each individual that is all-encompassing it's not just students but it's students teachers custodians uh community members it's everybody i mean like we can't narrow who we value to students or to any i mean if we're really going into this the way i think we're going into this then we need to adopt an uh an attitude and a perspective of honoring everybody it's all inclusive otherwise it's kind of contrived in my in my feeling but it's everybody we want our students we want our teachers we want our families we want our community to be a place that honors each individual however they present and our responsibility is to take them as they come and in our our our operations to maximize the potential of
036everybody and that's teachers parents students anybody that we interact with brookfield cares brookfield education foundation the the um many businesses in town that support us we honor each and every one of them because that's what we want our students to do and that's the only way that we can break down these barriers that we have so i i like what i think john said it before and rosie i think you hinted at it that it's this is high level and then subsumed under this high level i'll call it vision statement is going to be many other things that were that will be to to bob's point that will be the things that we'll be measuring to see what our success is i just want to add in here that in order for us as your
037leadership team to be able to really live up to and honoring the statement whatever it is in its finality we're going to have to think more broadly about policies because in order for us to be able to do this we have to go through our policies and make sure that board policies actually support us living out this vision with some teeth behind it to be able to actually do what it is we're saying we want to do rosa if i could jump in just for a second that i know vin mistero's been working on a lot of policies of course between covet and equity i think he's he's probably aged 10 years in the last months and ben was pushing it already but um you know please be in touch with our policy department i'm
038sure they have some things already done and some things in the work but i'm sure they could be of help there um i can't see the whole thing on on one screen but i'm wondering if the second part that you wrote makes a good preamble for this the first the the bottom part might be a good preamble for the top part so that flip them around smaller starting by talking about the uniqueness and you know a more positive statement about what why we want children to be protected safe etc and then going how you're committed to how you're doing it i i just wonder if they make sense together i do i like i like components of of both of them for different reasons but you know i do really like the um the beginning
039part of this of this bottom one that maureen had wrote yeah and i i like where we talk about um student growth and so forth and where where the caps student growth is talked about in the um uh the cap statement that we've started to modify and also you know uh gender and class and so forth but again it's it's great that it's specific and and but i wonder if going back to the concept of broadness that that we clearly hit on in a number of those objectives and goals so again vision statement could be broader um and then the very specific pieces are obviously in what we've already gone through in july and said that you know we want to have as part of the subcommittee's work um and just a quick note before
040i forget to say it i know maureen brought a policy and then nick mentioned what what vin mastaro does up the cape one of the things i've talked about for a number of years off and on with the policy committee and we're actually we just were too busy last night we had so many other things going on um but policy committee one of the things uh deb deb and i talked about putting on the agenda was policy process um and one of the things that we all know how painful uh painfully long it takes to get through policy so one of the things the policy committee is going to have to talk about i mentioned this when we talked about the master timeline two weeks ago is how we approach the development or the adoption
041of policies because the pace we go at and it's only because we meet once a month and there's only so many uh so much human capital to go around in the office but also so much time from the volunteers from this board who are on the committee to do that work um so we're going to be at the policy committee we really do need to talk about these things especially process yeah i didn't really give him a long conversation about it but i wanted to put it out there for people as a reminder that the process is really important rosa could could you just so we could look at it could you take the second sentence of the first one and just paste it onto the second one [Music] and at the end yeah and
042then change in the first sentence just change the bps to brookfield public schools right just spell it out pick out though too and get the thought out of there at the beginning right i just i just was it was driving me crazy so this kind of what i what i like about it and it's uh it was a good suggestion is the second sentence here is a little bit more specific about responsibilities and barriers and growth and mention specifics on gender gender identity sexual orientation racial class and disability i think it brings a level of specificity that is positive to this um and uh and the two sentences do support one another so bob the one thing because i'm always like you just said before always thinking about how do we measure our success even
043though this is high level when i read that second statement we believe it is our responsibility to remove systemic barriers what are what are those what are the systems and what are we removing and how do we hold ourselves responsible and can we actually if we define if we can define what the systemic barriers are can you hold yourself as a board accountable for removing those i mean i i'm just trying to think of how we're gonna measure that down the road well i mean it's to that point though i think you know one of the objectives that we need the subcommittee was to identify what those barriers are you know in in our curriculum in you know however that may present itself in the schools but you know maybe it's putting the car before
