001does its thing and then are we stuck testing good afternoon and welcome to the 8th May Equity committee meeting hello everyone hello we're getting started and I'm going to turn it right over to Dr Chapman okay so we have a number of things to share today as a part of our update on the work we have been engaged in but the first thing would be just a review of the minutes from March 14 2023 I don't think so okay so I participated in a seven month culturally responsive Leadership Institute offered by the Ohio State University and led by Dr Khalifa and team we were awarded a grant through the OSU Network to participate in this program and I wanted to just share one of the key takeaways that Wilma Alexander and myself had as a
002result of participation in that program you'll see a one page in the packet after your minutes one page document that Dr Khalif offers at as part of his culturally responsive School leadership work around District Y critical self-reflection and of course I was very interested in that but more importantly the questions that are raised in order to think and be more considerate in our decisions around culturally responsive leadership work I thought were very important to share with all of you and we talk a lot about using critical reflection in our work as we're making decisions so he lays out for us the kinds of questions we can ask ourselves on a personal level questions specific to our role structural questions that can be asked community-based organizational and the kinds of questions to sustain this as a
003practice and so just wanted you to put your eyes on it because I think too it is even important for leaders such as yourself as you consider the decisions that you have to make Equity work is so much about how we reflect on what we are doing and how it impacts our decisions and our actions impact others so Dr Glover didn't know if you wanted to add to this no okay any questions for me from that that the sessions took place with OSU on Monday so you might have noticed my absence at a few board meetings because they took place on Mondays for eight consecutive Mondays 5 30 to 8 p.m and so they were in depth uh very well attended by educating education leaders across the country and lots of really really good information
004that we're going to be bringing forward in our work so I wanted you to see something that we plan to put in use rather quickly in the district the other piece I wanted to share with you is the colorful document that you have in front of you which is the draft recommendations that are coming forward from our committee our district-wide Excellence through Equity Dei committee and so they're categorized by various themes that are coming forward the first is culturally responsive professional practices and you can see they are still in draft form but you can see what the team is bringing forward in terms of learning opportunities for all staff tools and resources the portrait of a culturally responsive educator and staff is taking shape um it is in draft version hopefully we'll have that for
005you in its final form in in June and then centering this culture of creativity where people feel that they're able to be creative in their work and not stifled by various things so Dr Glover and Angela I know you're both a part of that work with our uh e-t-e-d-e-i advisory committee if you want to talk to any of these recommendations School climate recommendations and you hear this a lot I've heard some of you say it uplifting and celebrating APS work what is working well what we're doing well you're going to hear a lot about integrating student voice today with Dr Glover and and Mrs Whitfield if she's able to join us and then this idea of administering surveys to our staff so that we have a better understanding of their experiences as employees and Dr
006lash is leading that work now with our transcend survey that went out I believe the last couple of weeks I think the due date was May seventh maybe to complete that survey throughout the district and I don't know what those numbers are yet and I'm sure Dr lash is busy tabulating all of that information you'll see recommendations for human resources retent retention and recruitment that came out of the committee and maybe Angela Carter can talk to some of those but you see develop and Implement Equitable selection processes as a recommendation providing training for hiring managers on mitigating bias and hiring and selection process of course we've always had the goal of increasing the number of black indigenous persons of color across all roles and then creating pipelines for young people to gain exposure into the
007teaching education field and some of the recommendations are made in light of what committee members may not necessarily know is taking place so as we bring recommendations forward that represent work that is currently underway we want to also provide an update as we go along on these things ongoing intentional relationships with institutions more HR and Recruitment and resource Equity recommendations such as hbcus that may lead to increasing the candidate pool creating solutions that consider Financial barriers that may prevent persons of color from entering the education field and then this idea which I thought was very interesting a talent Equity audit of Staff by position yeah I thought that one was very interesting and I want to unpack that more with the team is that like what it sounds like I mean looking at each individual
008on a person-by-person basis and seeing what their talents and strengths might be am I reading that inquiry I think it is if you all have knowledge about background knowledge about how this one came forward I think it was you want to turn your mic on yeah really like them hello all right so good idea especially when we're looking at our ergs and we're looking at other people taking the lead for ergs and creating new new Arch ergs I think a talent Equity audit would help with um some of that ERG work as well and then also just making sure that we're utilizing all of our gifts with because you may have a gift that may not have anything to do with um actual teaching content but say for instance you have a skill or a
009talent that you can offer in like Akron after school so we have some of our employees and some of our Educators that create their own Akron after school clubs and summer clubs that they could lend some of their talents to so and I think it's just good to know what kind of talent do you have in your pool of people especially when you're doing different projects and things you can you'll know who to reach out to based on this Talent Equity audit yeah that's how I saw it really going beyond what people do in their day-to-day work which is really a part of feeling seen and valued right which constantly comes up as one of the major areas of focus when we're in conversation with folks around climate and culture work in our district so
