001you um low pressure right [Music] hello good evening everyone it's six o'clock on thursday march 17th and i would like to call this regular meeting of the lansing school district board of education to order will everyone please join me for the pledge of allegiance thank you will the clerk please call the roll dr body dr burrows miss hodgin mrs lawrence here this is logee here mr lopez mrs moore present dr rodriguez mrs willis quorum is present thank you very much any additions to the agenda this evening seeing none i do just want to make a comment before we start our agenda this evening i'm so happy to see so many members of the community here with us tonight thank you for coming out um i know that there has been circulating some information that i
002wanted to uh just just bring forth there has been an allegation that there is a pending michigan department of civil rights complaint against the school district and that that investigation or report is going to be revealed this evening that is not true there is no mdcr active investigation uh there is no report that's going to be revealed from mdcr this evening there's no pending mdcr investigation there is a report that will be revealed this evening that will be discussed this evening from a company called west ed west ed is a company that this board selected to perform an equity audit at our request and that is the report that will be discussed this evening um i don't ha i do have one participant who has asked to make public comment on the equity audit miss
003claretta duckett freeman so please approach the podium if you're with us this evening i also want to inform our attendees this evening if you're not familiar with how to register to make public comment there are blue cards in the back of the room right now we are about to enter into the public comment on agenda item section of the meeting if you would like to make a public comment on an agenda item please go fill out a blue card and turn it in right now because we only have one participant and each person gets three minutes to make their public comment if you would like to register to make a public comment on a non-agenda item again fill out a blue card check the non-agenda item box and that will be that will happen at
004the end of our agenda miss duckett freeman thank you for being with us this evening you have three minutes and the board typically does not respond to public comment um so i wanted to kind of say something about the um the equity audit so equity in education requires equality and outcomes i've been a parent in the lansing school district for about 13 years for years my family has experience being undervalued i have five children in lsd two of them attend eastern and three attend post oak and i've given a lot of grace to our teachers and administrators because i know that teaching is difficult and resources in public schools are limited and they are not paid enough however they have given little to no grace to my son when i tried to seek help i
005went through all the appropriate channels but i still encountered resistance when i requested evaluations and ieps and maybe the equity audit will reveal new things for you but those of us who are being crushed under this racist sexist and controlling education system it won't reveal anything new other members of our community have told me that upgrades needed from the last bond were ignored for their schools while it was not ignored for my school so i assumed that you listen to everyone i hope that this has corrected this go around we need you to stop ignoring bullying sexual harassment and special education and i used to brag about the education of my children because it was better than the education i received but i've never had to deal with being called and treated like the n-word
006by non by non-black people who are students and staff i wonder if my children have paid for their good chinese immersion education with their dignity our staff needs more training to be compliant with special education and many more black teachers need to be created and hired in post oak in particular there are zero black teachers in post oak i want to support the school district and i want to support the bond like i did the last time but the district needs to address the needs of the schools who don't look like post oak so that they can also brag about their school everyone doesn't live in grosbeck but everyone in lansing deserves to be treated like people in girl spec [Music] [Applause] thank you miss duncan freeman i see no other no other registrants for
007public comment on agenda items so i'm going to move on with the agenda first on our agenda this evening is a presentation from west ed and i will turn it over to mrs willis who has worked closely with west ed to shepherd shepherd us through this process thank you before i turn it over to our presenters this morning i just want to set the stage as a reminder to how we got here so in the summer of 2020 this board of education courageously passed a resolution um saying that we were going to make steps towards addressing um inequities and disparities in race equity within this this district the whereas is of that um of that resolution so that we would complete a comprehensive equity audit that we would develop a plan to support our black
008students well-being that we would develop a steering committee or an advisory council with a focus on black history curriculum and that we would continue to uh invest in diverse workforce and professional development we worked through a process where we had a competitive rfp review and selected our partners through west ed to um complete this equity audit for us the members before you this evening and some who weren't able to attend but still worked tirelessly and put in innumerable hours we met um it ended up being 11 times um each meeting for four out three hours um and that doesn't include any of the work that was done between meetings and preparation meeting for meetings and review of meetings and data i sincerely thank and appreciate the work of all of the members of this team
009and i know that there is going to be data and information in this report that is going to challenge this board to continue to be courageous and make decisions and the community is looking to us to step boldly into this work and say that we have a standard that we are going to um to increase and continue to support for equity in this district so we have our partners on the screen from west ed um i'm gonna turn it over dr o'neill so i turn over you or mr lopez i'm gonna turn it on and i don't want anybody confused from west that is david lopez we also have mr grier malopas who helped um i'm going to turn it over to david lopez from west ed to kick us off and do some introductions
010for the team and lead us through this presentation also by the way the team has practiced tirelessly to get this um this presentation down much more succinctly than my introduction is turning out to be and um it takes them 45 minutes to get through it without interruptions so just wanted to let you guys know that so let's remember board colleagues please remember to hold your questions to the end jot them down as we go through and we'll take all questions at the end thank you so much can everyone hear me are we okay yes okay wonderful thank you so much for having us my name is david lopez i am a senior uh technical assistant specialist with west ed and and have uh led the project here uh we do not refer to the work
011that we've done as an equity audit but a systemic equity review and we'll talk a little bit about why we renamed that uh i want to start by you know i had this whole spiel but i want to start by validating miss freeman for her bravery and honesty uh before we start it um and hold uh what she offered that for many black uh families and other families of color that these findings won't be new uh that they know this from their own experiences uh but and i also want to acknowledge um all the hard work that the district equity team has put in uh during a pandemic during uh changes to distance learning to in person uh to i want to thank the board for their brave resolution that that prompted this work i
012want to thank the parents and community members who were willing to speak to us and be honest about their experiences of themselves and their children i want to also thank dr o'neal for her tireless leadership to really galvanize this group and and use her her relationships to uh bring in the community for us to be able to talk to them uh you know we couldn't have done it without them uh we also want to thank the teachers union who has supported us and has asked its members to support the work that we're doing we want to thank the uh the local naacp uh chapter that has also uh leaned and sent their support to us and while some of the the findings uh today that we discussed will be troubling uh i think we would
013be remiss and do a disservice um not to mention the immense support and obvious dedication and hard work of many of the educators and community members of lansing right and i want us to be able to hold both that uh we need to center the safety of our our our children and our communities in particular those impacted uh but there are also many educators that are fighting the good fight on behalf of those children and we got to see that as well so i think while we're gonna see these troubling findings there is really hope in in the educators that i've met and that my team has met at lansing and i really want to uh thank you especially because this is just the start of the journey right and we know um that the
014real hard work for this district begins it wasn't during those 11 sessions it's after this right what do you do with this information and how do we begin to address the beliefs policies practices and procedures that have harmed our children in particular our black children and other children of color in the district for today um for today's agenda we are gonna uh introduce what we've done this introduce the west ed team and the district equity team we'll discuss the systemic equity review process we'll review the key uh root causes and recommendations made by the district equity team in westa and we'll also open up for a q a so uh i just wanted we won't introduce everybody but i want to give a shout out we have a robust team uh folks with a uh
015that with diverse identities but diverse experiences that leave the technical assistance right that professional learning for that district equity team but also uh the research and data our resource allocation uh and if you had just so that we could acknowledge the other 10 team members right so we we've brought quite a few folks to really be able to do this work and do this work well in collaboration with the district uh for today so one one thing you know i i know this was presented as a presentation from west ed this is not just a presentation from westside right we don't believe that as an outside organization we should come in uh do an audit and tell you what you've been doing wrong and what you should be doing moving forward we understand that there's
016expertise in the district there are educators who have been here for decades that have been doing the good work and we believe in collaborating with the community so that we can accurately uh um find the root causes and appropriate recommendations based on the local context right so we believe in a process in our systemic equity review that is also culturally responsive and sustaining to the district so beyond the west ed team we will be co-presenting with the district equity team and i want to give a shout out uh to these 10 members that will be co-presenting with us today and then sarah i love if you could not uh we would love to acknowledge the rest of the district equity team as well so we could acknowledge you thank you so much if we could
017give them a round of applause thank you we're clapping along with you all for all your hard work dedication uh in this process so we're gonna uh begin by just because we know uh beyond the the board there's also members of the community in attendance to just give a high level of our process right and so we were tasked with answering uh eight research questions in the systemic equity review uh these were a robust set of questions and we used a robust set of data we looked at uh to mrs freeman's point when thinking about equity around uh comparably high academic achievement and outcomes equitable access and inclusion right uh equitable treatment how are our children and and staff being treated and are there any differences um we looked at equitable opportunities to learn right
018our folks our children getting the same opportunities to join honors ib courses um are they being taught uh in ways that sustain their culture and value it we looked at the resources uh and did a review of of equitable resources we looked at discipline and interventions we looked at accountability around do our educators really accept responsibility for the outcomes and experiences of our children and then we also looked at the training right so what types of training are educators getting how effective and do they center equity and culturally responsiveness uh to do that we we we really had a robust set of data that we use throughout both quantitative data right so that data like the numbers um just head back to the last to the previous slide rather than uh the the numbers right
019we looked at those i think many folks are are familiar with the numbers right but we also use qualitative data data we wanted to hear from the people to contextualize what do these numbers mean what's really happening right and we did that through surveys uh focus groups and then also the field notes that west ed took so we also like to be really honest um around the value propositions that west said showed up in this process right and it really undergrids our approach uh the first is that we know equity is not a lens or it's not a pair of glasses that you could put on and take off it's a mindset set that needs to be made normative it is not an addition it is the plate right it is part of everything we
020need to be doing in education we also know and we we center this in how we collected data what types of questions we asked that to achieve systemic equity we have to center race and we have to address power privilege and other bias-based beliefs that are impacting our children and our communities we also know that a commitment to achieve educational equity is not enough our students our parents our communities do not need to hear that we want to achieve equity anymore right but policies and practices must follow right changes must occur equity is action oriented it is not just lip service right and the other is uh that that isn't on that slide that i want to highlight again is really that we believe in building the capacity of the district to take ownership of
021the work and to use their expertise right we do not want to come in do work and leave it be we know that the work is of the district not necessarily of west ed but we are here to support right so to to be able to to do this work and answer those eight research questions we took a three-phase approach and i'll i'll let dr harvey talk a little bit about phase one in our data collection good evening everyone it's nice to be with you all my name is alexandria harvey and i'm a program associate at west ed and so our data team we relied on a collection of data provided by lansing um and we consider that as extant data we also as david mentioned earlier we use focus groups we use the bias-based
022belief survey to gather information and through this we used a mixed methods analytic approach to really weave the pieces of these together to be able to answer some of lansing's research questions and as we consider some of the artifacts provided by the district as extant data and this is not limited to what we were provided but this is just a brief sample we had discipline data we had m-step data access to enrollment data information on the types of professional development that was developed within the district as well as retention data and so that was some of those these are some of the numbers that we will able to review and now thinking about the focus groups we were able to conduct focus groups with teachers district administrators school level administrators and parents throughout we had
023about 10 school leaders participate within focus groups as well as about nine teachers and then we were able to conduct a bias based beliefs survey which was comprised of research and evidence-based practices to really get to understand the beliefs and the perception within the districts and this survey was administered to students teachers district administrators and parents and so our total a little over 1 000 people within the lansing school district participated in taking this survey and as we conducted and collected all of this information we analyzed this information as i said it was a mix of quantitative and qualitative data we triangulated this data to really come up with the findings that you will hear shortly throughout the presentation and this really included an iterative of themes that we found within the qualitative and quantitative