044the horse a little bit and sort of saying yep they're there uh the subcommittee has to go and find them and fix them um but i think to i think some sort of recognition that you could so so rosie i'm sorry to interrupt you could actually simplify the second sentence by just getting rid of the repeats and the barriers there our responsibility to uh ensure right and and kind of go right to the point because what what excites me about the second sentence is that it's about the achievement and growth are not i don't like predicted but uh by gender gender equity sexual orientation race and class and disability because that is measurable maybe instead of remove identify yeah i mean i i think it'd be hard for us i i i'm just speaking i
045think it would be hard for us to actually make a commitment to removing systemic barriers that's or even just recognize that's herculean you know first of all we have to identify them like within our system is it our school system so maybe you can even go broader instead of identify which sounds a little light and remove which sounds a little hard you could just say address yeah that is more it's a good action word yeah i'm just and and then systemic barriers are going to be so we can make sure we understand that and define that what do we all think about what is it what is that what does that mean i agree with joy like i mean i think i know what it means but i don't know if that's what everybody else
046thinks yeah and i i actually think more about systemic biases than barriers but it's just about biases never about systemic biases because is the system the school system is the system the community like what is what system are you talking about because above i want to be responsible to you as a board but i can't um i can't change how people think in their homes or in their businesses and if people i think i'm going to disagree with you i think we can address it we can bring people in and we can have this you know we can apparent university like we're doing today and talk about biases that's addressing it um i don't think we should stand back from a broader impact that the schools have on the communities um and so i i'm
047going to disagree with you on this one because i think we should take on a broad and maybe not so defined um role because i think the schools have a big impact in community so the more we try to water that down the less impactful the statement is do do we are we skipping over i mean i feel like we're skipping over something i i like joey's question are we defining systemic barriers not i don't think in the vision statement that that's an appropriate spot for it um well i think joy's asking maybe we should just all share what we think so we have a commentary okay is that what you're saying joy yes exactly to me a systemic barrier is essentially an action or a creation based on an action of a person or
048a system or an organization that is essentially based on an implicit bias i feel like systemic barriers are ingrained beliefs and attitudes yeah i would think like beliefs and assumptions that um certain groups are performed a certain way or do a certain thing um yeah i mean i mean i actually use the word barriers in my mission statement in my office um well i remove any you know my office is about removing financial barriers uh so me i define you know the systemic part i guess for me is any you know law or policy that prevents you know the natural the someone's willing progression through life or willing progression to the next level or uh uh prevents achievement uh you know my office probably you know me i see as achievement of better health but
049uh yeah so i guess that's that's from where i'm gonna go with that but i feel like we all have very very different uh definitions it seems like it's kind of all over the place yeah and systemic means that it's all encompassing right it doesn't just touch things that we know of overtly it's you know it's everything that goes into the system including the personnel that we hire are we aware that we have any kind of bias or are we just you know going to ignore it and say you know we don't have any advice in terms of who we hire and or do we or we're gonna say you know what i think we do i think we need to be more proactive in seeking out you know personnel of more diverse backgrounds so
050that our students are learning from those people because that's that and that becomes a systemic solution so yeah that that's a big thing that i was trying to you know i wanted to circle back to when we were talking about the objectives before i don't really think staffing is addressed anywhere yet so i think you know to me like systemic is is it's really it's very all-encompassing and it's it touches every part of an organization whether we think about it consciously on a daily basis or not um oh so i'm listening to the words a little bit and from everybody by the way and mike when you were talking you uh you were actually talking about real barriers right there was a if i have a financial problem i can't do it right um that's
051a barrier what i heard everybody else say we're biases we have to address things that are leaning left or leaning right or you know things we might be undoing on subconsciously and uh and i actually think the issue though the word barrier has a connotation that is maybe a little more specific than we're thinking maybe we want to be broader here it's not just barriers it's barriers other biases in our hiring policies or like you said rosa or biases in our in other activities that we have going on so i'm i'm i'm thinking the broader term may help us and also deal with dr ruby's measurability question so because we address bias and ensure achievement and growth are not predicated predicted by these various characteristics i think is that that's the very measurable thing and
