10/21/2020 Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Discussion

001all right well good evening everyone and welcome to the canal winchester's equity diversity and inclusion discussion i am jim stotler superintendent of canal wood church of local schools and with me tonight is amanda conley who is president of enhanced collaboration consulting and will be our moderator for tonight amanda has been with the school district since june to help develop our equity diversity and inclusion initiative to make sure that we are promoting a culture that celebrates equity inclusivity and diversity for all students staff families and the wider community uh before i hand it over to amanda i just have a few comments back in june i sent out a letter to our community stating that we must do a better job of listening educating and becoming more aware of the issues of racism and cultural proficiency

002i said i was committed to working with the student staff and community to make a positive change in our school district while we know there's no simple answer and this will take time for this to occur the sooner we start the conversations no matter how challenging or uncomfortable they may be the quicker the change will start to occur for us so tonight is an opportunity to hear from our community about ways we can make positive change for changes for canal winchester local schools i'm looking forward to hearing from each one of you and of course working with you in the future so let's have a great evening and thank you for participating and now amanda i'm going to turn it over to you wonderful thank you so much uh thank you so much jim um

003i just want to take a moment to pause uh with all of you that i can see and those i can't see um and i want to just take a moment to say thank you so so much for offering up your voice uh each of us has a unique and special story narrative that brings us to the table and i think what's especially uh just important is that each of you decided to bring your whole authentic story to the table um and my my hope is that all of the beautiful things you all emailed me about the topics that you want to share um that we can all receive those and really hear it uh with just the willingness to be neighbors and to be community um and that this work is so so important

004it is so important um and i think beyond anything our willingness to be neighbors and to be communities is of utmost importance when we're talking about our diverseness when we're talking about uh race when we're talking about uh being inclusive in terms of neurodiversity abilities when we're talking about any of these things equity looks a lot of different ways um and so the first step is coming together and sharing uh sharing our ideas sharing our experiences and having a safe place to do that um and so i just want to lift up my gratitude to each and every one of you beautiful people um for offering up yourselves to this space and so i want to just go over briefly um a few things so i'm going to try sharing my my screen and uh

005so let's let's do that all right can you all see the powerpoint yeah okay the only thing is i want you to see the slideshow okay all right so welcome to the virtual community um and i want to briefly just touch on the things that i've been working with the school district on in regards to equity and inclusion so one of the things is taking the portrait of a graduate which some of you may know about it is that full picture of your student what they want the graduate to leave canal winchester schools with empathy and uh and and deductive thinking and strategic thinking and all these beautiful things one of the things that i've been doing is just helping to integrate race diversity inclusion and equity with the portrait of a graduate and working

006with leadership on how that can look for students whether that's events centered around portrait of a graduate whether that's a particular learning days and so that's one of the things that we've we've talked about and worked on is how do we integrate equity into that into those values that we want to instill into the students the next thing is we've been working on professional development for the staff around diversity we have already completed a summer course a webinar for the teachers around resilience and wellness and talking about race just giving them some tips and tools for the school year so that's already been completed and we got some really excellent feedback from the teachers about the next topics they want to learn more about so i'll be working with the district on planning the next

007uh the next education for the staff um and then i also just wanted to touch on the fact that the staff also have been like self-motivated in a lot of beautiful ways so in one of our elementary schools in canal winchester school district they're working on a cultural humility project where there will be staff educated about cultural humility over the course of the year so i've also been uh just sort of consulting with that team on ways to really integrate that cultural humility uh into their staff meetings and getting good feedback and good conversation going um and so those are the things we've been working on and just a reminder that our purpose for today uh is to listen to you uh we want to get information about your experiences ideas your feedback about advancing

008equity and inclusion within the school district also this is a safe space uh we're providing this space where you all can connect and um empower each other and hopefully also be inspired by each other and again just to go over the ground rules camera you can turn it off anytime the microphone will keep you muted to eliminate that background noise and you have five minutes each of you to share your ideas with the group um and please use the chat feature throughout to add your ideas and questions for consideration and our community norms for today just to keep it safe is to listen to each other with empathy uh seek to understand if there's not if there's something you don't understand challenge ideas try not to accuse or challenge people directly including calling out people

009by name who are not present please just try to keep this about um ideas and and processes and things that we can do action to change um engage by staying on topic and being professional as much as we can i'm aware these are very emotional topics so um that is just something to keep in mind please also know no profanity um no attacks written or spoken in this forum will be tolerated we really want this to stay a safe space and again i thank you so much for this time and so we will go ahead and get started with our first speaker and i have just a little bit about our format for those of you who are listening go ahead and you can start with your questions or anything like that and i will

010fold in those questions as we go so first we have mr taylor and i want to go ahead and give the floor to you are you ready yes i'm ready wonderful people are you ready yeah lord and the savior uh jesus just follow me be on this earth give the opportunity to kind of speak my heart during this time so thank you and i want to thank jim for following up on his words that uh that we talked about doing in march you know that that that's a that's a strong sign right there that's a strong uh uh admission saying hey we need to go forward and and move on from what we're protesting about uh black lives matter so jim i want to thank you and man i want to thank you as well