024data to really support um some of the themes and the evidence that we found within the district and a full review of findings and analyses including data tables will be provided in a forthcoming report thank you so much for that dr harvey uh so we use that data from the phase one to really inform phase two uh where we did the 11 sessions that vice president willis spoke about with the district equity team uh the district equity team both received professional learning around culturally responsiveness to support their learning but ultimately to co-analyze the data so they can develop the root causes and recommendations for the district that we'll discuss later and we won't be presenting those as i spoke about you'll hear directly from the district equity team we're currently in phase three that is
025uh to complete that report that dr hari spoke about to present to the community and board and will round us out as we move forward so as we said right the district equity team served as a leadership and advising body to ground our findings our discussions and the eventual recommendations that you'll hear to address the inequities i'll pass it over to dr o'neill board you will hear us circle back several times to thank you this evening but please allow me this moment to articulate our thanks from this team in particular today we stand before you because you courageously passed a board resolution committing to equity that single decision started a movement in this district for many of us that had a lot of learning to do we are humble we make mistakes and we are
026tired but most importantly we are so grateful for you so thank you from our heart to yours as you look at this we thought it would be helpful for you to understand the makeup of our team we worked hard to make sure we had representation for all levels within our educational system our team consisted of three board members three district administrators six principals six teachers three support staff five parents and seven community partners a special thank you to our community partners that sit next to me you continue to show up and put countless hours in to wrap around our school district it made an intense difference in this process and we thank you next you will see the distribution of years worked in education for our team both in total which is shown in blue
027and then within the lansing school district which is in red we would like to highlight that 70 percent of our team has more than 16 years of experience in education many of those years served in lansing lastly we'd like to be transparent about the demographics of our team 48 of our team members identify as black male and female were represented 11 of our team identify as female and hispanic and 41 of our team identify as female and white thank you so much sarah so we want to start by right we're talking about a systemic equity review we want to the district equity team has developed the definition and statement vision for equity and we want to share this with you so that you understand what we mean when we say equity throughout this presentation good
028evening my name is relations and social media excuse me promise and also a member of this amazing equity team the creation of this definition was a collective effort by the entire team of what we believe equity to be and whenever you hear us [Music] all right i'm going to start over good evening my name is trikita hicks i am the program and donor relations associate for the lansing promise and a member of this amazing team the creation of this definition was a collective effort by the entire team of what we believe equity to be and whenever you hear us mention equity tonight this is what we mean equity is the removal of systemic barriers in the creation of policies practices and cultures that achieve fairness justice and liberation of marginalized excuse me for marginalized students
029families community members and educators in our educational system hello everyone my name is mateya chaluk i use she her hers pronouns and i work at michigan state university as the assistant director for the office of civil rights title online education compliance prevention outreach and education which is a long title and i'm also an alumni of the lancia school district everett vikings in the house thank you yes don't mean to cause anything here but you know i had to shout it out so um so clearly i'm very excited to be a part of this group and to be able to contribute back into our community um so going along with what sharkita mentioned earlier our definition of equity as you heard but here we wanted to highlight our equity statement and the statement i would have
030you consider to be a call to action so the lansing school district is committed to intentional moral humanistic actions to meet our professional and moral obligation to ensure access to equitable educational experiences for each member of our learning community free of systemic inequities that limit opportunities and success based on race gender and other social and cultural identities this is currently as you could see a work in progress not because of the essence of the message but more so of some of the terminology perhaps and um grammatical pieces there but the essence of this call to action is really to be committed to removing the barriers so that all of our students can have equitable access to education and be able to be successful regardless of their race gender and other social and cultural identities so
031with that i will turn it back over to david who will lead us into talking more about the root causes as well as recommendations that we have based on our findings oh yeah gave me chills i knew this co-presenting was going to be a amazing experience for everyone so we want to start by discussing some of the overall findings that exist throughout the research that we've done and the work that we did with that dish with the district equity team right before we get to particular root causes and recommendations based on the research questions so the first uh theme that we really wanted to make sure we highlighted was that the district equity team used new york university metropolitan center for research on equity and the transformation of schools culturally responsive and sustaining education self-assessment
032right and what we what was highlighted was that the district rated non-responsive in six out of the six categories in that self-assessment what we mean by non-responsive is in that self-assessment for each category those categories being student-centered welcoming and affirming environment high expectations and rigorous instructional guidance that inclusive of curriculum and assessment ongoing professional learning and support to build staff capacity family and community ties and district and school leadership so they you can score non-responsive non-culturally responsive partially culturally responsive and culturally responsive and not in all six of those areas lansing was non-responsive right and we have to sit with that throughout and what that means for the district another key theme is that there is a mis we we witness a mistrust between school-based educators and district staff often due to a culture of
033punishment right we both have to sit with uh are we punishing our students but how is that also impacting our staff right throughout our focus groups parents consistently mentioned unclear communication they consistently told us we don't know what's happening with our children and not because of their lack of effort some parents of color uh mention that they experience being treated differently when they enter school buildings whether that's at the entrance or how educators are treating them talking about their students many educators in our focus groups use deficit language in particular about black students and other students of color by deficit language those that's uh ways that we blame students for their outcomes because we see deficits in who they are right things like they don't come ready for for kindergarten they students don't value education
034our students are violent right all that sort of deficit language uh through our study we were uh unable to hear in any mass way from our refugee population i i want us just to hold that right and i think it really ties into the communication struggles that lansing has administrators of color expressed inequitable treatment as it pertains to recruitment retention and promotions while there have been several pd offerings around equity topics there hasn't been a deep dive into culturally responsive inequity right heard for many folks that they needed more support something that really has impacted our partnership with lansing the district's data system is inconsistent and educators really need support in using the data in addition we really recommend that culturally responsive data literacy development is uh provided to our educators and throughout our survey
035open-ended responses there were notable comments around students feeling unsafe and mistreated by educators and several staff that express concerns about educators race-based prejudices of students of color right we heard from staff talk about their colleagues mistreating students of color right and i want us to hold these themes as we go through the research questions because they play out in all eight of the research questions so as we move forward we're gonna head to discuss what high level it's not gonna be everything right so we have 45 minutes what are some high level uh takeaways from westside you'll see that on the blue side with the white writing right and then on the other half of the screen you'll see the root causes and recommendations that were created from the district equity team so the first
036piece a question was around comparably high academic achievement and outcomes we found and again to ms freeman's point probably unsurprising to many that student performance is not comparable for all identified groups and achievement gaps exist right we also found that a lot of our students uh leave high school not prepared for post-secondary opportunities now it's important to know um that according to our m-step data most of our students in lansing are struggling to achieve uh based on those results right so we saw that 85 of our students were not proficient or partially proficient right all of our students but we saw that increase that 90 almost about 92 percent for our black students right so even though we have that high percentage overall we're still seeing a disproportionality for our black children and i'll pass
037it over to kristin so in commenting on the root causes we found evidence as we have for years in the data that the bigotry of low expectations and of deficit thinking affects the achievement of our black students and other students of color that the curriculum in all subject areas is not culturally responsive and these combined create our situation currently where some staff can remain resistant to culturally responsive practices our recommendations would be to quickly move away from racially evasive language and to explicitly and accurately discuss the systems of racism within lsd with all parties that are interested that we conduct a further audit of curriculum and make the needed changes in each core area and provide the professional development to implement culturally responsive and sustaining practices and all three of those things will then have
038a direct impact on the very needed hiring and retention of bipac staff thank you kristin for question two um equitable access and inclusion we found uh that again to highlight those communication barriers but also that parents express that they were unclear right around how do they ensure that their students receive equitable opportunities receive challenging and rigorous coursework such as ap gifted and honors and to highlight that we saw that uh in our survey responses 65.9 of parents disagreed that their ch child has access to advanced placement and or gifted programs while black parents express the highest level of disagreement at 83.3 percent we found that some of the main root causes for an equity and access were limited transportation to ex extracurricular activities that it was too subjective the recommending of black and students of
039color for more rigorous classes such as ap and there are outdated library policies and woefully inadequate staffing and budgets in all of our libraries we have made these recommendations to re-center our focus on the voices of students and families in these situations to review and revise outdated and racist practices and policies within our district that have held over from years of use and bring our library staffing and budgets up to the minimum standards of the american association of school libraries i'd like to add that as a librarian in this district it pains me that we are in a reading and literacy crisis in this district and yet this year many of our most vulnerable students had no access to libraries or if they did our libraries were shamefully outdated and understaffed but i do have
040hope and i see that there is a turn in this district and people are beginning to rally behind our students and it's much appreciated thank you so much joy our third question that we were research question we were set out to answer was around equitable and we found um that many students families teachers and district administrators administrators expressed a concern around safety discomfort within the learning of our environments and there were reported acts of racism and color invasiveness uh supported by claims of anti-blackness within the district really impacting the learning experiences of our students right we had a some survey responses that explicitly talked about the ways that teachers that there are certain teachers they felt shouldn't be working with black and brown children right and those findings were supported by our our survey right
041where 20 of the teachers and support staff who took it agreed with uh personal anti-black sentiment items in that survey right so a fifth of folks who took that agreed with anti-black sentiment my name is carlton evans my pronouns are he him and his i am a dei consultant uh with mcduffie evans and a member of the district equity team uh there were two main root causes for this inequitable treatment number one implicit bias and cultural oppression we all have implicit bias if you have a brain you have implicit cultural oppression is when one culture thinks that they are the standard and the the standard bearer and the the normal culture for everyone and downplays everyone else's culture the remedy or recommendation in short is um you must expose yourself to teachers and the students
042to other cultures especially if people who do not look like you through books plays history podcasts by others and also realize that english is not the only valid language in the world thank you so much carlton uh for our first fourth question around equitable opportunities to learn right some of the pieces that we wanted to highlight today were really around the need for social social emotional learning but that did not just center the social emotional learning of our students it also centered the social emotional support and learning that our educators needed right and we have to really sit with what that means as we provide these equitable opportunities to learn i'll pass it to you erica thank you um i am erica lin i am the co-founder and director of the village lansing a non-profit
043doing anti-violence work in lansing in the lansing community serving lansing school district students and families as well as young adults in lansing i'm also a lifelong lansing resident and a graduate of the lansing school district everett high school to be specific and also a member of this wonderful equity team and um so regarding the equitable opportunity to learn our team found that root causes surround policies which is not a huge surprise there whether that is program criteria or policies that exclude and or limit access but also the absence of policy that ensures equitable access to certain educational programs we also found that the elimination of activities and educational programs has also impacted overall student engagement our recommendations focus on creating policies and procedures that center our students voices and their unique needs that we ensure
044that they have equitable access to multiple paths of success on their learning journey that connect to not only them but also their lives the lives that they live every day i'll pass it over to you dr sandoval thank you david uh participants in the equity team had several findings but their recommendations for investment priorities for the equitable distribution of resources really focused on teaching and learning student services and family school and community engagement and so i'd like to invite our colleague ms murphy to join us and talk more about the root causes and recommendations especially as they relate to teaching and learning ms murphy good evening um i am jakia murphy i'm the principal at rio elementary on the south side of lansing i am also a very proud parent to three beautiful brown lansing