052then we could deal with uh and address systemic biases by periodically going through topically and saying so do we have bias in this and how are we dealing with it and i got i'm going to disagree a little bit i i appreciate what you're saying but barrier you know you kind of point out that barrier is something it's something a little bit more objective like a policy a rule a behavior uh something that actually happens you know a fact not to say it's something tangible uh but it is it could be more effect a bias is kind of like i mean can't someone go through life and have a bias and you never know what that bias is so i think that's i think bias is true but it's sort of that it's that introspection
053that we that we need to do as a board because that trickles down to the rest of the organization and if we want our students to have that kind of introspection you're not you can recognize bias within yourself but you first have to you first have to reflect on your own actions your own thoughts because it's that awareness that leads to actual change so if we go through life not wanting to seek out that awareness not wanting to challenge our own thought process then of course we hold on to those biases with the word institutional bias be better than systemic i'm not sure i'm just thinking aloud a little bit because we're talking about the institution of the school district the word just sounds so medical medical to me that's why that's why i like
054it so much those are things like we can deal with like the ant i never liked that word if we think about the curriculum the hiring is that's all part of our instant marination yeah i agree again i like i actually uh i don't know like that i think maybe it's fair it's because it's very objective and that's why i like it so what would that break you would change the phrasing and i missed that i'm just trying to change systemic to institutional institutional yeah i just have a negative reaction to that word too yeah i don't i don't really yeah me too sorry jen sorry jen okay i was just thinking alive thank you mike if i may just change for a second and this might actually help us in our process too with
055that with what we've been talking about just change change gears and get down to the line right underneath that i know some people had a problem with uh predicting achievement and achievement and growth are not predicted by um do we want to say achievement and growth regardless of gender gender identity you know is that something that is more um more comfortable with i just wanna and again as we say that maybe there's that helps us go back as well jen a lot better actually what's up deb um do you like inherent bias any better what does that mean yeah the phrase inherent bias refers to the effect of underlying factors or assumptions that skew viewpoints of a subject under discussion so is it inherent by inherent bias of whom is it of the community of
056the faculty of the students of everybody i'm concerned about so when i when i'm looking at when i look at this statement from from my responsibility is like what do i do as the assistant superintendent of schools to provide the in-depth comprehensive professional development to to ensure that our our teachers and our other employees are able to live up to the promise that the um board is making in the statement that's that's all i'm not trying to be a pain in the neck i'm just trying to really um like from a linguistic perspective understand exactly what it is that we're going to have to do to make this statement not just be a statement so we can check a box which i know none of us are trying to do but for it to be
057a statement that actually we can come back to and say yeah you know what we did this we did this and and this is what we have to show for it so i i'm just that that's the lens that i'm looking through deb so i'm not picking on your inherent i just want to make sure that we all know that it means something that's tangible and that's comprehended by all of us so that when we move forward when we come back to this we don't go what the heck does this mean so so i'm gonna throw my hat in the word institutional a little bit here because um the first sentence is about people right it's about embracing uniqueness it's about embracing diverse backgrounds and values to create a strong community and that's about embracing
058that's about um uh the environment we build the second sentence is about how do we run the district um and you don't need to be so broad in it that it is um it's in embracing in the just in the second sentence biases of parents biases of the students and biases of that i think the measurable thing is we could look at how we run the district and it is our responsibility to address that so and it's our responsibility to ensure achievement regardless of all of different characteristics so i think that is a much more the second sentence is a measurable thing that you're doing as you're running your district the first sentence is about enviro embracing the diversity and the community and i think the two go together so i'm kind of going back
059to uh institutional here makes more sense to me yeah and institutional really just refers to like our organization yeah right organization or it could be our curriculum yeah it's it's uh everything we do everything we're in charge of that we're in charge of that's correct how we set budgets right um i mean it could be anything we touch is organizational a better word yeah i was gonna i was gonna suggest that would organization sound better to maybe joy because institutional could have a i i can see how people have a negative pullback from that so maybe organizational um is there organizational barriers though going back to that word i know mike talked about that it seems a little more concrete i don't know i'm just putting it out there for thinking um measure how do
060like how do you measure biases well we're just addressing them yep we measure it you know by making sure that there's that you know gender gender identity all those things are not you know predicted by um or achievement is not predicted by those things right and i would say there's probably things we're going to start actions we would take right to look at like a lot of school district and organizations are doing right now they're looking at you know our hiring practices curriculum that we um choose policy policy um professional development um doing it intentionally is the idea of the vision yeah well it goes to our conversation about budget assumptions and priorities right so we were talking about addressing a lot of the uh you know some of these areas that were you know