011for being able to facilitate this whole conversation so let me get started here so uh thank you for this platform uh in the matter at hand but i want to give a little history on why we're here today uh when colin kaepernick silently protested in the nfl by kneeling to the national anthem for the brutality of his of his fellow uh uh members uh by being killed by the hands of officers went unheard uh white america felt that it was a slap in the face that it was a disrespect of the flag failing to identify with the message and only focusing on the messenger of the action of kneeling uh fast forward george floyd rihanna taylor uh muhammad aubrey murders uh also the kovac 19 uh hitting this country and the higher rate of minorities

012dying uh the once racist actions were swept under the rug now became a mountain and for everybody to see the world to see in the judges based on uh america's action and our history of uh the things that's going on in this country today then moving forward the wealth gap when i hear some um people say blacks need to to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and gain wealth and work hard like everybody else in america but failing to acknowledge that the concrete that's those boots have settled in and are stuck in in order to move forward our school systems are failing to acknowledge and teach those the true history and the true reason of how america gained his wealth from slavery and on the blacks of free slaves that's telling the truth and teaching

013in our classrooms uh the education the education is so important the education gap in 1934 the fda instituted a red line approach in which black and brown families had to stay within a a red dying area therefore giving those students poor education old books less money from taxpayers dollars creating a a ghetto mentality creating a a lacking type of uh attitude studies have shown that um that students the black students with the same standardized score tests of white classroom students were less likely to be nominated for gifted programs if they had no uh had a non-black teacher my daughter was a four-point uh student at canal winchester and she didn't get nominated for any gifted programs any honor classes we had to push that mark we had to get her notarized to get her notice

014in order to participate in those classes i was so impressed with the black lives march and how everybody came together in that community blacks whites all had unity compassion and concerns on their faces on social justice rights you know i was so compelled i was touched uh if i felt change was coming forth i felt everybody now is seeing and feeling the pain from the witness and seeing uh george floyd murder on national tv the facts are with some of these cuts that taking place the tax cuts in nightmare in 2017 white families received a two thousand and twenty dollar tax cut hispanics with families received a 970 tax cut and blacks families receive the tax cut blacks make up not 67 of our prison population but only make up 37 of the u.s population

015moving forward such as some of those initiatives you guys are doing at canal winchester which i didn't hear of and i wish you would publicize it and make it make everyone aware of some of the things you're doing because if if we don't see it we don't know it it's not happening but it's happening we need to know it so everybody can see it uh moving forward i believe that our school system which you already working on a canal winchester should have a committee uh a admission of higher with the mission of hiring more minority teachers more minority coaches more minority uh counselors to work on this diverse group of students are we a community that embrace diversity are we a community living in fear of the property values uh being lowered uh-oh can you

016still hear me i didn't still hear you i just stopped sharing you're at one minute i feel like my screen just dropped off i can't see you guys at all but uh okay what happened all right so and um so in other words we must have the mindset to educate tell the truth and open race conversations it's moving forward so i thank you for this platform again and i'd love to hear all the ideals of things going on it was a brief history on how i feel and and and the excitement i have on moving forward in this community thank you thank you so much uh mr taylor uh for your insights and for what you shared the vulnerability around just the advocating you have to do for your children for gifted programs and also

017for just going over the history what brought us to this place and those those various facts around taxes and and prison statistics that are so important to this work and to to justice and equity i thank you so much for for sharing that and next i have angela barnes sharing uh are you ready to share okay let me unmute you sorry i'm unmuted can you hear me oh there you are okay yes i can hear you hi um thanks for um allowing me to be able to have this time to be able to share my experiences with the um with all with this group and with the the larger group that will be coming as people start viewing this i really feel great gratitude for this um amanda and mr stotler we've known each other

018for quite a few years um i have um uh when when you ask the question of envisioning the true equity what does that mean uh when i look up equity it's the quality of being fair and impartial equality the state of being equal especially in the status in status rights and opportunities and when i look at how i envision this happening in the canal winchester school district um first of all i have been in the district for 18 years my oldest son is 30 and he graduated from here my youngest son is a senior i have had um several kids graduate from the canal western winchester school district both biological and foster kids i am a foster foster mom in the school district i typically keep teenage boys and um i don't care what race

019they are or anything other than you know can we help them get out of high school if i could envision equality in our school district there would be an equal distribution of staff both brown teachers and male teachers teaching our elementary level kids um students would be achieving at the same levels we wouldn't have um what i call the one percent where their their those kids are the ones who seem to get the most attention and get the education and it starts at kindergarten where somebody somehow has identified them as oh these are going to be the stars so we're going to just focus on them um coaching staff would have more um blacks or bra people of color on the coaching staff we wouldn't have a coaching staff that has one black person on

020it um our kids would be able to see that there are people just like them that are in these positions and not all the people that are in leadership positions are all of another race and none of them look like them more families would be involved in fundraising and have some be able to bring their culture into the fundraising we wouldn't have to do it the canal winchester way as as it's always been like i said i've lived here for 18 years i have four boys who've graduated and three currently in the district um i help with the touchdown club i help i have helped with baseball and basketball and wrestling my experience in sports um began with the tribe my son is 18 now and the best experience i had there was when we