045school district students and tonight i am talking about the equitable resources causes and recommendations from the equity review team so one of the root causes which has played a recurring theme in a lot of our findings is the use of irrelevant curriculum to black and brown students across the district and also affecting educator or education staff so that is teachers and support staff who feel culturally taxed and pressured to support our students with social justice education in the absence of their colleagues there is also a lack of certified teachers and instructional assistants across the district and a focus on using intervention as a way to fix our students as opposed to a methodology of tier one instructional improvement the team is recommending that we address these gaps in technology access across the district the provision
046of digital arts instructors ensuring equitable distribution of quality teachers for every student the provision of staff to specifically work on building and strengthening school to community partnerships and also the commitment to pay equity review and transparency thank you both so much so the next question was really around what's occurring with our discipline and interventions and here you know we've we found some really startling information in particular for our black students and our students who identified with two or more races when we looked at the intersections we saw that black girls were two times more likely than all other girls uh to receive a referral we found that black students were three times more likely to be suspended for a referral as compared to all other students and another uh piece that i really wanted to
047highlight today we dig into so what what are these referrals right and we found that lansing's referrals mirrored what we see in our national research right so for instance as we looked at referrals for disorderly conduct we compared black student referrals uh to white student referrals and we found that our black student referrals for disorderly conduct had a lot more subjective language in them right meaning they were being referred for things like disrespect disruptive disorderly right that are really at the whims of how the teacher defines or the educator defines these things where our white students those top uh words that show up in those referrals are things like pushed throwing and kicked right and so we even saw the ways again that possibly bias showed up in these referrals and i'll pass it over
048to dr foster good evening i'm eunice foster a professor at michigan state university but i want you to know that i have been in the district 38 years and some of you know me as a parent grandparent and at multiple schools and that i live in lansing by choice because i truly believe that lansing can have an outstanding school district and i'm just waiting for us to get there okay all right with regard to root causes district and school policies reflect the dominant white culture students parents guardians caregivers and the community are not involved in the creation of these policies and the relationship between staff and the community is weak those are the root causes that were identified what are the recommendations strengthen school community relationships engage families in all aspects of the school district
049provide professional development for staff related to identity race and culture and revise all aspects of the code of conduct thank you dr foster as we look at our next question around accountability what we wanted to highlight is that one of our teachers were aware of the inequitable student outcomes right and even felt a sense of accountability but they did not feel supported or equipped by the district as individuals to address these gaps in their classrooms and i'll pass it over to susie hi my name is susie hernandez i am the instructional coach at luton global studies spanish immersion school i'm also a graduate of the lancia school district go everett vikings my children also graduated from everett and i all too live in lansing a block away from where i work so i walk to
050work and i'm very proud of where i live and the family that i have raised here in lansing and so today i'm here to share what we found as a team related to accountability and the route we found were the inconsistencies of accountability among teachers when it comes to differential treatment of our students based on their appearance or race um and so the recommendations we came up with were first which i thought was very very important is um our commitment from the lansing school district in their vision and the importance of our vision and that it's centered in equity and cultural responsiveness another recommendation was supporting our leaders needed to be supportive when they are addressing stereotypes and biases and microaggressions for some of our leaders this is new territory for them and they need
051the support they need the language they need to know how to do it themselves so that it can build capacity within their staff to do that and they need to do it in a loving way um another recommendation is ongoing collaboration among our educational community as we're creating these goals related to equity and cultural responsiveness and the progress monitoring we want to be included um in this collaboration um so that we can hold each other but it can hold each other accountable uh towards goals related to equity uh we also recommend that there are coaching opportunities that are centered on equity as a instructional coach i find that the conversations i have with my staff and my administrator are very meaningful because we take the time to reflect and that is invaluable that's really important
052to me and finally we recommend that the building cultural responsive elements within our teaching evaluations and all this so that we can translate this sustained changes into our teaching and learning thank you so much susie so for our last question around training right we did see that uh there are equity trainings that are happening in the district right but what we also found was that our educators don't feel adequately supported to really sustain those learnings and implement them uh to implement these culturally responsive practices overall and the other piece we uh that i'm gonna throw in here uh we also analyzed five um uh not proposals team helped me out dissertations from lansing staff right and one of those dissertations that i'm gonna quote it highlights that black teacher shared having to shoulder additional burden
053of disrupting the racist and disenfranchising status quo of school through curriculum right so we also wanted to highlight the the burden that uh i know some on our the district equity team will call it the black tax that our educators of color are experiencing in lansing to really show that burden and i'll pass it over to ladonna to talk about their root causes and recommendations hi i'm ladonna mask principal at kinden elementary school uh this must be every night because i'm the proud parent of two every grads um also um i'm a more than 30-year proud member of the lsd staff so i'm really really excited to be a part of this when we think about training we can do all the research and all of the work but we know that if we don't
054put some effort into looking at training our staff that we really won't have the outcomes that we want so right now staff really feels that there is a kind of a disconnect and there's not the same kind of importance put on culturally responsible responsiveness for professional development as there is on reading and math so it's really really critical that all stakeholders in the district are trained not just teachers but also principals support staff secretaries every member of our of our school district staff does receive that training we also have to make a long commitment we've done some training but it's kind of been one time in and then not much else so we really need to make a very long five plus years commitment to making sure that our training is sustained that it's on
055restorative practices on social emotional learning and also on culturally responsive sustaining education we know that it takes a long time for change to happens we also need to make sure that we build into our systems training for new staff so when people come on and they become employed with the district that does be kind of become part of our own onboarding process we're doing some wonderful things we have great things that are happening in the district so to begin to highlight those things and showcase those and build on those would also be a recommendation thank you thank you so much so i i know i want to acknowledge i know we're uh headed a little bit older but i hope that we can i want to share some of the experiences of our district equity
056team to really round out our understanding of our review um so the first uh i'm gonna ask uh pat weaver to share no i'm sorry i'm gonna ask uh carlton to share what are some of the greatest takeaways from this process thank you david it is a difficult long but worthwhile process to make social justice real in your organization the first step is for the institution to want to change and i applaud the lansing school board for taking that first step but logic and morality demand that you continue it is also important to have a competent uh consultant to help you in this long and difficult process that consultant must have a high degree of emotional intelligence technical expertise and authenticity to be effective and to point the board in the right direction west ed
057has pointed you in the right direction it is up to you to take the next steps thank you an additional takeaway that i had was that the learning that we undertook as we went through this process you know learning things about the different kinds of tensions really coming up with the definition that we came up with and then learning about those things that are root causes and what culturally sustaining practice really does look like thank you so much for that uh i hope we could pass the mic to kat and you can let us know did the findings surprise you good evening i'm kat weaver i'm an english teacher at sexton high school this is my 22nd year in teaching and this is the only year that i have ever felt like i wanted to
058leave teaching the findings do not surprise me whatsoever and i will share with you a story so that you can understand um how these findings play out in a school so i believe in the power of story and story or narrative forces us to hear the voices of individuals when we hear that individual story the hope is that there will be active listening and so i will tell you a story from september i was not at sexton i was at dwight rich and we there was an i had an experience of a fight outside of my classroom and first let me tell you the layers of my job i started as a focused teacher and then i was told i needed to go back to the classroom so i was put in an art classroom
059which i'm not certified for but i'm really good at art so it worked out okay but then i was also moved into a seventh grade classroom but while i was the art teacher my classroom was right in the hallway where all of the children came in after lunch and during that lunch period i always had the littles so i had kindergarten i had first grade i had second grade and um [Music] there was a day where i heard a commotion in the hallway and i stepped out into the hallway and i could see that children were gathering as if there was going to be a fight happening and mind you i had first graders in my classroom at this time and so i went back into the room i called the office said we need
060support down here stepped back out there were two staff members out there teachers and my first graders started to come to the door what's going on out there miss cat what's happening what's happening let's just go back into the classroom so i shut the door but when we shut the door we could hear the screaming and this wasn't screaming like people screaming at each other this was screaming in pain and so my first graders are listening to this and saying what is happening what is happening out there they start crying so i think about the trauma like we have as a system just traumatized the children i as a teacher am traumatized because of having to navigate these situations where like we're expected to go out there and help in that situation which we probably
061shouldn't like i know i'm i can't get in the middle of a fight like i don't have the i don't have karate skills i can't help okay so when you have a situation where two staff members two teachers have to pull two children a male and a female child sixth graders i believe apart when the male is about to smash the girl's head into the floor and this is happening so that first graders babies can hear this and that staff members get injured in this process and then nothing is done there were no suspensions there was no i took the next day off i i wrote to my administrators and i said i i'm emotionally at a space where i can't be there tomorrow and i was told i hope you feel better where this
062was a space to have a conversation about what was happening in our school and this is just a small little picture there are so many layers to the climate and culture that happens in a school and when i when i think about like the trauma and the re-traumatization in the safety in schools and when staff and students are saying we're struggling we're traumatized we're depressed we're hopeless listen like this is you know the system is willfully ignorant and imposes ignorance and silence on staff and students and when we are ignored then why should we stay [Music] so i want to move us uh thank you kat for sharing your story uh to my mate and erica to share what were some of the greatest areas of concern as you see it [Music] so in terms
063of concerns and i think we illustrated it pretty well here in just some short bullet points but really the lack of resources right i mean even miss freeman speaking earlier and talking about retention recruitment in terms of individuals who look like the students that they serve right and so how does cultural responsiveness play a role when folks who look like you are helping you navigate being successful in school i think the second part of resources is mental health resources i'm not sure that there are any schools that have mental health resources to a standard that are necessary that students and families and even as a community member think that we need um financial resources to support all of this as well as training resources not that the teachers are then again taking on creating training
064administrators are taking on creating training but how is how can an outside community partner like many people in this room help with creating trainings for folks that aren't tasked in doing additional work on top of the work they're doing in the school so really huge concerns around the lack of resources that there are to support so as i think about it i do want to acknowledge um there are a lot of concerns full transparency full disclosure i have a lot of concerns i will highlight a greatest area of concern throughout this process and that is partly because that was my experience as a lansing school district parent as well as friends we heard a parent speak tonight the data reinforces anecdotal and experiential information and experiences that many of us have felt and it is
065largely surrounding um the data with disciplinary referrals um that david mentioned earlier those numbers those statistics um you know kind of the subjective nature and what we now know to be true out of this this audit um the major concern again is the disparate treatment the subjective nature specifically regarding black students and other students of color the implications that that has and the the profound impact that is often very long-term and often permanent damage done to a black youth's life cannot be understated when i think about the data and i think about why that gives me concern it is largely because over the last two years we have seen data come out in our city regarding the disparate treatment in traffic stops with black drivers we have seen that data with msp and lansing police
066department every time i think about this it gives me the same feeling but we are talking about our children and our kids that is greatest concern to me again that being an experience as a lansing school district parent and i think intentional and immediate changes surrounding that data are imperative [Music] thank you so much um i i want to head to kristin can you talk a little bit about what are some of the barriers you see moving forward for the district yes but can i introduce myself just and say of course yeah so she her pronouns um i'm a 32-year lansing district school teacher and an llca board member of i don't know eight years or something but the proud mother of two eastern students they're well involved in their community now so there could