061these these characteristic areas we were talking about right um you know disabilities or whatever it might be or learning gaps and things like that rosa um i want to just throw something out because as i look at this the first part of the statement as it was said really talks about uniqueness embracing diversity it's a very positive statement the second one the second sentence really says um we have to protect kids or protect people uh it's more of a i'm going to say using the wrong term but a defense term um you know we're going to protect we're going to uh ensure that these things aren't going to hurt a child but are we missing something about we're also here to teach children how to embrace equality equity you know so it's not just how
062to recognize the differences in ourselves and celebrate them which i think we need to do better with kids but also how to confront um you know those things when they see them i think we have a responsibility to children to teach them both aspects of that how to celebrate diversity themselves and then also how to confront it when they see it uh whether that's go to a teacher get help i mean it doesn't mean necessarily going up and challenging someone but that they they know it's wrong and they are willing to stand up to it however they have the potential to do it i mean i actually i want to disagree a little bit on that because i i look at the second sentence as more of an empowering statement as opposed to a defensive
063one you know i think you know again i don't i it's really important for me um in terms of this district's vision that we're not just looking at overt bullying or racism or things like that that's stuff that is it's very obvious and i think anybody would agree you know has no place in the schools but i think we're at a point where we need to recognize some other issues as well so the way i see the second sentence is we're going to intentionally look for those we're going to intentionally think about them reflect and then you know that recognition will hopefully bring about some change for students not so that they're on sort of a defense but so that no matter who they are or how they identify or whatever that they have an
064equal chance of success in brookfield so and i don't know how everybody else feels about the second sentence in that regard but stop rosa i'm just i'm thinking as i'm reading that second sentence that maybe maybe the two um main points of that sentence are flipped like is our responsibility to address organizational biases or is our responsibility so you know to ensure achievement so if we flip it we believe it is our responsibility to ensure achievement regardless of gender gender identity so um and then can we is there a way to end it by saying buy recognizing or buy a dressing or i don't know i think i just i'm not sure what i'm trying to say but i feel like ensuring achievement is the more important i need to get to the point i'm
065horrible at getting to the point um we still could hear someone in the background there's a pretty lively conversation yeah i mean i don't i don't know how everybody else feels i mean i don't know yeah i mean we can flip it i don't know if that changes too much maybe yeah i mean i kind of like this as it is i would like to kind of work in you know empowering in there change prepares to empower what's that can we change prepares to win powers empowers students for lives if it doesn't really make sense with yeah yeah for lives in a multicultural society i like the word of power yeah yeah i think going back to what the students were saying is that they weren't prepared for a multicultural society i feel like a
066sentence like that reassures that we heard them yeah what about in power's achievement and regardless of gender or gender identity we're not really well well no because you don't want just empower for achievement you want to empower for yeah we're ensuring that we're providing the opportunities um and the and the scaffolding through our instruction and through our curriculum and and everything else that we do in school where that's our that's our ensuring um i think that's our responsibility um and i see empowering and ensuring as as having two different meanings i i actually i you know nick has a good point but i think it's all it can be picked up underneath the welcoming school community and then it's a as a matter of how we flush that out right which is how do we
067let kids you know if there's an issue go deal with it and give them the strength to do it that's all part of a welcoming school community to me so yeah that's what i was thinking bob too i thought um nick's concern sort of gets addressed in that sentence yeah um part of the sentence how do you guys like i just put empowering instead of um i forget what was just there before um uh welcoming to me samia's adding a buzzword yeah well i agree did we want is so it's just going to be points of view to build a safe and welcoming school community i think it's fine there yeah but that's what we had before right no we had something else where we had safe um strong strong safe and welcoming school committee
068strong doesn't what what how about unified i was gonna say um i like unified i like unified a lot debbie were you going to say something yeah i was going to say where it says and welcoming school community that empowers students and prepares them for lives in a multicultural society well i like that well that's what we said before that doesn't make sense that empowers students students empowers students and prepares them for lives in a multicultural school like that okay yeah i'm sorry that's right that's good yeah because empowers the way it looks before it doesn't make sense here it does i like this well can i you know make one more one suggestion uh you know we believe it's our responsibility to address organizational biases i want to go back to that phrase and