021all went to a game and we spent the night and i got got to actually meet the parents and got to actually know them a little better on a more personal level level and my most uncomfortable experience in sports was probably um running for um an officer position for the touchdown club and i remember um one of the people uh who was in leadership saying um that they were they'd never seen you people here before and it was like you people what do you mean you people uh and it was a meeting where we were having an officer election meeting and what the people that had come were coming to help me get elected for a position on the touchdown club and i thought the way that the people everyone acted was so disrespectful to

022people who don't normally come to the touchdown club meetings and those same people didn't come back because they were just so taken aback by how they were treated at the meeting um these people have kids playing too and they see things the same way as as it's only a little click it's a certain number of people who get to do everything um my experiences in the classroom have been a little bit different i think my best experiences were when my son one my youngest son now when he was in kindergarten and his kindergarten teacher came to me and said she just loved having him in class and how how nice he was to because he was in a mixed class of kids who needed help bringing them up to a certain level but he was

023already at that level or above and he was so nice to the other kids who needed a lot of help um and i think my other a good experience in the district was um when the coach came to our graduation um party and recognized the boys and was even willing to just come to my house i never had it happen before and i was like wow he took he thought enough of the kids because there were probably about five or six of the boys we all had one big graduation party but a lot of the football players happened to be at my house that day and he thought enough of them to come over here and and see them for graduation so i thought that was a nice thing i think my worst experience a

024couple of my worst experiences of being in the district um was when my oldest son when i i registered him for school and i i asked to put him in accelerated classes and i was i was told are you sure because he's coming from columbus and i thought what do you mean he's coming from columbus he goes well you know we're a little bit more competitive i thought i was going to jump over the desk literally and and i said put him in the classes that i asked you to put him in and we'll see how well he does um my son where am i at i'm sorry miss barnes you're at five minutes okay can i take about ten more minutes i mean five more seconds um and go ahead and i graduated from

025osu with the moral scholarship but didn't get recognized at graduation for that the best thing i think you guys can do to improve diversity is to establish a diversity inclusion officer if y'all could do that i think that would really help the school because a diversity inclusion officer could look at some of the things that we do that we're doing to improve the school district thank you well thank you so much and you packed a lot in there um i i'm sad to have to cut you all off that's okay i i know we'll get we'll get more chances but thank you i just love i i love the fact that you offered up you know this parenting that you do the foster parenting and and your kids at such a wide range of ages

026and the different experiences that you've had whether it's through the sports or whether it's in the classroom sort of offering up both the positive experiences that you've had of uh that connection that's really meaningful uh to people and i think that's everything like when when a coach or someone comes to your house or when a teacher goes the extra mile to get to know you and your kids um i think that's absolutely everything and makes a world of difference um and so i i appreciate everything you lifted up and i thank you so much for sharing your voice today and sharing your family with us today um i have another note i have arnetta davis up next are you here i don't see her okay um we'll go on to the next person tina uh

027maharath yes i'm a state senator for canal chester city schools and i'm also a parent in the district my son is a fourth grader over at winchester trail elementary so i'm very very taken back from what's been said so far it hits a lot of home uh i'm disappointed to see that these are situations that people went through but unfortunately i'm a native of whitehall ohio my son's only been in the district for two years but we've lived in canal winchester for the last five years so the main reason why i actually joined this call was because i wanted to share my two cents as well um for starters what i got disappointed about initially with the district was when i received an email back in september advocating for the westchester golf course um i

028was taken back by not the contents of the email but what was in there there was a line item that says potential impacts in our community from the sale of the golf course the metro parks it says homes in the community could see reduction in property value every property owner cannot winchester could be affected so the reason why i'm so offended by those line items is because minorities and just lower income families in general we're already disproportionately disadvantaged economically so when i see that type of message the way i interpret this was so you really don't want any people of color or low-income families in the district because you don't want to take care of them and the reason why i got that interpretation because as a state senator i'm also on the education committee

029and my responsibility right now is with with school funding and uh winchester unfortunately has over 30 years lost money to students transferring out to community schools or transferring out to take advantage of the choice program despite not winchester being a great public school we i don't believe that they should be on the school list to be um because us taxpayer dollars are spending money on students who just go to a good public education school here in the district but that money gets transferred out to a toy school or to a community school because of the fact that they don't want to be in the district for whatever reason so right now we have a really flawed school funding system here in ohio and it disproportionately harms minorities and economically advantaged students especially for winchester where

030we're fortunate enough to have somebody like me at the state senate to advocate and say hey this district is not ac district this is not a b district this is an ab district we should not be wasting money for students to go to a different school all because of somebody who wants to take advantage of ed toys because they want to take advantage of sending their kids to private school for free but this is just one of many many frustrations i've had with a public education system um because of the fact that no one's doing anything about it it's as if we're providing public education in ohio because of the color your skin and the circle that you live in and that's not the way it's supposed to be so i i've already heard some

031individuals mention some great suggestions so i'm not going to mention anything any further because one of my suggestions was going to be some of the things they already mentioned such as a more diverse workforce i look at the yearbook and i see a well variety full of students from all walks of life but then when it comes down to the staff i probably saw a handful of people call at winchester elementary and what's worse is what someone's already mentioned with covet that's minorities are more prone to have kova compared to other people my family included and me and my son got called at the beginning of school year but they expect us to come in and pick up their school supplies despite me emailing them saying i have covered i am not walking in there