067be many potential barriers if we let that happen the potential barrier which concerns me the most is that my white colleagues will react with defensiveness and fear and try to re-center white or non-black voice and center the conversation around intent intent or intent as opposed to staying focused on black voice and our impact as educators i am more concerned however that my black colleagues who through this whole process i just wonder how on earth they put up with i'm worried that they will be further culturally taxed in in this work that's about to begin and uh non-black teachers can find their own learning we don't need to lean any heavier on our black colleagues in fact i think it's time for black cultural tax relief for the staff in lansing this work is transformative both
068personally and professionally i've made all those mistakes i listed i've reacted defensively and in fear and so on but this work changes classrooms lives children's minds and it leads to great joy i hope we don't lose sight of that it is our small part in the arc of human progress small in the whole scope of things so i hope we go forward bravely pass those barriers wow kristen thank you so much for centering joy as well and the the positive outcome that this work can really have on our students our communities and on all right i really appreciate that i went ahead to uh miss hernandez um can you talk to us a little bit about what do you hope the district will accomplish with this moving forward um what i hope is that this
069work is not seen as uh temporary just one year and we're done two years we're done but it's lifelong and for built for our generations after i leave after my children leave that we are a district that is open to hearing all voices especially those that are voices that are marginalized and that all stakeholders are invested um any chi any person that comes into contact with our children that they are invested in this work and they are held accountable for the work and um i just hope that the generations come come to the table to celebrate and share all of our accomplishments not come to the table to say we're here today because we want to audit an equity audit but we want that we want to hear what we've accomplished and for them to
070say we are lansing school district and we are the place to come to have courageous conversations we are the place that your voices will be heard that you your you can see yourself in books you can see yourself um in leadership roles and that we are the leaders in in this work thank you so much susie and i just want to end with dr eunice foster is there anything else that you would want the district the board to know as it pertains to our process and equity in the district yes thank you um the systemic equity review has been a caring inclusive process and we are urging the district to move forward with these recommendations moving forward will be for the betterment of our students teachers the district and the city of lansing we're urging
071the district to make immediate and continuous action on these recommendations for the reasons i just mentioned thank you that's what i would like to see [Music] thank you so much dr foster and thank you all so much for sharing your experiences and thoughts i mean there's there's so much power on what you have to offer we're gonna end just with uh i have six up i'm gonna highlight three recommend additional recommendations that west ed is gonna make and again i'm gonna thank in advance and ask for forgiveness i know we're all over time um but the first is uh a recommendation that we we hope that the sir findings will be translated for families who speak in different languages that are we will develop a communication strategy for the larger lansing district uh lansing community
072as a whole we see this as the work of the central office administration of of the board and school buildings leaders we are recommending that you utilize the systemic equity review findings and recommendation recommendations to drive the strategic planning process right this needs to be part of what we do it cannot be something on the side again it's not a lens it's a mindset and it is the plate right and we look to the central office administration the board and the strategic planning team to accomplish this uh the last recommendation that i'll highlight today number three is that we are recommending that you continue to convene the district equity team they've asked the district to know that this work is lifelong work we've activated over 20 uh community members and educators right so that they
073can serve to progress monitor the systemic equity review recommendations action steps so i'm going to stop there uh thank you all but i'm going to send an immense thank you one to my team here at westside but really to the district equity team who has demonstrated the true work that it's never an outside organization that the real work comes when the district takes ownership and they have already modeled that for us today this process is as strong as it is because of them and we want to thank them for that i will open to any q a the board may have for us either you know west ed or the district equity team thank you david i'm going to take advantage of my position and kick off our comments and questions because i anticipate there
074will be many miss moore i'm going to start with you and come right around the horn in a moment i graduated from sexton high school thank you thank you in 2000 and um just last night i was listening to an interview that one of my former classmates jody clemens was doing with one of my other former classmates calvin donald who his stage name is dj infamous and he's a good friend of mine um and i was remembering what a great experience i had at sexton and how inclusive it always felt and how maybe i was naive but dr foster i want to come back to something that you said you know that lansing can have an outstanding school system and i know that we can too because we have had and it has been it
075has not always been like this and i'm very you know this is hard information to hear it's sad information to hear but it's important it's important for us to know where we are failing a large number of our students because we need to correct course and we need to be better and i know that we will be thank you so much for all of your work and i'm just sitting here thinking wow if everybody in our district could go through what you all have gone through it would be incredible and if everybody in our city could go through this and if they could really find the strength to be honest it would really be an incredible thing but we can't do that so we're going to start at home we're going to start with us
076mrs moore well you would have to start with b i'm praying that we have find the courage strength and courage you started off at sexton i'm an everett viking almost graduate till i got kicked out of school i can say that yes i can be very transparent i had a horrible time at everett because of the things that were discussed in our report that's why i'm on the board i'm a parent of two ever graduates and i have a 10th grader at everett i salute you i appreciate you i respect you and the work that you're doing it's important i also work at lansing community college tutu we have one of our trustees in the audience so i want to also commend her for the work that she's doing at lansing community college when it
077comes to diversity equity and inclusion because that's what this is all about and it's not just a one and done this is a lifelong work and so i am here for the work i support the work and i really don't have any any questions to ask you because it's here it's i mean it's it is what it is we can't sugarcoat it we can't act like it's not what it is but let us think about who we are and what we can do to make a difference in the district our community members it's important that our parents are educated because it's their children that attends the jensen schools it's important so let us be engaged let us not be afraid let us have courage to have those difficult conversations at lcc we call them courageous
078conversations i might have to take that trustee matthews courageous conversations here for the lansing school district because that's why i'm here on the board also because i do believe that we are the best regardless of the experience i had right regardless of my experience but i do believe we can be the best we are not the oh my gosh lansing school district where our signs are misspelled at certain schools that we're not that we're not thinking and and and encouraging our school our students to be excellent in all that they do right we are better than that oh we just talked about that at lccc i keep looking at trustee because we are better than that and we should we in being accountable for our students that's like a one-and-done humanity that's just in our
079teeth you all as well making sure that you all have the resources that you need to do your job and us as a board we have work to do we need to be educated because if we're not educated we can't serve them and it's our responsibility to serve them our students our educators in the community because we're accountable to them and that's all i have to say thank you for being here and thank you for doing what you're doing thank you mrs moore mr lopez thank you madam president i just want to reflect back on what dr eunice foster said you know she's been here 30 some odd years right i think we started at the equal opportunity committee school improvement team i'm sorry remember the school improvement teams yeah the doctor so it's been
080a long it's been a long haul and you know i've been here through how many superintendents one two three four maybe five and you know from the beginning i think every administration and board wanted to do the right thing they just didn't know how or we didn't have the opportunity to sit in this kind of setting or have this kind of training that we have gone through and putting this together so i thank this board for having the courage to do that and i've seen this board have courage on many things in terms of what is facing us which is really hard is this the covet we've made decisions that other districts have not been able to and so this board is very courageous and i'm certainly happy to serve with them and and certainly
081happy that that hopefully this time around we'll get it right and that um this is the work for the and i told you at the meeting that the purpose of this dei or equity audit was to guide our our planning for the future starting with our uh strategic plan and then review review of the policies that that we meet that we have to change uh now remember that that that school boards are really um we have to meet states state requirements state acts education educational state acts and so we have to to kind of move through them and with them in order to put some of this stuff together but i think that's something that can be done and and as far as i'm concerned we will do it and and we can move on
082so that's what i have madame thank you mr lopez mrs willis thank you i have a couple comments and then i have two direct questions i'm hoping can be answered um really quick uh chiquita didn't get a chance to say this in an introduction but what's cool did you go to okay and i promise i didn't double t go ever go okay all right sorry i promise i didn't stack this committee i promise um i'll do it really really quick though i i do i would be remiss without saying the only reason why i've been able to maintain my composure throughout receiving this information is because i've seen it i've had you know i was part of the committee that reviewed it um and i really appreciate that this board was intentional about getting this
083report and um that we're going to continue to allocate resources you know i'm not a doctor but i'm a social worker by trade and although we don't have the same oath of office um or same oath you know our goal is to not harm kids and do no harm and what we see here clearly in black and white is that our we have failed black and brown students we have caused harm and i think that it's incredibly important that we look at how do we continue to do the next best thing so we don't yet have the written report yet um the written report will have more information you know the back in the data it's going to be over 100 pages long it's going to be very in-depth and robust review of everything that
084was that was summarized in this report i think that um we need to figure out what is going to be our next best step and bite those pieces off keeping in mind that our goal is to get through all of these and i think these can be both and approaches right so things that we can be doing on the back end we can do that while we're doing forward-facing things but i think that it's critically important that we continue to lead that charge um that leads me into my two questions so we have our district equity team here that's done this work and i i sincerely um thank you all and i love that i recommendation that we reconvene again especially as we um excuse me draft our charter for our advisory committee that's going
085to be the ongoing support work for this but we do have district staff or just members that are currently on staff dr sarah o'neill is helping lead that team and i was hoping dr know that you could tell us who all comprises the district staff team no problem so in addition to who you see before you um as well as some as some of them we have uh dr nathan burroughs yourself rachel right mr lopez and then uh camelot diaz served lisa carlson who is dr carlson who's in the audience teddy simmons also in the audience who is our data manager and then we have jakiah murphy dr cadogan who is a principal at geier park catherine bates who is an assistant principal we have joy curry cat weaver kristen small grimes lori barber who
086is a teacher at sexton angela green izzo also a teacher sarah hipps who works in central office as an administrative assistant susie hernandez dr foster next to me miss trukita hicks dr brian beverly mateo kalut erica lin and dr denise troutman thank you dr o'neal and just lifting up that we have had continued support within the district um to get the data out with mr teddy simmons and remind me liesel's less carlson nelson thank you dr carlson my second question is what is tier one instruction uh tier one instruction is instruction to the whole class so what i would deliver as to the whole class my whole yeah so what every child receives and then looking at different risk factors or whatever definitions which we would want to look at again tier two then tier
087three and i think that's part of the call for the better data so that we can manage data well dr rodriguez thank you mr president i started in lansing school district i graduated from narrow from garner from easter from patented i knew nine superintendents and i know almost all of you i congratulate you for dedication is in spite of historical circumstances you are having now you put in writing have had been practicing for 50 years or more that is history in paper but the actions were there for a long time and you had the courage on this boar and this superintendent had the courage to put the writing who no other district has done congratulations to you it's time for a change for the good cannot continue the same from anybody we are making history
088tonight but you stop here tonight we will be guilty i have a question i can continue with that but i get too emotional because we are in a very very important matter it's all the students and families is the nation we cannot play when i run for this board my logo was our children our future then i had to work for that i was thinking that maybe you gave me more ideas about curriculum because we need to change the curriculum when the teachers of the structure whoever that's another curriculum or is there no is not in the curriculum they are not learning about that where is the african-american or the latino or anybody inside of the curriculum where the student can see themselves and what the teacher is teaching then we have to do something
089about the curriculum and everybody has to learn the curriculum and teach the curriculum that is no question of how difficult i had been on the mr lopez and others for the state department we are changing the curriculum can over we get ideas and don't forget when you don't test you don't teach they really have to put that in alignment we need books all kind diverse books in the libraries and the in the classroom in the houses they have the same value that books traditional books that are reading for years and years and years we are in exchange for good then i hope that we are going to work in the curriculum for the goods of the teachers for the good administrators and everybody else and about the situations in the school believe me we can't