069i had a thought while we were talking we could we believe it's our responsibility to seek out and address organizational biases organizational and curricular biases so we can bring in that we can go look at curriculum that could be something we could very periodically look at and say are we diverse enough in our curriculum and then we bring in some of the other things the students told us which is you know we have very narrow in terms of some of our they felt when some of our curricular choices so you don't think that's too specific so can i just say something bob this is not like directed at you but you brought up a thought in my mind when there are financial implications to anything that we write that we say we're going to do
070and so when we write in um curricular biases and i'm sure the board will support this but i just want to put it out there because i never assume anything that if we go into our curriculum and we identify areas where there may be implicit biases and that we need to expend funds to eradicate those or to shore up the curriculum so that it's um addressing diversity etc then if we have this is our vision statement then subsumed under that is that the board is financially supporting us in in doing that and i don't say that to be argumentative i just i'm just thinking about what we have to do yeah i think you're just opening up pandora's box i mean if we recognize that we should be addressing it i agree but i but
071it's but i i don't control that so i just want to make sure that we are you know i think what we're all working here as collab collaboratively and i want to just be transparent that from my my views viewpoint as a correct having curriculum expertise i see that as we're saying that when we go through our curriculum which we're perfectly able to do and we actually have been doing that when we see areas where there might be implicit bias we are absolutely going to address that and if it in if it imply if it means that we need to expend funds to correct those that the board is supporting that that's that's what i hear you saying i just want to put it out there and not make an assumption you know what it's
072first of all it's not a contract that says if you find something you will have to do it it's to seek out an address right and uh and i agree with you but if we found we had a curricular bias i'd be the first to be walking forward with a budget proposal that says we've got to fix it thank you but i kind of think when we put in the word organizational i i feel like that covers it that we're talking about everything the organization is responsible for whether it's staffing curriculum yeah i'm with you deb i feel like our objectives are gonna seek out what parts of the organization we're going to dig into and right not to bring up an old source subject but i feel like institutions hits it well but i'm
073willing to withdraw you know organization system you know we don't want to assume anything but it generally can mean some very similar things so be careful people will read the word organizational in very different ways right they'll think about it as oh this is about staffing absolutely about i mean organizational um is has different meanings to different people that's all um yeah that's actually what prompted me to put curricular in there because i think people wouldn't read organizational to be addressing curriculum so bob do you think that that that it weakens the statement if you just take organizational out and address biases biases yeah yeah we can do that that's maybe we're just arguing over semantics but we could just simplify it even more not an unreasonable compromise yeah i think i like that and
074again because we already have a lot of the objectives i keep thinking yeah we do have very specific are our objectives aligned to this and they are what about religion are we including that as part of class we absolutely should [Music] good one yep okay i think um religion i'd say belief beliefs right uh a religious religious then religious voice um rosa in the quizzes that you sent um there was also mention of uh like just physical you know bias based on body type weight size and that it's different from disability so i don't know what to call that and i don't know like neurotypical differences or no no i mean like this tall people short people skinny people fat people yeah that's why i love the honors the uniqueness of each individual because that's
075really hard on the back side for the bottom including the marginalized groups i guess please think about so did everybody take that uh that little uh the thing where you do the eyes and the ease yeah i just i i decided that it it drew conclusions about me but it should have just drawn the conclusion i don't know my left from my right so the other thing to think about is the board is doing this as a board as it should to give the committee whoever the ultimate core group of the committee is um and that's a process that uh jen and amy and maureen and i talked about about you know a month ago and then maybe three weeks ago before the letter went out to seek individuals to be a part of it
076you know the committee needs to to be um take kind of the marching orders but really the committee needs to exercise this leadership too and it's it's ownership of the process of going forward so we can't forget that the board isn't going to do all this work the committee is going to do the work which is going to be a very inclusive group and then bring recommendations forward we just want to make sure that's out there too we can't forget about yeah definitely i like a statement i think yeah i do too this is pretty good yeah how does everybody else feel yeah comfortable with us i like there's still a paragraph above it or did we combine them now um i can combine them i can delete the one above it so in terms
077of finalizing it should we bounce this off of anybody else or um like should we send it over to the committee and say you give us some any input you might have or does that just add a degree of complexity to i think it probably adds a degree of complexity yeah right now i'm sorry no i was just gonna say i think because it's so broad it's you know sort of falls under you know something that the entire board should do um it's a board vision and the committee is under the board right it's about asking for input that's all yeah yeah and the committee right now is is uh amy jen john maureen [Laughter] you know uh those unique people in with different perspectives all right so do we need to do we should