032and that's one of many frustrations i've had during colby because uh the teachers keep asking me to come in and do this and that i've had called it i'm not going to put myself at risk to get reinfected and i'm not going to put my others in the community at risk as well so um i again i appreciate this conversation i'm i'm happy it happened it's a conversation that's needed and i'm sorry to hear about all the comments i've already said in the district and again i'm your state senator if you guys ever need anything please reach out to my office i appreciate you all taking your time to join us today thank you so much uh senator uh for offering your passion for the work that you do for minorities and low-income families and

033for the school funding issues that we have in ohio and offering your thoughts and your frustrations in this space i so appreciate that and i'm grateful for just the fire that you brought uh with you today so thank you uh and we've got folks who are who are commenting alongside you who are with you and lift up their own frustration and and also uh are lifting up just the fact that they agree with with what you've brought to the table and so thank you again um and next i have jennifer mcdonald jennifer are you ready do i unmute myself or do you do that oh no there you are okay you can yeah if you're ready to start okay um so i've been here for 20 years and i kind of have a diverse background

034i guess if you want to use that word but i've been in the military served for four years love my country i'm a mom i have four teenagers my husband's a police officer in reynoldsburg i work at the canal winchester food pantry and i write grants to help us bring money in to help underserved um people in communities and that's really opened my eyes a lot but i don't i guess for me what i have found i'm a parent obviously um what i have found what i feel like a lot of parents or and maybe i shouldn't speak for other people but i feel like with my kids who are in the district um with everything that's gone on this year there's just been so many emotions that have been unleashed and raw emotions and

035a lot of these kids my heart just goes out to kids who they're just trying to find their identity in this world they're trying to find out where they fit and they want to be accepted and i think that's true for every child um regardless of where you come from we we all want to fit in we all want to feel like validated we all want to feel like we have a voice and i completely a hundred percent want to help facilitate that um and so my whole point here wasn't to come because i don't i don't have a high position i don't have any great ideas about what needs to happen in school districts to be honest my my um i guess i would say i was so busy raising four children um that

036maybe i'm not aware of everything and and some of the the gaps and the things the struggles that families have gone through so i don't feel like i'm really a good voice for that um but i am i don't know if i mentioned this but i am a teacher too so i taught third grade for five years so my heart really is towards children and um i feel like one of the things that we can do as we move on with the conversation because i feel like the struggle that i've had even with my own children is with understanding where other people are coming from and using vocabulary that accurately reflects what it is you're trying to say because there's been a lot of disconnect within my own family when certain vocabularies are word words

037are used and um so i guess my point in coming on was just to say i think it's a great conversation to have i think it's a valid conversation to have but i also hope that as the school district embraces that that there are some really hard conversations about words and what they mean and definitions and so that people can all be kind of on the same playing field and people don't get offended just by a word that that has been my my heartache is that just one word can offend someone and you know i i just my heart breaks for that what what has happened what has happened in our country where we don't use the golden rule which is to treat others the way you want to be treated it's not a hard

038concept but sometimes in this world it is a very tough and difficult thing to navigate because you don't know what might offend someone else and you don't know what they've been through and i guess i would say for me personally um because i've been there's just been a lot of tears in my house i i don't know how to describe it this year has been so heartbreaking for so many reasons um that my heart is just open to these kids and i i want to give these kids the words are power and i want to give these kids you know if they don't if they can't express themselves and if they can't use words that will um build up and if they don't know how to use those words to build up then i feel

039like that's something that needs to be taught i guess is my point i don't know if that's a part of a school curriculum i i don't know if those are just small groups that happen and from those small groups other small groups spawn from them but i think real conversations need to happen where people are honest and they're telling their stories and that way you have empathy and you can see what's in that other person's mind and i think um i love to teach reading i'll just say it this way an analogy i love to teach reading the reason i love to teach reading is because you are getting inside the author's mind you are seeing the pictures that they're creating with their words you're feeling the same emotions that they're feeling because they've had

040time to finesse it they've had years to write a book and yet we expect in just a few conversations that we're going to understand somebody else's story or that we're going to understand what they've been through i'm at five yep you're it wasn't as hard as i thought so yeah that's i don't know i mean i'm that's just i it's my heart i definitely appreciate your um uh just just the offering up the vulnerability of your heart and that you're not sure you don't know you're trying to just bring yourself to the table and i i just wanted to put out there one you know thank you for serving our country um i i always just have to lift of gratitude to our veterans and so thank you so much for that um and for

041your spouse who's a police officer you know these times right now it's it's scary for everyone um including law enforcement um and so we just i just want to lift up you know for you and your family that i'm sure you guys have to navigate a lot of challenge um as well around his profession um and also too just lifting up the fact that words are absolutely powerful and folks have been commenting and agreeing with you here in the chat that we do have to be mindful of our language uh that these are times where being clear around our language is especially important ranging from what do we mean when we talk about racial justice or what do we mean when we talk about inclusion uh what do we mean when we you know say