090go to any district any school and they had maybe worse situation than lance in school district but lance in school dristi always was sincere honest in front of the civil rights commission for years the day came from chicago and cleveland and from the civil rights commission in michigan lansing school district gave the right data data to them always congratulations to you because this is not going to go it's going to serve us to continue working thank you mr president and you don't need to answer my question about the curriculum today but we will work on that thank you dr rodriguez dr burroughs um as a white man and a phd and a public official um i know you're gonna expect me to talk a long time um i'm not gonna do that i'm just gonna
091thank you for all your hard work and promise that even though i unfortunately i'm gonna be leaving the board because i'm moving to oregon because my wife had a new job so we're leaving i'm not gonna stop my involvement with the district um i very much hope to continue to support the equity efforts um and we'll be applying when there are applications for the for the equity review team that's meeting quarterly um and i'll be pestering rachel about it in the future um but i just want to thank you for all your hard work and i i greatly enjoyed um working with you during this process and was very much impressed and frankly honored to be part of that so thank you thank you dr burrows miss hodgin thank you very much i was thinking
092as you guys were talking i have been in this movie before but i just couldn't i couldn't put it together until nino dr rodriguez just said it we've been doing this uh 10 years ago we had a hunt all over the united states for better teachers for teachers of all nationalities teachers when uh administrators went uh it lasted almost two three years we couldn't find anybody to teach anybody to come to michigan it was an absolute disappointing we couldn't find we we offer uh money we offer extra bonuses if they came even though the michigan people didn't wouldn't get him we understood that the weather we blamed everything and everything and and what you just did is what notices you put it in writing [Music] and made sense of what right to happen this has
093been happening for a long time and it needed to be discussed and it needs to be done and thanks to this it will be done because we have now like a bible here that will it's not a a scene that i need to disrespect but i want as a member of the board for you guys i want to thank you but i want to tell you that i as a member of the board for years we have tried to do this it has been done and i know uh ladonna oscar remembers has to remember that because he was at that time teaching i know that uh a lot of people that are here in this building right now it became an obsession because we couldn't understand and if if if the or the one thing
094that we understood is if it can be done it can be done in lansing michigan because he has wonderful people people we have michigan state we have lcc we have educators everywhere and so i thank you so much because yes it needs to be done it has to be done and and and it is almost like a prophecy can come true for me that i was saying we are meeting every thursday but we're where are we headed this is where we're headed we have to we have to do this and now that we have the book that you miraculously brought and the words and your opinions it can be done it should be done but believe me we have tried i can give you the name of many administrators many teachers who are alive or
095who have died of uh who are retired who were part of this group uh we tried this yesterday we were disorganized there were thoughts everywhere but there was no organization like this and this is what we need so i thank you very much you you've done an incredible work and and i'm very humbled and i'm very moved by the work we have done and i hope that we respond in time that no need noticing is waiting to start but thank you very much you did an outstanding job but i want you to know believe me we have tried we have this body this mind my heart i have been in this movie it's just that we have it we we had a different script but we tried we went to uh miami we went to
096new york we went to washington we went and went and came back and brought buses and went by buses and trains many people to come and teach in in michigan and didn't stay and couldn't get anybody not just it's just impossible it was impossible at that time so it has been tried let's see thanks to this where do we take it from here like like the fastest says we should have been there a long time i will so i thank you very much thank you miss hodgin mrs bulgey i'll be brief i'm like shaking um sorry i don't mean to like make this about about me but i'm just feeling like as a white person i got to not know this and you know some of you are friends and um i just appreciate your
097grace and your patience and i'm sorry i feel like i didn't listen well enough soon enough so thank you for the work we have the information nobody can say that we don't know that's it thank you missy dr body good uh good evening i i also just want to reiterate my sincere and heartfelt thanks for uh this work uh like missy i'm feeling a lot of emotions some of them are contradictory uh i feel of course sad upset disappointed but i also feel motivated and excited i really do i feel excited that this is now front and center in our minds um when i applied to join the board when there were vacancies along with dr burrows my primary reason for doing that was as a physician that runs a clinic that provides care for
098adults and children and in families that are marginalized that are underserved uh i hear a lot of stories in those visits with those children at their well child checks about how things are going in school and how over the course of my entire career i've heard students say many of the things that were highlighted in this report and what could i do about it other than to motivate them as their physician what could i do to advocate for stuff inside the district to make their experience better so i want to renew that commitment in front of everyone here and express my sincere uh eagerness to to get to work thank you dr body mrs willis just um one final question before i send this off with a thank you to the west ed team um
099dr burrows even though you didn't go to everett when you apply for the team i'll allow it and then i just wanted to point out um david you don't know but we can see you um on the screen and um uh see you know the emotional response and i i just wanted to say thank you to the team and i know that your goal is to provide us with this information and then build capacity within the district to carry on the charge um and full stop equity is a mindset that must be made normative and that is where we're moving i just know that you got to um know myself dr burrows and mr lopez very well i just hope that by seeing the board this evening that you see the commitment um and please
100hope that all the tireless nights extra phone calls extra work that we put you through extensions um i hope you see that it was um for the betterment of moving the needle and it's it's what you guys do so i just wanted to thank you and your team i still want my report but uh i just just want to uh thank you and and turn it back over to you for any final comments um and then we will um i'm not done yet rachel oh okay cause i was gonna ask if we could take uh recess to reassemble and knowledge yes okay thank you and i and i would like um to know for my own edification and i don't expect this question to be answered this evening but i would like to know what
101our library fees are i shame on me i didn't even realize that we had library fees because i know that capital area district library does not charge library fees and joy i don't expect you to answer me right now unless you happen to she's got this hit me with it so um we do not charge children for late books only if they are missing and not returned the current policies have been it's not even policies it's just a thing that has kind of been passed on is that if children do not have or have an overdue book they are not allowed to check out i can tell you not all librarians adhere to that um i get them i know what side you're on joy i get that i feel you on that um and
102so and then in some schools students are not allowed to walk at graduation if they have fees even back to kindergarten i don't know which member of the executive team this is a question for but i would like to have information available to the board as to how much is outstanding in library fees district-wide uh i would like to make a motion to wait if i could please i can wait i'm a mom um i would like to make a motion to waive all library fees district-wide it's been moved by myself supported by miss lilogy uh you know i don't normally like make motions but uh any discussion or questions mrs moore i feel your pain i feel it and thank you you're welcome will all those in favor of waving all destructoid library fees
103please signify by saying aye aye any opposed mrs willis i'm sorry we we want to waive and abolish fees yes we'll vote again just for just to be super clear uh will all those in favor of waving and abolishing all library fees please signify by saying aye any opposed thank you very much [Applause] mrs hodgin we're the board i i appreciate the question no we're not breaking any rules but you have to write the check just kidding just kidding just kidding just kidding um earlier in the presentation we were talking a little bit about deficit language and i wasn't i wasn't really sure what that terminology referred to but i i know what you're talking about and actually i've heard our superintendent get really fired up about members of the community using deficit language when
104they ask him questions about the district and i remember in particular one of the presentations that ben was making to a club of which i am a member and one of the members said something about the the kids coming to school and the parents don't care and that was really the first time that i saw ben get really artfully but really fired up and um he essentially said to this woman that you don't know what you're talking about and how dare you speak about our students and our families that way that is so inappropriate and unacceptable and just disrespectful to another human being and what i'm hearing in this report is that we have members of our staff who use language like that and i i want to be very clear with lansing school district
105staff that if that is the way that you feel about members of our family you need to find another family [Applause] and that's all i have and i will who are you pointing at dr body i got so caught up in expressing my emotions that i didn't ask my questions so one of the uh root causes that was identified in bullet seven under accountability was teachers are not consistently held accountable for their differential treatment of students based on appearance or race so my question is how are teachers held accountable and are they held accountable at all for treatment of students differential treatment of student space on appearances in race what's the status quo in that regard in that paradigm i would say that through our evaluation process there's some feedback but it's not highlighted or
106stressed to us i also want to mention that um this is all staff that come in contact with students i believe the slide may have said teachers but we want to make sure that everybody who's referring students for restorative work or for suspect you know suspension or whatever all of us are accountable for how did that student get there why are they there how is this going to help them in their future to learn something so the accountability piece is i guess within our evaluation but it i would say it falls fairly it falls down behind many other things thank you and rachel i am gonna turn it back over to you but before i do it's clear that we all have a role to play in this work but to rachel my friend you
107were our quarterback in this this was your idea this was your project and i love you and i thank you so much for helping us get here [Applause] and now you can have it back well i i appreciate that and it's a team effort and i certainly have to thank our former colleague dr beverly for his insistence on us passing the resolution and then passing the torch um to me to move this project forward um and as a team we will continue to tackle this issue um i think at this point what we are going to um our next steps are with west ed um well to take receipt of the report and then reconvene um with the supportive equity team and dr sarah o'neil um the group together to walk through our charter for
108a um our charter for a advisory committee and bring that back to the board to adopt moving forward with a um moving forward with adopting the the charge for the advisory committee that will be charged at moving forward with these recommendations thank you mrs willis thank you everyone we are going to take a nine minute recess we will reconnect we will reconvene mr lopez david did you guys have any final comments i'm sorry oh um oh you gave me some time to to get those tears out um we just want to thank you for allowing um us to partner with you all for trusting us in this partnership and we just hope that we honor the families and communities that have been impacted like miss freeman who shared uh the opening and wow thank you
109you know thank you dr sarah o'meal for your work the district equity team um rachel everyone there's such powerful and amazing educators here uh for you know president lawrence thank you for making a commitment to tonight right and showing that change is possible um this is what we do the work for and i i'm overwhelmed with emotion and thanks and gratefulness for allowing us to partner uh and we'll be you know partners for a lifetime right contract they're not uh you all mean so much to me and my team so thank you thank you thank you thank you david thank you david and now you have an eight minute recess we will reconvene at eight o'clock on the dots yes [Music] oh yes come back to me [Music] if you are a board member come
110to the table i gave you an extra minute [Laughter] what more do you want thank you everyone we're going to move on with our the with the remainder of our agenda this evening next up is our report from superintendent uh good evening everyone um for those of you who have had to listen to me for the last however many months at these board meetings uh usually i will give a report about covid or bussing but clearly the event today is so much more important and is so much more a part of the conversation and of what we do as always sitting here reflecting on the incredible work by this community and that's really what this is is that the the city of lansing the community of lansing the school district of lansing has said that
111we are going to take ownership of our own narrative and that is incredibly positive the last couple of times i've read some poetry uh sadly there are still a devastating war going on in the world that people are seeing and it's affecting our children but throughout this conversation that we heard today i kept going back to a favorite song of mine uh called by the river of babylon and it's taken from uh basically a mix of psalm 19 and psalm 137 and the line that keeps going over in my mind is let the words of our mouth and the meditation of our heart be accepted in thy sight here tonight let us hope that the words that we spoke today let us hope that the meditation of our hearts today lead us towards action lead
112us towards that desired place be it the rivers of babylon be a canaan be it lansing be at the you know mount hope street or any place that we feel is our home and you heard tonight a lot of language about how we can be more equitable but you also heard some ideas about how policy in and of itself can actually do something right we're in a school district and oftentimes you hear language oh we could try or we can do and and it's a lot of talk and it's not a lot of action that we we think so much about inputs rather than outcomes and so i want to give an example of how egregious a previous policy was that affects a conversation about equity so we in this district have cte programs they're
113really quite incredible you've got an emt you've got a you know design you have uh even insurance you have some really high level programming it's it's really quite great the relationship with the fire department uh where we're training folks um but yet we only had 60 students in the whole program i mean we have multiple multiple programs 60 students and you say to yourself what's going on these these are amazing kids want to be active kids want to do things why is it that only 60 students are a part of it so you dig a little deeper oh well there's rules and there's requirements oh we don't let a student come in if they're even one credit off where they need to be oh we don't let them in if they don't have a 2.0