078we vote on this do we need to vote on this tonight do you want to um rosa i don't know that it was on the agenda as something we would it's subject matter um if anybody has a better at least in robert's roles i'm certainly open to that but we could always vote on it in a regular meeting where it's specifically it's not on the agenda for a vote you cannot add it exactly it's a special meeting all right so i'll just um i'll just save it and um we can put it on our next agenda and at that point we've already had this lengthy discussion so yeah can i just suggest that when we put it on the next agenda actually put the words in the agenda document yep um so that the public
079has a chance to have seen it um if they're look if they're the sort who go in and look at agendas um and uh it could be at the end or the uh at the end of it or you know in the in the mainline text but i just think making sure people have had a chance if someone wants to give us any public comment they can right that we do open our our meetings for public comment and on this type of topic i am a believer in asking people for their input um and uh um it's just a it's a very sensitive topic in this day and age so um i like it by the way uh just i like what we've kind of collaborated on here so yeah um so you know the
080last slide is you know we we talked about the objectives of the committee these were their specific goals in terms of what's actionable and how we will essentially assess if the committee um is or has accomplished their their mission as we formed them but i just wanted to kind of maybe you know because we've already had sort of that lengthy discussion in terms of the specificity we we kind of want the committee to do um maybe amy you can just sort of give us an update now just for anybody who may be listening you know what's the update on the committee and um yeah any kind of information would be good yeah i think we set tomorrow as our last day for applications coming in and so far i've received 26 letters of application from
081the community to want to be involved so we're going to set up a another meeting sometime in november right john to try and pour over these applications and make a final decision on what the makeup of the committee is going to be and then hopefully have a first full meeting as a committee in early december hopefully that's a lot of that's a lot of interest yeah it's good it's really cool that we have that much interest that's cool i love that and so you'll probably meet sort of as a full committee maybe sometime in december i would think right john is that kind of what we had that that's the goal you know with the timeline right and and i i at this point i don't think that's unreasonable we need to uh again manage
082our own expectations of what what we have the capacity to do considering we're also in a very different time you know in terms of the demands uh the time demands on the administrative team um and again that's there's no cop out i think you all know me well enough by now we we work all day and night and over the weekends that's that's not the issue it's just at some point how much can you do in whatever the given time frame is of quality and so we want to make sure that and then and in the board as volunteers and committee members as volunteers we start hitting into the holiday season um we did not anticipate the decisions that needed to be made on tuesday you know with some of the health data um and
083again these things from monkey wrenches into the real life that we have to live throughout the year um but i think i think we can at least get a meeting in december and start to norm and storm and get the expectations out there and get people comfortable um again just so everybody knows jen and amy and maureen and uh and i we talked about process and again we really need to structure that and define that but it's really important we talked maybe about more of a core committee and then having subcommittees off the core or whatever that might look like um you know without getting into that but we had some lengthy discussion on that and i think we need to continue to talk that through and then that whatever whoever is going to be
084part of that core committee needs to obviously who's not part of this group right now needs to be a major part of what that's going to look like so um there's a lot of group dynamics here um and again the great thing about this is is we're moving forward with this and martha herself talks about that martha ratkeen harris um who forwarded actually an email yesterday or today and it was just nice to hear from her that this is something that that while you set objectives and you have projects and initiatives and deliverables i guess maybe on an annual or however we set up the goals um it doesn't go away this is something we need to work on we're always going to need to work on it i think it'll end up being a
085standing committee at some point uh once we get the ball wrong i also think it's gonna when we do meet in november going over 26 and we could get more applications and pouring through those and discussion and i anticipate to be lengthy meeting amy what's the breakdown of that students and parents it's both it's students it's parents it's staff it's pretty well represented now that you've saved that if you want to email it to the board that would be great if you didn't lisa on that because we were actually working today on the draft agenda for november 4th so we can make sure we don't forget we get it on the agenda to bob suggestion um we don't miss that one thank you apparently okay anything else on on this before we move on okay
086so um okay up next on our agenda is an executive session um so i will move that the board enter into executive session for the purpose of discussing itself self-evaluation second thanks amy okay all in favor hi okay that's unanimous so um that concludes our publicly broadcasted portion and i'll meet all of you guys on the other resume link bye you