042various things um towards uh just promoting equity and can we build up language that is kind towards one another and can we give that to our children and can we promote that amongst our children um and then also recognizing you know that the words that are used to hurt people that there has to be a way to pull those out and get and just like have a no like having a a really strong sense of where that line is of what we don't say to people and what we don't call people um in terms of name calling is also really important language is just of utmost importance and i just appreciate you bringing that to the table because i think it will be a work in progress as we work together to work out our

043definitions our our common language terms um and so thank you so much jennifer for bringing that you've got folks who have who have reached out in the chat for you speaking from your heart so thank you you're welcome so i unmute myself now yes okay next i have jamoya cox on the list can you hear me well good evening to everyone and um thank you uh to the school district for creating this platform for us to have this discussion about um race equity diversity and inclusion i'm certainly thankful for our uh facility our moderator on this evening i'm thankful for uh the insights that we've received so far the feedback um very good insights on how we could move forward in a meaningful way i'd like to add to that uh discussion um as much

044as i can so we were given four options for questions to choose from mine landed on equity and how we can kind of move forward in in a very practical way but i'd like to start the conversation with one question and that is how do we improve educational outcomes for populations impacted most by educational disparities again how do we improve educational outcomes for populations impacted most by educational disparities oftentimes even most times that falls on black and brown children and so with this i think the idea of having specific programs are good coming up with programmatic ideas but i believe the approach should be holistic and very strategic and so for over 10 years i worked for the ohio department of mental health and addiction services this was my role to actually look at these

045issues to look at as a system how do we move that system along this cultural and linguistic competency continuum we use that continuum to inform the best way for us to address disparities which really fell on looking at the data and allowing what we see in the data to come up with strategic ideas to actually improve outcomes so it begins with this notion this cultural boosted competency paradigm that was developed in the late 80s uh by terry cross it's been modified a dozen times even probably by this system of care even as recently as a few years ago all looking to see how do we change our perspective from being culturally destructive as a system meaning you want uh populations diverse communities to acquiesce to the system itself rather than meet the needs of the

046diverse communities that need to be served the further along you go down that continuum it takes you to proficiency that is you see the difference you work with the communities of culture the diverse communities especially those impacted by diversity i mean at disparities and you work with the community to come up with meaningful ways to address disparities to improve outcomes and so the areas of focus in this instance we're looking at governance or the school board we're looking at hiring practices we're looking at interpretation of data at the board level down to the service level or the teacher and principal level we look at policies procedures and service delivery strategies we look at training and making sure that this paradigm incorporates incorporated training and trainings in every way and also looking at data to help

047inform what that training looks like and finally we look at engagement how does teacher and admin and staff engagement look like with each other the community with students with families to prove produce the best possible outcomes and so when we look at this in a broad context but in a strategic way we know that there are types of change there's a system change or the uh school district at the school district level there's a school level uh that that involves working with principals there's a teacher and staff level and then finally there's a student level so your strategies have to impact all of those levels over a long period of time it didn't happen overnight so prepare to take 5 10 15 years to map out something that makes sense and that's based on what

048we know the data to tell us about disparities and um and equity so what are we looking to change in terms of outcomes we want to do things that gradually lead to an improvement in attitudes about academic achievement we want our children to have an opportunity to have experience that as a result of the programs are now available to support them we want improvements in academic achievement we want a reduction in disciplinary actions or behaviors but also those things that lead teachers and staff to formally you know have disciplinary actions against these children we want to improve graduation rates and we want to increase admissions to college trade schools and other um you know achievements that the child or the student may be interested in doing so for me it's all about investing and it's

049all about being strategic and it's all about coming up with something that could be practical over a long period of time so for me it's all about what is the annual budget look like to support this of course we want to identify a committee to look at these things but holistically we want a budget that truly makes sense in a holistic way to impact change we want expertise on the job be it from a consulting standpoint or an administration standpoint um at the helm leading this we're at five minutes okay one more point you want to build the case and last create a strategic plan you want to create the plan and you want to implement it you need to do be very strategic in this so that we see the outcomes at the end

050of the day to improve educational outcomes for uh children students of color wow yes um thank you so much you just said a lot of really brilliant things and people are saying that in the chat um just the i i personally just really appreciate the reliance on data to um impact a holistic and strategic approach um and looking at our whatever data we collect to really inform our outcomes and i i like the idea of working directly with particular pieces of the community working directly with the board in terms of the school district the students the staff um and really focusing on policy hiring training and not just focusing not just focusing on it for one day or one hour but focusing on it for years i mean you're really spot on the fact that

051these things uh take an immense amount of energy and time um to both get you know to both glean the data and then to implement uh change and to really uh take that critical eye to what's happening and how to improve it um that's really wonderful feedback that you just gave i just wrote down a lot um and so thank you so much for your time um and those ideas and i'm sorry again to have to cut you all off at five minutes you all have said really beautiful things and i so appreciate it um and moving on to our next speaker tara smith i know i've seen you on um are you ready hi let's uh get you unmuted hi everybody um my name is tara smith can everybody hear me okay i am