114gpa so here is a program that children might love to be a part of but yet you have a policy that is not only making a wall but you're making a wall against children who want to actually be engaged in an academic system so what policy do we do we say get rid of it what question do we ask now do you want to be in this program do you want to be part of this learning and with that one policy change we went from 60 students enrolled to 220 students who signed up for next year and and i want to use that as an example of how powerful making equity not as this lens or this sort of thing but as what we hold in our hearts as how we act it can gravely
115change how children learn and are engaged and are supported and so there's so many things like that that this work of the board and the work of the committee and the work of the community is now saying let us rethink let us change the policies that we do one other big thing that i want to highlight and it was sort of alluded to but when you really look at equity one of the things that you really want to think about is how is money spent and where is money spent so if you look at our district there might be certain schools that get more money where are those schools located which students do they serve those are the kinds of questions that we need to start asking but it's very difficult to ask those if
116and you saw it mentioned and i will be the first one to admit if your systems and structures are so bad that you can't even read the data that you need in order to make these decisions so one big thing that we are working on and you can imagine how difficult this is and how long it takes is just to create a transparent budget that is readable and accessible so that we know how much money is spent at each school and how that money works per capita so that you could start to see any sort of discrepancies between where programs are where hiring is and where the money goes and so over the course i mean this is my promise to to the community and of course the board already knows this is my promise
117is that hopefully in the next six to 12 months there's going to be website where you can click on a school and you can see where this is you can click on the district and you can see where this is because in order for us to have true equity conversations we need to know the truth and not obfuscate that between oh well you know it's really complicated or it's over here and we can't have access to it or oh there's so many different systems there's no answer and i'm reminded again of this old you know an old line light is the best disinfectant is that if you share the truth if you share the light if you open up the books you're going to be able to see what is actually going on and so
118that kind of conversation is what we need to have and what i hope happens with the relationship with the board the committee and the community is those are the kinds of questions we need to be held accountable to answer because once we can talk about that the more we can make the correct decisions with equity as our driving force one other really important piece that will allow us to do this that we are working on that i make a promise to this community on is true survey data from students from parents and from teachers about how we as a district are doing i know that there have been surveys given in this district for years however finding them getting the analysis of them looking at what they mean is hard and i'm the superintendent so
119you could imagine the frustration from a parent if they were like you know i really wonder what my teachers think about this if i as a superintendent can't even get that stuff clearly there is an issue so what we're going to be trying to work on is having a codified survey for all parents students and educators so employees that are going to be asking about their school and asking about this district and that data will be public it will be searchable because again light is the best disinfectant and if we continue to hide behind the obscurity of don't pay attention to what's happening just hey look isn't that nice that's not going to work anymore and so i just cannot tell you how appreciative i am as a superintendent to be in a place that
120is now willing to do this and so the last thing i'll say is we need you i have said this since the moment i got here and i will say it until the moment this board decides to fire me is this will never work unless we are in this together and i challenge all of you in this room all of you listening at home it's amazing people actually do listen to this at home thank you and all the people that were here tonight is that for us to truly engage in this deep and powerful and difficult work we have to do this together and we have to go in with best intentions because the desire for defensiveness the desire for protection and the desire of of of not wanting to be in a place of
121vulnerability is so high especially in a world where we're vulnerable in our health we're wearing masks because there is this disease that has killed almost a million people in this country it's at like 968 000 i'm sure dr body can tell me exactly but we're so close to a million deaths there's fear there's scaredness but if we do this together if we do this work together we will be able to move mountains so i just thank everyone for being willing to have this conversation and anybody who knows if you send me an email you get an answer if you want to come to the office you're going to come and the door is going to be open and i will offer you coffee or water sometimes soda it depends if i drank it all or
122not but but we can only do this as a community together and the first step is that those doors here to this building have to be open to you because i do know that historically school doors and school administration doors have not always been open so i just thank you all for your time for your love for your support and let's get on with the work thank you thank you ben we'll move on to routine matters in old business this evening first up we have committee reports facilities committee mr lopez thank you madam president the um poor facilities committee met on on monday the 14th and items that were discussed and looked at were starting with the district pools um and you know district pools are not in the best shape possible but after receiving
123the um narratives for each of the swimming pools in lansing which are five that's extensive uh work that needs to be done so um we talked about it um talk to superintendent staff about the the um the conditions of the pools and and funding um arrangements and so after that discussion the committee prioritized the pools at white ridge gardner and hill for immediate action the other pools will be also served but you know as as we move on with our first three um the um and and here are the reports so i looked at them and i'm going to give them back to you i don't need them anymore um so actually the the folks that did the um the work is aquatic source and um we asked many questions of them they gave us
124pictures of the conditions of the pools the pipes rotting and so and so forth and but we came to a decision and and they're working on it um the next issue with sex sexting heating issues and energy updates and those were um um for sexton gardner and everett yeah these are these are ongoing um so we got a report as to to the uh where they're at right now uh the third item was the don johnson field house partial re-roof recommendations um and as as you all know um that's been an issue for a long time the roof of don johnson in addition to that uh there's another piece of work that's going on there and that's the cement they're gonna do the cement around the um johnson field house and some tuck point uh
125in areas that that needs it so there there is uh um a recommendation on the agenda for approval tonight that would hvac recommendation again it's an item on the agenda for approval wexford renovation and site work this project needs to proceed as soon as possible if we want to have the school ready for students next year as we all know securing materials in a timely manner is a problem that is why the recommendation to proceed is on the agenda for approval this particular project is i think it's a cost of a hundred and forty three thousand dollars the the next item we had woodcreek bid packages one and two recommendations or on the agenda for approval tonight sinking fund review i'm not sure we have it in your packet but we got a a printout
126of all the sinking fund projects if you don't have it in your packet i will ask superintendent to make it available to to all the board members so they can see all the projects that that are associated with the sinking fund and what are the projects that are ongoing that are planned and you know so you'll see um the breakdown of all those projects associated with the sinking fund auto atto land discussion the individuals who were buying the land i think fell through so uh the um the land's gonna be put on on the market again or maybe there's a possibility that the current uh folks at um at otto may use the land but uh that's still in discussion the main point is that those that were going to buy it or wanted to
127buy it fell through the next item we talked about was the yet center purchase agreement extension request as you may remember we had a an agreement with the lansing housing commission and two of their partners to purchase the ed center and build uh senior housing and the agreement gave him two opportunities to secure funding through mishta because that's what they need that's what they needed their first attempt did failed they were not selected for funding but for contract they have two opportunities through the agreement we have with them so the next opportunity opportunity is in april and they have asked to extend to extend that agreement for a third try later on after discussion and with staff and superintendent it seems that there are many issues with the contractor buyer and and we believe that
128it's not in the best interest of the district to extend the agreement so if they are not successful in securing funding on their second attempt in april the agreement will automatically lapse and and then this board doesn't have to do anything okay unless there's anyone that wants to extend it then we may have discussion but a recommendation is to let it lapse okay um in other matters uh hill parking lot they're working on it uh uh hill water line this is the item that cost 143 000 the recommendations is on the agenda for approval it's uh something that needs to be done immediately and so it's like i said it's on the agenda for approval the final item was blinking lights at whitebridge auditorium staff is working on it uh ms lg was very concerned
129that performances were impacted at uh at white ridge because the lights were blinking and they're just uh but anyway the staff is on it they're working on it and uh hopefully those blinking lights will will be fixed so that they don't blink anymore that way that is my report madam chair madam president if you have if you are a missouri you have anything else to contribute please feel free no okay that's my report on that thank you any questions from mr lopez mrs willis yeah i just have one on the um recommendations that are on our agenda this evening to approve there's one on there that's for a change order um for wexford and it's in a different format i'm presuming it's because it's a change order i'm just i'm fine with this um i'm
130just curious if in future um instances because we very rarely get these um if we could get the original bid and project purchase with it just we can see it all together because for the life of me i don't know where the original uh request is thank you okay yeah that will that will happen promise committee mr lopez promise okay well hot off the bat um i'll give you some highlights of what was discussed today and uh the promise scholarship expansion a proven amended development plan that's what we're working on and what was presented to the uh to the board so uh the recommendations for approving an amended development plan or the following for keeping pace with lcc billing rates um you know everything's gone up tuition at lcc and so on and so forth
131um we're we're paying a current rate of 8 500 8 500 8 500 for um over the course of four years or 65 attempted credits okay after high school graduation we um also um bumped the the payment to to four-year institutions to ten thousand dollars per student and that is to keep up with inflation uh let's keep up with the rise of cost of the uh of credit hours the the second uh uh item that that is uh new to this development plan is that we're going to include the books and fees for students for our scholars uh in addition to the to the scholarship and so within the fall of 2022 entering class we can begin funding books fees tools and supplies at lcc and at promised board approved vocational programs because we're expanding
132the the the choices or for for students right now it's lcc msu olivet college okay so now we're expanding that to include vocational schools or um you know um apprenticeships and then that sort of thing and uh so that's the the other thing is uh increasing bachelor opportunities adding davenport university to the choices of schools where students can attend and again increase scholarship funding like i mentioned ten thousand dollars for four-year universities so the the next thing is the promise initiatives underway and i think i mentioned this before but the 2022 state of the promise video is has been running lancing promise impact report coming soon and i talked also about inherent worth a promise podcast that is rolling out in march well this month so that that should be something that would be interesting
133to to watch um also they're going to do lesson promise updates and these are lesson promise updates done by promise scholars okay so that's probably rolling out in in april scholar spotlights rolling out throughout 2022 shining light on some of our current alumni promise scholars rewriting the narrative that's a children's book series authored by promise promises on mr james g curry ii who is not only can can speak so well but he's also an author of children's books we're working with the lansing education advancement foundation commonly known as leaf discussions on the way to to support the work of leave and to bring it into the promised family in different ways so i think probably our superintendent knows more that about than than i do but it's it's in the works okay uh there's two
134councils that the promises is working on this is the business council the inaugural meeting will be on april 14th and the promised community council which will be taking place in may of 2020 then thereafter there will be quarterly meetings of this two councils um if you need more information about either of those things we can give you more more definite attention now the the big event coming up in 2022 promised dinner reimagine um it'll be the sixth annual lasting promising thursday june 9th at jackson field so put in your calendar and so that we can attend that uh dr rodriguez from from the foundation point of view if you want to add anything yeah i think i think that was very very complete and we mentioned the bomb proposal balancing school district several times from
135130 millions made there is there a mill increase on that on that bond half a million vehicles in case to be sure that we don't we can't go 129 but [Laughter] there's but there's no mill increase is that correct no it's no million they're saying that we are paying now for the next 12 25 years then that was presented to them and that was very well done and also it's going to be a golf tournament to get more money by the michigan state football coach that they are going to be involved and we are going to do it or they are going to do it in the city club and lansing then and the student will be involved in that the students in french will be involved but that was a very very very interesting
136meeting and and very productive thank you mr lopez yeah one other item a couple of statistics to date we have 1408 scholars uh retention rates at lcc of our scholars is 92 percent retention rate there are 600 plus successful completions and transfers from lcc to other colleges one of them being my grandson who finishes uh his degree at lcc is transferred to ulm that hurts but but anyway i did it for the right reason education so uh and there have been uh 6 60 000 credits earned by prominent scholars to date and there's more so the the program really is is a real benefit for our students and they don't just give him the scholarship and then let him go now there's connection by the promised staff with the promised scholars and they hold meetings