010I'm really interested in that and there are three more areas that we expect to glean recommendation is from with the committee during the last meeting which will take place on the 22nd of this month 24th 24th of this month will be the last convening for this year of that advisory committee and we expect to get more I'm going to quickly do you have any questions any thoughts I'm sorry I don't know I know it's a lot of information anybody Dr Garber I think I'll just add that um I think threaded throughout each of those areas is a huge Focus it's set specifically one area but as we were unpacking with the team it's a huge focus on ongoing learning I you know understanding that um our Scholars change the work will change and so the
011long the ongoing learning space like never ends and so I think that's something that is important to highlight in that space as well yeah and just I'm sorry did you have something I didn't know um lastly I wanted to share that we're in the midst of our work plans for the next school year there are a number of things we have identified as summer work that myself Mrs Alexander and Dr Glover will be working on a lot of it has to do with what we are already seeing in terms of recommendations finding and curating resources for all professionals both faculty and staff in the district preparing to seek feedback from principals teachers and other staff and professionals about the recommendations so that we're sure a number of employee groups have an opportunity to contribute to
012that thinking and then doing the work of coaching and identifying Equity supports for APS team leaders and divisions and then continuing to build out the new and existing employees United our APS pride and our Akron Educators for social justice ergs and so as well as Next Level Training so we're we're busy building our summer calendar for the work that we're going to do and I'm going to turn it over to Dr Glover now because we wanted to highlight scholar voice today with you because one of the things that comes out of discussions with the committee is how are we centering scholar voice in this work they are our ultimate customer right and who we work for ultimately and so we have been very intentional this year in integrating scholar Voice work into the Dei division
013so um I know dreamer has a PowerPoint that I do have access to so I don't know if you want me to share it or to you want me to share with you we can bring it up okay yeah she may need you to share it with her now as I'm sharing please disregard the tabs the amount of tabs that you see you see no judgment has nothing to do with me okay with me [Music] I'm gonna get a what anyone see the water oh finally took care of us thank you boom right on time I don't know foreign [Music] but that is for the board meeting this evening yeah so Sydney that that document that I sent you earlier that you printed off if you can just pull that one up that would be
014good they have it as a handout so hi I can just talk from him hi everybody how are you all good so the first thing that I want to talk about is the leading the change conference down in Columbus Ohio and it was just a wonderful conference Carla thank you for the invitation and I just want to go over some of the sessions that I attended and what we plan to do with that information so the first session I attended was the authentic leadership and learning why student voices matter and the presenter there was Dr Keith Bell he is the director and facilitator of student leadership research a collaborative with Ohio State University and he and I we're going to meet we're going to have a partnership and we're going to develop a stronger framework
015for our student voice program and we're going to see how we can also partner with Ohio State University just to get our students involved in that piece of it um the next session that I went to was the got to be real how being authentic can strengthen your professional career and the most interesting part about that one is that the presenter was shavonda Johnson I mean she is the leader in her field and she is an Akron public schools graduate and she was one of my former students and so we had time to connect and she's going to also come and do some things with us hopefully this summer um with our hip hop and change piece um one of the most important pieces that I went to was translating your diversity efforts to distribute
016to this to demonstrate a measurable return on investment impact so there's a pathway analysis that you can use and with that analysis you really have to know what the goals and objective of APs are know our APS metrics and then with those metrics we can develop our own needs assessment and goals for our initiatives and we're going to use the TPC technical think of all the questions that can be asked about whatever program it is that we're working on we need to know the political impact who is infected who is affected and the cultural values who will be affected by it and then we should think about our outcomes we should have three outcomes for any program that we do with student voice we should have some long-term outcomes intermediate and short-term outcomes so are
017there any questions about the leading the charge conference okay I'll keep moving and Erica you may want to chime in on the hip hop and change summer experience I'll start off and then I'm Dr Glover can give more it's going to be a bookdoll CLC June 5th through the 16th and the times are from 11 to 1 we are targeting students across the district I'm grades 9 through 12. we're going to make sure that the students from the Akron Urban League youth Council we're going to talk more about that at the board meeting tonight they're going to have a special invitation to attend because we want to take some consistency and Dr Glover will tell you more about the objectives [Music] so um voice sorry so our overall goal is to allow Scholars to um
018experience all the items quite honestly that are embedded in this document here critical reflection through the opportunity of examining hip-hop so there is an approach a teaching and learning approach a talk called hip-hop pedagogy Dr Christopher Edmond I want to make sure I'm pronouncing his name correctly anyway I'm pretty uh popular researcher in this space and he has designed a framework at the same time there's a Dr Scott who's pulled from his framework so what we've done is Blended hip-hop pedagogy and a framework that brings into the cipher so if you know anything about hip-hop when folks are battling they battle in What's called the cipher and if you think about our circles our story to Circle circles or proactive circles the cipher is similar to that so Scholars are able to unpack and analyze