052a wife a mom a counselor a writer and a podcaster i'm bringing tonight this to this experience in talking about marginalized community and marginalized folks in part because when i started my career in mental health i worked with homeless adults and currently my son is my youngest son is disabled he is autistic and is medically handicapped and he fits into that category again of marginalized folks or marginalized communities um because of my because of my position as a mom and then because of my position in mental health i have a special yet not really unique perspective from both sides of the table of what it means to have a seat at the table and like many of you i watched in horror earlier this year as several of our black brothers and sisters were murdered

053in our communities both near and far fortunately due to the work of black indigenous and other people of color some of who are disabled and have laid a foundation by sharing the hard truth i recently woke up to the power that racism and white supremacy hold in our everyday lives i have resolved to believe my black brothers and sisters when they say they are hurting and that the cause of this hurt is systemic racism it is now time that the white citizens of this community here in canal and communities around the nation wake up and we go to our fellow humans and talk about these injustices and start to set right the course that was started over 400 years ago how can we move towards this monumental change and confront issues of racism diversity and

054equity in our community we can start by taking a small but meaningful step of changing the school mascot and team name from indians this is a lightning rod issue for the community true but we need to ask ourselves whose comfort are we protecting when we hang on to something that symbolizes racism and white supremacy just because that is the way it has always been done we can start with the education of our children from kindergarten to seniors in high school we must provide them with tools that will show them the true history of this nation for older children we can provide them a book called me and white supremacy a 28-day course laid out to help children and adults recognize their personal struggles with racism we can also engage in the 1619 project that helps

055reveal the true history of enslaved persons how they built our country and how they were sacrificed to the economic engine those types of things will help with individual change in the heart where we must start this process we can then equip our educators with anti-racism programs that are already being successfully implemented in other school districts in the nation this might include the defining s documentary and the work that is moving forward in the new york city school district the largest and most segregated school system in the country for our parents we can engage in discussions around the podcast nice white parents and learn about the biggest obstacle to equity in our public schools which is in fact nice white parents we can also reassess how we work with our disabled students which is something that

056is near and dear to my heart and their families to get them what they are entitled to by federal law a free and appropriate public education we can examine if the current system in our school of the hoops to jump through is set up to maximize the experience of the disabled student or the cost saving of the district which one are we prioritizing and we must strongly consider the student's heart the intersection of race and disability they are indeed our most vulnerable population we also need to ask ourselves when it comes to helping all of our children in school how have we settled on police to help the problem and not turning to more counselors more teachers and more mental health help for our young children as a community we could start a simple yet

057effective messaging campaign that anti-racism is anti-racism work is work that everyone can participate in is lifelong and is something that everyone will benefit from and we must listen to our black leaders in our community and follow their lead i do have more resources tools and ideas i am grateful for the allotted time that i got to share these current thoughts with you i'll be happy to participate any way i can to further the anti-racism work in our community in closing this anti-racism work has to start somewhere it has to start sometime what better place than here in canal and what better time than now thank you thank you so much tara um that was really beautifully said um just offering up yourself as a wife a mom a podcaster which i love that tidbit um

058and just lifting up the marginalized community and also the intersectionality between people of color and people with disabilities and mental health and all of these things which are so important that impact us on so many different levels in our community and uh i really appreciate you bringing up solid points for different things you feel like would be a really positive improvement to the school district ranging from you know the mascot which i know some other folks may touch on that tonight so we'll hear about that again um the 1619 project incorporating that um and also looking at how do we take care of our disabled students and how do we offer mental health uh to our students in the schools so thank you again so much and folks are thanking you in the chat as

059well all right next i have jim saban jim are you ready i'm ready ready as i'll ever be well thank you i'd like to thank the district and the the superintendent for this opportunity uh and i'll be honest i struggled with whether to do this because i don't have many of the experiences that you all have been so eloquently explaining here today but as a new parent in the district i i've already have one challenge that i feel uh shows it provides an example of what institutional racism can look like that is as plain as the signs on the buildings our family went to a local store recently to buy clothes for my kindergartener we saw a rows of high school branded gear and went to check it out every single canal winchester shirt bore

060indians in huge letters uh or at the very least had the feathers that are often associated with native american iconography i wasn't comfortable with buying any of them so we didn't these symbols are continued evidence that native american culture has become a mascot a demeaning dehumanizing gesture it ignores the fact that no culture deserves uh that kind of treatment they deserve respect every culture deserves respect it's not just a nickname it's the name of one of the schools the school my son attends indian trail elementary school whether i wanted him to or not my kindergarten garden now thinks it's okay for the name indian to be on a building that has nothing to do with native americans pardon me if my knowledge of past steps is limited but i've been told that the district did

061take the step of getting rid of the indian head logo but it's not gone it's hanging today on a sign on the front of indian trail elementary school so kids now also have a characterized idea of what indian actually means i believe the district should stop using the indian's nickname and should also consider changing the name of indian trail elementary school i won't buy canal winchester indians gear for my son and then explain to him later or apologize to him later i won't allow that imagery to be institutionalized in my house i don't want it to be institutionalized in his school where he goes to learn about more than just reading and math carrying that nickname uh does carry connotations for how the district's perceived ten years ago i was a journalist i was participating