137they hold sessions you know they take him to msu again the coach at michigan state university started with the antonio now with uh their new coach they they go for for trips for learning experiences and so on and so forth so it's a well-rounded program that's really showing really real benefit to our students so that is my report madam president you have any questions i may be able to answer thank you very much any questions okay equity committee mrs willis i was gonna say if you possibly need me to say anything after this presentation i don't think we were paid attention there's no additional comment for me this evening and a president thank you mrs willis policy committee dr rodriguez thank you you don't have the meeting and probably you don't meet until april but
138i heard today many times there were policies and i am not clear about they are talking about regulations of policies there is two different things then what we will do in the committee in the next few months is to see the policies they are connecting what the presentation want tonight and and see what we can do about them but we had to see what our district is directed by policies or is directed by regulation they will change every year for the last few years then the policies is one thing and the regulation is another thing and we could be an alignment in some way another but this is going to take a few hours of work and and then we will do it probably and starting in april anything else which is no okay reiterate
139what you're saying the the word policy was used a lot in the west ed presentation the policy committee deals mostly with law and um i think like what you're saying like the the practices the administrative guidelines and the practices that happen in the schools is a little different than what we call policy in the legal sense so um the policy committee doesn't have all the power in the world to make this an equitable dick district it will take everybody it will take everybody so thank you very much and unfortunately um the leaders they are directing us they had to come down to the reality of the district we had today and i had to tell him or the other people who are doing that but we cannot be having policies because we have a few
140years ago or because when they were superintendent they have it we had to have policies for the future and destroy the other one they are not doing any good then that is i hope that we can examinate that and go from there mother president thank you dr rodriguez ad hoc committee on strategic plan mrs moore yes madam president um we will be meeting the lansing school district strategic plan steering committee and the msu team um tomorrow from 8 to 10 a.m we will be discussing the planning process the timeline our current mission values that excuse me our current mission vision and beliefs and we will begin planning for community input sessions thank you and the treasurer's report mrs willis oh sorry yes yeah okay um can you just make sure that you you bring one
141of these with you when you go to that i planned on doing so thank you doctor great thank you thank you uh madam president the detailed treasurer's report for the period of february first through on february 28 2022 are attached to this evening's agenda here are some highlights of the report the beginning cash and investment balance was 25 million 600 to 879 i can't i'm just gonna start saying 25.6 million dollars receipts totaled roughly 14.8 million dollars while disbursements equaled approximately 15 million dollars the net inter fund transfers total and 390 thousand two hundred and ninety eight dollars um and interest from fund investments to student and bond funds as well as journal entries to remove um due or due to um forms and all from funds the monthly transfer to the general fund for
1422016 and 19 bond expenses was a little over one million dollars um so the ending general fund cash and investment balance as of february 28 2022 was 26.6 million dollars which is a little bit more than what we started with and it's also 2.8 million dollars greater compared to where we were this time last year i'm just highlighting some donations received during this period we received over twenty thousand dollars in donations um including three hundred and ten dollars um uh as a rift donation from the capital area united way there was a 20 donation to the from the blackbaud giving fund and then robert and judith posey um donated 20 000 to the sexton fund so we thank everyone for their contributions and especially the posey family and man of president that concludes the treasures
143report thank you mrs willis does anyone have any more information about robert and judith posey no yeah i will happily follow up on that that would be wonderful thank you very much any other questions for mrs willis okay great we're gonna move on to our consent agenda for this evening um our consent agenda includes the approval of the march 3rd regular board meeting minutes in the march 10th iss meeting minutes the receipt and approval of the treasury's report for january and expenditures and bid recommendations as noted on the agenda may i have a motion madam president dr burroughs i moved the board of education approved the consent agenda as presented it's been moved by dr burroughs supported by miss hajj in any discussion will all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye any
144opposed i'm going to add thank you consented is adopted i'm going to add an action item which is the uh well first let me make sure is katie white's still here duh um i'm gonna add the the uh storm water management because i think that's probably why you're here tonight so i'm gonna add um as as item c um the approval of and it's in our packets remember this is the one that i tried to talk intelligently about last time and and failed miserably um so katie's here this evening so i'm going to add the um re uh my brain is fried um renewal of our renewal renewal of our membership into the uh stormwater management as item c so moving on to action items this evening first we have um the approval of a
145revised mou may i have a motion madam president can i ask a point of clarification i thought the memorandum of agreement was the extension okay all right and i was like i was like i don't know where this mou was the extension of what it is okay can i remove item c from your action i um appreciate that it looks like our attorneys did revise this um to update to reflect um that the authority will just be to the superintendent of record of the district or whomever the um superintendent designates their authority to um that's about as far as we got katie last time so katie would you like to join us please thank you we'll figure it out may i have a motion first of all madam president i knew that the board of
146education approved the revised memory memorandum of understanding agreement resolution as presented sec it's been moved by mrs willis supported by dr burroughs any katie why don't you give us a little bit of background please um so as the school district we are considered our own municipality and we're required to have a stormwater program permit in place um that is regulated by the state of michigan the glrc program is uh or the membership itself provides us with many benefits but um some bullet point ones that i can at least have up on my my phone here that is also in your fact sheet that you have um but my benefits i see um from it is i i'm able to learn from all the other municipalities that come in as as a membership as well we
147come together we bounce ideas off of each other and it's a really great place for us to be able to improve our stormwater management they help us maintain our six measures that we have that we require through the state of michigan in our permit application that we commit to and then they also provide materials such as public education training materials they conduct training and they also guide us through the audits when the state does do audits it's basically a lot of what they do we hold monthly meetings i am part of the public education committee itself within that group and so they're very beneficial and vital for my success to make sure that this program and permit cycle is successful for this for the school district so any questions for katie okay guillermo i tried
148i tried right off the bat i did not know that we were on our own municipality uh no other questions for katie okay well all those in favor please signify by saying aye any opposed thank you katie moving on to the approval of the settlement agreement with an employee may i have a motion it's been moved by mr lopez supported by dr rodriguez any discussion will all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye any opposed thank you no new business yes ma'am can i you know i can wait never mind i was gonna ask for a point of privilege but i'm okay okay uh then we will move on to public comment on non-agenda items i have one two three four five people who have uh filled out cards to participate in public
149comment i'm going to go in alphabetical order so i'm going to first come to mr kane and then taja clay tasia clay i'm sorry if i'm mispronouncing your name mr king you can approach the podium yep i'm just telling people when to expect i think it is but i'm going to give you a little bit of flexibility tonight you're welcome uh malweek noel or noel will be third raven odom will be fourth and then sheila rather will be fifth uh public comment participants you have three minutes and typically the board does not respond to public comment mr king go ahead when you're ready good evening uh president lawrence um superintendent board members and my friends mr lopez and dr rodriguez my name is eugene kane i'm a 50-year retired educator you name anything in education
150i've done it from university professor to school superintendent goes on down the line and then as much as you were hooraying schools i would like to say that my wife the other dr kane and i have three sons one who is a university professor one is a 62 platinum twice grammy award winner and one is assistant to the city manager of grand rapids sexton graduates not everett but sexton graduates thanks to the late dr alec and of course uh clyde carnegie and coach becker and coach mage they made a difference in our son's life we also have another one a cast tech graduate who is receiving his coming out of his uh medical residency uh in two months so we're happy about that and we're happy about public schools the presentation tonight was very interesting
151to me because one of the positions i had in my 15-year career was assistant state school superintendent and we did an equity audit for you it was interesting when the superintendent said we need to codify some of this stuff yes you do we did it in i think it was 1982-93 and from that equity audit if you if you look at what happened what spawned after that that's when most of your minority administrators came in as a result of that audit so you might want to go back and see if you could find that audit a lot of what they said here wasn't an audit nothing has changed now here here are your challenges and i can tell you from experience most of what was said here is about attitudes and interpersonal relationships those are
152difficult mountains to climb especially attitudes but i think the district could put into place certain structures to deal with these attitudes for example uh the uh person said that uh something went and some uh all the commotion that the lady said went unpunished that shouldn't happen uh something should have happened the other thing that i want to say is that in looking at is my three minutes i am going to be enforcing the time limit lansing has turned out some wonderful students and we see them everywhere please don't start with the deficit model that we haven't done anything i would like to suggest that somewhere along the line that this district have homecoming so the kids here can see these kids who came from the projects who came from their schools think about it thank
153you dr kane [Applause] tasia clay okay i'm going to move on to moek knoll or noelle monique noel can you guys hear me oh thank you to the board and to everyone that's um i will try to go on three minutes however um if you're a person like me that values true freedom and true equity freedom of speech controlled all right sounds good to me thank you this is better i have a soft voice i know okay once again my name is monique noel i've lived here in lansing for the past i don't know six years i've been educated and academic my entire life and i would try to limit my stuff myself to three minutes so much to save so little time first and foremost i have been involved with the school board district
154you guys may or may not remember my face i was the board of education uh excuse me i was the education chair for the lansing naacp not much move in there so when things things don't move i get to moving because i don't have time for foolishness uh secondly um i am now a substitute teacher for the lansing school district and i have been since late january on the card it says my blackness because my blackness is not to be ignored when we talk about equity my phone should be ringing as you can hear the accent caribbean ancestry my phone should be ringing when i'm at gardner and i see two african students that keeps going walking back and forth and they're not going to class and i tell the security guard let's go in
155there and call your mother thank god i had a health instructor that could watch the class for me real quick right that's what i should be in the classrooms right today when i'm teaching math as i am a phd doctoral student at msu studying chemistry long academic career i know i look young long academic career why isn't my phone ringing ms noel can you come in today miss noel can you come in today but instead i'm faced with hostile white staff at most of the schools that i attend to i am faced with hostile white teachers at most of the schools that i attend to it's an issue you see the head wrap you hear the accent you don't want no problems you don't want no business with me but really it's not about you
156these children need me miss noel you should be our teacher miss noel you should be my teacher and they only see me one day but why isn't my phone ringing off the hook that's an issue um my blackness is not to be ignored thank you to miss murphy who has been so supportive i'm at rio you know all the time i'm at rio thank you dr foster thank you to the miss in the back i saw you today at sexton i was at sexton today thank you thank you so much for always waving and asking me how i'm doing i appreciate that when you talked about sex sexton in the uh hvac i was sweating bullets today it needs ac okay i'm trying to teach math and i can't concentrate because it's too hot when
157the students is walking in the hallway and he says i don't want to wear a mask and it's too hot i can't sit in my classroom i said just do it for mr well please i beg so he goes to class because i could be his aunt his sister his mother but even though i look too young my blackness is not to be ignored you understand i just want to say one more thing about what what what why colleagues don't understand miss president lawrence after the equity discussion you stated and you looked at dr foster and you say that you went to sexton and that it felt inclusive and that it the school district one second hadn't always been this way it's not your place she's your elder but most importantly she's a black woman
158and she's been telling you it's been like this and so we have to recognize the things that we say although probably unintentional how that plays a role into someone who just laid a 40-minute presentation of the inequity that has been going on and someone of the opposite race of the white race turns around and says when i was that there i it did it felt inclusive of course you're a white woman these are the things that i'm talking about and i don't want to get too upset because miss noel can be can be known for getting there but i will be watching what's going on i will be seriously watching what's going on and i will continue to level on these students anywhere that i go alright thank you thank you ms noel raven odom
159hello board members can you hear me can you hear me okay can you hear me now okay hello board members my name is raven odom and i'm a graduate of lansing everett high school class of 2012. we're excited to share that the class of 2012 is coming together to host our 10-year class reunion during the weekend of august 12th through the 14th it seems like only yesterday we took our final steps through everett's busy hallways as rising seniors it's hard to believe it's been 10 years since we turned the tassel to what was the end of our high school career during our time at everett we built connections with both classmates and staff and created lifelong memories that shape who we are today evan provided us a space to understand the meaning of teamwork through