019through lyrics of a song what they're hearing about Community what that artist is expressing about Community or the change that they want to see and connected back to what has historically happened with them in terms of where they're at in terms of place and community and make connections to the changes that they now want to see so we are doing this similar to like a pbl and a ypar research stance and so Dr Chapman is actually going to launch the pbl by helping Scholars to understand the support that we need from them right now we are working with the ete and Dei team to think about you know cultural responsive practices and resources and strategies that could be made available to staff and Educators across the district and so the scholars are actually going to
020have that opportunity to create a resource that relates to you know culture responsive teaching and learning through the way they're able to express theirselves through the art through music through spoken word through photography or even being able to make their own t-shirts with have messages on them so every session pending time in the schedule they're supposed to walk away with some product or artifact that reflects what they are seeing in terms of wanting change in their community and their culture and by the end of the session they still go to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame we're also going to have some folks come in we have a local artist actually I think she graduated from Garfield but um she will present them present to the spoken word in her process of creating spoken
021word we'll have a current assistant principal who is also a rapper who prides himself for being able to talk about or use rap to talk about rap in The Stance of being able to say it in appropriate ways and so they'll come in and speak to scholars in that way as well so it'll be a 10-day experience we pretend to experience but what we hope is that sorry we're going to encourage our students to participate in the city of akron's National Night Out program and that is a big initiative that's going on in the city so we're going to encourage our students to become a part of that so and we are also just trying to create a systematic way so the students who are participating in the Akron Urban League's youth facilitative voices they
022will be invited to the hip-hop Summit and then those students will be invited and encouraged to participate in the city of akron's National Night Out initiative when is the National right now what date is that do we know I want to say it keeps changing but my idea is it's going to be lab Labor Day weekend now okay but don't quote me and as soon as we get the accurate dates we'll make sure that we share them with all of you all we have a meeting coming up soon I do have a couple questions when you guys get down there so one thing I was noticing the flyer that we have it has a different time yeah which one is the accurate time for it we're gonna I'm gonna check and see what our proposal
023says correct because I may not have told you the accurate time but we will find out yeah the other thing is um you know I was just a very good program it looks awesome I can't wait to wish my 13 year old was old enough to go do it this year next year you can probably do it um but I'm curious though other than through the Urban League and then the National Night Out how can the students sign up to participate in it just through the school yes so there are two ways that a student can sign up so um the Akron Public School summer experience there's a sign-in portion on our webpage and they can sign up there and if you can see there's a QR code on the flyer and they can scan
024the QR code as well it is uh the summer experience publicizes every opportunity I did see that yeah and and it's a lot yeah [Music] but if you have someone he didn't do extra case doing stem again he's last year for stem at Resnick so he's doing that but not Mr he did Mr Kim last year or the year before one of those yeah he did it it was fun he liked it well if if there was one thing I could say I learned from this year's work it was the importance of the scholar voice piece we do so much on the adult side of the coin in terms of professional development you know supporting coaching training teachers how we marry what our Scholars say to us about what they wish to experience in school
025has to be a part of that equation if we're going to realize the vision that we have and what we've said we want for our young people we've gotta we've got a center The Scholar voice more and so that's really key we talk about agency right and how we want our students to have that and self-advocacy and this is this is one of the ways we do that it's beautiful I love it any questions I know it's a lot to share but please share all of it tonight with the scholar voice landing page because it is now live so the students can also register for all of the events any scholar voice events that are happening through the scholar voice landing page which is a part of the aps website so next step for us
026is again going to be finalizing the recommendations after the May convening of the Excellence through Equity Dei team advisory committee and we will be taking them to the superintendent and then using them to help guide some of the Strategic work that we're focusing on throughout the district and divisions and departments yeah the big goal is that they don't just live on paper right right we lift them off the paper and operationalize the work who's the author of the uh the critical the sheets you gave the cultural responsible School leadership leadership yes that is Dr Khalifa his name is right there at the top and you will see that I said adapt it from Dr Khalifa because I I should also put my own name on there sure because some of this is also my own
027research but uh Dr Khalifa really brought it to life in that Institute and really love the the way we can think about critical self-reflection across the work that we do and even on a personal and individual level I'm Gonna Write Your Name at the top as well not just Dr Khalifa yeah um give you your credit also be correct I'm sorry so the correct time for the hip-hop and change program is actually what it is 10 to 12 30. that is correct okay and we will also um I'll be uh visiting the educator pathway or professions pathway I do believe that the teacher there also teaches from the hip-hop lens as well so we'll go do some recruiting in that classroom as well [Music] Mrs McKittrick if there isn't turn it back over to you
028anybody have anything else to add questions comments [Music] nope okay easy peasy that concludes the equity committee meeting for 8 May 2023. thank you everyone thank you thank you