062in a conversation at my newspaper about whether or not we should include team nicknames like indians and redskins on our sports pages including in high school sports when we made the decision to keep those words out of our headlines and to avoid use of the team names as much as possible which obviously meant sometimes those team coverages just didn't get much play that does affect canal winchester i was the editor of the lancaster eagle gazette at the time as far as i know that policy remains in place this form of institutionalized racism to me is not actively practiced maybe it's not something anybody intends to do but it's it's hidden in plain sight it's it's right there and it's entrenched in this country for hundreds of years it should not and cannot be tolerated at

063least least of all by a place of education the fact that this form is happening tells me that the district wants to make this stand against racism which is hardening wants to do something to show that it's anti-racist it's not enough just to say hey we're not racist we need to do something about it and this form tells me that there's that desire to do that it's happened elsewhere it's uh miami university once upon a time and i'm an ohio bobcat so it's hard for me to say but they did the right thing and changed their name they were the miami redskins 20 years ago they changed it to redhawks the washington football club in the nfl ditched its team name after fighting for years to remain the redskins the cleveland indians who still sell

064chief wahoo on their merchandise and encourage their super fan to beat war drums during scoring opportunities they're considering changing their name the atlanta braves and kansas city chiefs aren't but they are getting rid of the use of the tomahawk the war chants the headdresses all these things things that i haven't been to a game but i've heard that some of these things have been used at canal winchester games in the recent past i've heard more than once that changing the mascot will be difficult because alumni are very protective of it yeah there was an alumnus in the wash in the columbus dispatch just two months ago talking about how uncomfortable this team name was for her just a few years ago and how uncomfortable she was chanting scalp them with her soccer team how's that

065for institutionalized racism i really hope that these changes can be made uh and made all the way uh incremental change just draws it out makes it a painful process if people are going to be upset i hope it's at least because the district is going to do the right thing and can stand behind it with pride if you can't eliminate the obvious symbols of racism that are out there it's hard to imagine or to believe that the more hidden forms can be eliminated i really hope this is done soon because i do not want my son growing up proud to be in india thank you thank you so the much five minutes uh i appreciate you lifting that up um as a parent and as someone new to the district and how that imagery has

066impacted you and your family and uh and just sharing that insight and feedback to the district for one of the i guess it would be a very um one of the obvious symbols that that canal winchester school district could could address taking away would be changing the mascot and so thank you so much for for sharing that um giving some history about other teams that have done the same thing other schools professional teams so thank you so much uh next i have buford payne i'm here i'm ready excellent wonderful the floor is yours five minutes all right i'll try to finish in less than five minutes i just want to briefly just share my story this year marks my 19th year as an intervention specialist at the middle school here at canal winchester i have

067a daughter named michelle who just graduated in 2020 from the high school my experience as an educator and canal winchester has not been easy um over the course of my time teaching at canal and chester canal winchester has changed quite a bit so when i got hired back in i was the second african-american male in the district and so our district has changed quite a bit in that time being so so has our population in regards to the students but this dynamics or the demographics of our staff has not um i've also coached football both at the middle school and high school levels from 2002 to 2007. and in regards to changes in the school system i think it starts with the community there's a perception that i've heard many times in the district well

068the other side of 33. and so that kind of has a underlying not i wouldn't say like outright being racist but you could catch the undertones if you lived in canal winchester or know people that lived in canal winchester for many many years what that implied um meeting states and so when it comes to the school district in regards to anti-racism policy i think it starts with the community as a whole where if we work on the community first then it can work into our school systems and i think people need to be aware and cognizant of the reason why people move to canal winchester regardless of your race economic background wherever you come from you want a better opportunity of life for yourself and for your family and luckily for canal winchester we have

069a really good school system and i don't regret sending my daughter to school here at canal winchester so there's a lot of great talking points that have been mentioned um is definitely this shouldn't be a one-time discussion right so absolutely thank you so much buford and um just offering up this vulnerability as a teacher and uh being a part of the district in this way thank you for educating um our young people and being present um and being and offering up your time as a coach when you did that and uh so thank you so much for your insight as someone who works in the district and also just the undertones how do we talk as a community outside of outside of school space like what's happening at home i think that's a really a

070really poignant thing for folks to be thinking about and to be acting on as much as possible is how to change that that rhetoric at home the other side of 33. thank you for bringing that up and next i have megan friend and angela carpenter uh you all have the floor do we get five minutes or ten minutes i don't know you're muted i had you down as i had you down as one entry because i wasn't sure if you both wanted to talk or not okay so i'm megan i'm a current senior at canal winchester uh ever since may since you know the black lives matter movement um really started in the protest i started to like reflect on our community and i saw our mascot and i found the petition to retire it

071and i reached out to the petition creator and we were fortunate enough to meet with mr sotler and a few other people and speak out about it and we came to a kind of closing conclusion that a positive change would be implementing it in education and ever since then i've just been reflecting more and more and i think that i look at our leaders um within the indigenous community like the national congress american indians and the cleveland american indian movement who i've been fortunate enough to reach out to and have communicate or have like conversations with has been really eye opening and i've seen um how we as a community um oppress this community and i look at the definition of racism and i see that it's a dominant culture oppressing and asserting control over