160participation in sports teams explore our interests through extracurricular activities like band and quiz bowl express ourselves through dance and theater and share our stories via the school newspaper personally i developed foundation my foundational understanding of leadership through serving as class president of our graduating class i am and always will be a proud alum of everett high school for these reasons myself and fellow classmates feel it's important that we come back to the place that connects all of us and was such an important chapter of our growth since our time in high school we the everett class of 2012 graduates have strived to positively impact our community and plan to continue such efforts throughout our 10-year reunion hello board members my name is can i caldwell i am also a proud graduate of lansing everett high
161school um our 10-year class reunion is an opportunity for us to showcase our viking pride and also showcase us being proud alum of lansing everett high school we will return to host a volunteer event at everett and we would like to offer a donation that will also support not only current students but also staff earlier today we met everett high school to connect with principal amy boyles as well as john mccraw the commun communications director for the lsd to discuss potential volunteer activities and opportunities for collaborations specifically we are looking to build bridges between our classmates and current students and staff through working collect collectively in our volunteer event and so we're here today seeking assistance from the lansing school board in the form of monetary support to aid us in these endeavors we are
162happy to connect with members of the board and draft a formal proposal to provide any additional uh information as well as necessary steps to garner your support thank you thank you very much sheila rather rather and then miss duckett freeman do you have another public comment that you'd like okay you can come up after she just done hello you hear me my name is sheila rather i graduated from lansing school district i'm an eastern quaker i haven't heard that tonight okay two of my daughters just graduated from lansing my mom my aunt and myself have all retired from lansing with over 30 years each i am currently a grandmother of eight and i have my husband and i have legal guardianship of two of our grandsons although as of three weeks ago things have finally
163turned around i think it's important as cat shared to share our story of this year's school experience my grandson is a biracial child he is in seventh grade he has had extensive trauma in his life and he is currently labeled emotionally impaired we have psychiatry services and trauma therapist services through community mental health we have been through numerous evaluations diagnoses medications therapy appointments trying to get everything in order we've had them it'll be four years in may this school i graduated from or i retired from the school district i was a special ed assistant i've worked with severely multiplying peer students severely cognitively impaired students autism students in a self-contained classroom and when i retired i was a special ed resource room assistant i've seen a lot but i have to say as invested as
164i am in the district and as vested as i have been with my own special ed families in my classrooms it is so different when you're on the other side and i did not expect that i expected the effort and love and care that i put into my students i expected the same thing for my grandson that is not what we got this year at all we received an iep from a virtual school in the previous school year everything was done by october this year when i alerted the school district that our grandson was coming in and had an iep we just got resolution three weeks ago three weeks ago there are idea deadlines there are laws that should have been followed i kept hearing it's due to covetous due to covet is due to
165covet i heard that from the school principal as a district employee i wanted to return to school because i retired in february of 19 i wanted to return to work but because my grandson required so much my of my attention from phone calls i'm not even getting where i want to be something has to change we sh the teacher at dwight rich talks about traumatized he has been traumatized even more from the trauma that he deals with he was told by the principal i know you've experienced trauma in your life but you need to grow up and be a man this child is 12 years old and he is already telling me why should i even try grandma they don't care they don't listen to me i'm doing things that other kids are doing but
166i'm the one getting in trouble for it there is no special ed teacher at wood creek montessori there hasn't been one for the entire school year how are students with ieps put into that building with no special ed report or support none the teachers don't have support ms smalls who was on the board mr hassell the student support s sp student support specialist are the two people that have kept us above water we have felt here that we're drowning my husband and i both went back to school i'm trying to be a student advocate there isn't even a program for that so i'm taking all these classes special ed includes special special ed education families and inclusion to educational psychology child psychology i'm trying to learn what i can to help my own grandson my
167goal is to be able to suffer the district in the fall i have seven more credits to be able to do that i want to do what the board is saying it needs to be done but for the principal to tell my grandson you need to grow up and be a man at age 12 he feels targeted defeated he feels there's no sense of even trying anymore but i keep sending him back to the school he has to be educated he wants to be with his friends to be told that we should probably put him in the ei room ms rather thank you i'd like you to stay if you can someone from the executive team will follow up with you and as i've said typically the board does not respond to public comment but
168i'm sure you know that that principle has been removed and it's not an excuse it's it's it it's he's on leave right thank you for your comment okay thank you miss duckett freeman i don't want to beat a dead horse but i want to make sure that some things that you guys pay attention to so one of the things i want to say is that if our current staff and teachers are not willing to do the inner work that it takes to love and teach black and brown children that you need to replace them with people who want to do the work and if you need to talk with the state in order to make money for these people to be able to go to the schooling who already have the heart to do it
169then you need to do that the schools depend too much on control tactics and public safety officers i would love to see the public safety officers replaced with social workers that are good and that know how to deal with black and brown children and their issues um in my child's school the children felt like they had to take matters into their own hands because the staff did not do anything they were tired of hearing racial slurs and being sexually harassed and so they decided that they were going to actually physically stop another child from doing it um as a result my son got suspended for five days he didn't even actually get into the fight so it was interesting to hear the other lady's story about children not being suspended and they were literally fighting
170but of course it's probably because my black child went to post oak i really really really want to believe in lansing school district again and i want to be supportive but my family needs restoration so while you're sitting here talking about your plans for the future make sure that you make up for the harm that you've done today um [Music] and i i think that's all i have but oh no the other thing stop locking the bathrooms that is really really weird it's like are you training our kids for prison they got to raise their hand and let you know they're going to the bathroom they should be able to just sign out and say i'm going to the bathroom and go to the bathroom my daughters i come pick them up and they're like
171oh mama hurry up gotta go home and i'm like wow you just came for school you could use the bathroom at school she's like no i can't use the bathroom it's locked all the time that's weird stop doing that people be on a period they got all types of stuff going on they need to go to the bathroom don't do that to those children and that doesn't keep them safe if you want to keep people safe then address the root issues stop treating our children like prisoners and that's all i have to say thank you that concludes public comment this evening miss hodgin sure this um is a happy day or a happy week for the lansing board of education board members because dr buddy just had and his wife just had a little baby
172girl so congratulations dr buddy mrs willis can i ask for a point of privilege please so i my family is absolutely waiting for me to leave rachel i know i know but i couldn't leave and i needed to your public comment um may i take a moment to um do something okay dr burroughs will you join me at the podium please i'm in trouble no so of you may not know this but tonight is dr burrell's final uh meeting with the board of education um his vacancies although his vacancies not official yet it is his final meeting um so we would be remiss if we didn't take some time to embarrass you and um recognize and thank you um i for one am forever grateful for everything that you've contributed to the board and your
173analytical mind and i'm truly going to miss you um and i'm so thankful that you and dr body um joined the board when you did in 2018 so for that we have um just a recognition plaque for you that's reads um with our greatest appreciation for your unwavering support that helped in leading our path to success in the lansing school district for honoring you for your years of service and as a final going away present because you're leaving the state we have a basket of all michigan-made goodies and stuff and coffees because you're leaving us there's no better state to be but michigan so we know that you guys have to pack this stuff in here for you and danielle that we hope you will enjoy um and we just really appreciate your guys tireless
174dedication and support of the district during your tenure thank you thank you oh i should get it here [Applause] and i'm gonna run but i'm not sure if there's other board members that had uh comments speech speech speech you want me to say something yeah all right i said a lot um a month or so ago when i made my announcement um but i just wanna i just wanna say thank you um this has been an incredibly meaningful experience for me and i am so proud i was part of these ridiculously exciting four years that we had um but thank you to the voters thank you to the board thank you from to my wife for letting me do this um i did want to say one thing because i can't let this go by
175but um because of the presentation we had today which it was incredibly important work but i just want you guys all to know that this was the easy part it's going to get a lot harder um you're going to encounter obstacles from the community um from your own teachers from your own friends um and it's going to be extremely hard work and you know god willing the external political environment doesn't make it even harder but that could happen too but we did the right thing during the pandemic and i think it's paid off um you know guillermo mentioned this before that we were kind of a model for the state about the right thing to do and i think that this this is another moment where we can do that but it it this is
176not going to be easy um so i will be here in any capacity that i can even though i'll be many thousands of miles away um a lot of my heart's always going to be here so thank you [Applause] dr rodriguez thank you thank you very much i'm so glad that we bought medical i mean michigan products we are number two in the nation in agriculture and soon we are going to be number one now number one is california but because the climate and all that many cows are coming to michigan and you are going to oregon i remember the first meeting that you had with us here coming from the high school coming to the normal life here with kids and all that and now you have been a leader of this board in
177the last few months and all the work that you have done and be vice president that showed me the maturity and the capacity that you are having i congratulate your wife because it's not easy to work with you but at the end you understand and i think that is an important point we can disagree here and there but then we you and the board were together thank you for your time thank you for your wisdom and your intelligence well first of all good luck enjoy your new your new uh adventure and and wherever you're going what is it oregon yeah oregon yeah way up there in the northeast northwest uh yeah i just want to follow up on um actually and i agree with dr rodriguez thank you wife uh i'd like to just say
178a couple of things in terms of what happened today um i'd like to kind of touch on what the doctor said we're not reinventing the wheel okay i don't i think we're not we're doing more than that the wheel is there but it needs some grease job you know it needs to be we need to work with that and i think that that at this point in time we are going to get there it's going to take time and and like dr uh nathan's voter said it's it's going to be difficult for many reasons and one difficult one difficulty is for us to balance you know how we present this new policies this new strategy with also uplifting our students of color that are doing very well okay we need to continue to acknowledge them
179along with all the other students because they're part of the family and in a family there's always one or two kids that need needs more help and we've got to do that but we cannot forget of of this group of students and and work on this i think we need that's going to be a difficult thing to do is to balance how we do this work and i think that's something that you who are uh leading the uh this group and and will be there is one of the things that we're going to have to do how do we balance our work to benefit all students in the district and staff because we're not only talking about students we think about we're talking about the whole the system how do we hire how do we
180look for teachers where do we go i mean you know it's we're not getting that many teachers out there you know that's the other problem and and and students of color are not going to teaching you know one because it doesn't pay that much the other one is because they just have bad experiences but anyway i'm just saying we have to balance this work to where we support every student in the district regardless and uh i'm there to help you thank you madam president thank you mr lopez i'm actually gonna let dr rodriguez make the secretary's report before we come back to any further board comments doc if you could do that [Music] now now thank you madam president tuesday march 22nd cte open house at 5 30 to 7 30 is free and the
181superintendent already said that we had 220 students from a year we won even more that will be a health center in the wise road and see lansing school district website for more details wednesday march 23rd 2022 pick up parents community advisory council online be assumed please register focus on lansing pathway promise and sinking fund bond updates see lance in school district website for more details thursday march 24 end of the third marking period for the students one more marking period nine more weeks friday march 25th no school march 28th to april 1st spring break nice school thursday april 7th regular board meeting 6 p.m and this building and will be a presentation of the first step for the boring warning light and the promise group thank you madam president thank you dr rodriguez any other
182board member comments this evening mr president mr dr rodriguez thank you i mad president i mean superintendent i received this thank you very much um but i noticed the sun schools are in some sports and there are no in others we have tennis only one school and we have track only one school how we can improve that we can have teams from every school in the pro in the future i think that will be a lot it's part of the whole thing and i'm not complaining anything please that's only one to how we can have more and more activities for the students to be happy in the schools okay you don't need to answer now other comments from board members as has previously been announced tonight is dr burroughs last meeting dr bro's resignation will
183be effective on this coming wednesday march 23rd and the application will be posted to our website on that day applications will be due a week later march 30th so keep your eyes on that if you're interested in applying for the vacancy nathan i wasn't sure about you you say harassment in the weird way you say harassment don't you i remember that about you you have been an absolute pleasure to do this with thank you for your work thank you for your time thank you for being such a nerd about numbers and data because we needed that we really needed that and we will miss you and i wish you and your lovely wife the absolute best of luck with that at 9 14 we are adjourned [Applause] you