072minorities and i look at what the meaning of the mascot is which is a kind of a good luck charm and i think that as a student we should not have a people be at mascot and this is my mom she has more to say so um i have a little bit in common with tara and with jim my background isn't primarily as a mental health nurse the last two years i've been an infection control nurse which was not the wisest career change in hindsight but part of my role is to combat false beliefs with education false beliefs such as kevin 19 doesn't exist or mass don't work or the flu shot will give you the flu those are common things that i have to combat with education every day so as a community i

073think that we need to better promote the education that keeping the name of the mascot as the indians under the banner that is honoring the native people doesn't change the fact that it's still cultural appropriation and it's still harmful to the native american community so i'd like to cite an article that was written by the smithsonian national museum of american indians it was written this july um that was titled ending the use of racist mascots and images it says the museum strongly believes that native names other words associated with native people and native inspired mascots do not our indigenous people our history or our cultures on the contrary any team folks enable emboldens disrespectful fans to continue to paint their faces don headdresses and act out faux native performances the commercial use of images and

074words that evoke native cultures perpetuates racism and legitimizes racist acts so i think that jim beautifully pointed out that the national narrative is changed uh national sports teams are changing their mascots away from harmful uh native names and as a community we need to move forward and at least recognize that this is harmful and make a plan of action to change it um there's a book that was written by ibram kendy called how to be an anti-racist talks about how it's not enough just to be not a racist but you have to be it's more effective to be an anti-racist and the difference in those things is action which involves critical thinking ending racist policies and ending cultural appropriation so positive acts that the school can take in addition to changing the school mascot name

075would be to implement a culturally diverse staff mandating cultural awareness training for all the staff that exist there and um i think it's all going to begin with ending retiring this mascot i understand that it's a form of pride and nostalgia for many alumni and that it is something that's you know a very sensitive topic in our community but through education understanding i think that we can change this narrative and that's all wonderful thank you so much you all are just under your five minutes um i appreciate having a student thank you so much uh megan for jumping in and sharing your heart um as a young person i know all of us that makes us really happy uh to see you and to hear your voice uh just the power of young people is

076is especially important and to have your mother there with you hi uh and i i just really really love um the specific points you brought up at the end that have to do with action um and that there are these you know sort of anti-racist things that can be done um internally with education and there are things that can be done on a larger scale like again addressing the mascot and um i just so appreciate the insights you all brought and just being able to hear about you know megan the different people you've reached out to in this process and the fact that you filled out that petition um and so i look forward to hopefully continuing that that just action that you've started so just keeping the ball rolling um so so well spoken

077uh the chat again folks are really excited to hear from both of you um i have next up on is monica talley all right you ready hi good evening everyone and to all of the um virtual listeners um i'd like to thank all the participants thus far for sharing and bringing to the table really wonderful great actionable items that really need to be considered in order to improve the educational outcomes as mr cox had eloquently presented in his presentation for our students i'd like to thank amanda conley for hosting this community forum and also superintendent sotler and the entire district leadership for providing this opportunity for us to have a purposeful meaningful and a very timely dialogue i also would like to mention that as a school board member of this outstanding district the views

078i'm expressing this evening are my own personal views and do not represent the viewpoint or opinion of the school board um what i would like to talk about um i come from a policy public policy background and i really think that it is important to consider how powerful public policy is and the impact that it has on people's lives it can be used to empower and it also can be used to disadvantage and to uh oppress um one example would be with the jim crow laws um but in addition to that um there has to be more than good good public policy there has to be perspectives given that create and a standard for everyone and you have to you look at it through the lens of diversity and inclusion um with that being said

079um what i would like to talk about is the utility of promoting equity and inclusion of diverse perspectives in decision-making processes at the top levels of education at the board and the administrative levels i firmly believe that this is essential for establishing a viable thriving school culture that is conducive to learning and fostering growth and development academically socially emotionally and professionally it takes a high degree of collaboration and communication to achieve a shared vision of a school district has such as ours our vision in canal winchester is to empower all students for success so we really have to think about what that means when we talk about all students that's inclusivity right there empowering students requires everyone to be respectful of differences recognizing obstacles and helping to identify what needs to be done to help

080eradicate them so that students can excel and build their potential and their self-confidence when there is a lack of diversity in decision-making roles a decision rendered may expose certain biases or may result in an outcome that could disproportionately impact a certain group of people this has the potential to undermine the value of the kind of education students are receiving and it enables distrust to settle in amongst parents in a community and uh i'd like to bring up a certain situation that has been going on in current events it's an illustration of perceived wrongdoing when there are claims made by community members of a certain neighboring school district that basically addresses that their school board and those in decision-making roles lack diversity and they wish to see more equity in their school system specifically there has

081been major pushback from educators students and parents in a local school district as a result of two racially different administrators who were found to have violated the same social media policy however were reprimanded very differently now we have to ask why is that many believe that there should be a clearly defined standard that would apply to everyone in addition when there is a lack of transparency in how or why um support uh or certain if that when there's a lack of transparency in how or why certain decisions are made it gives support to the notion that such actions could be deemed as discriminatory for obvious reasons situations like this are a real threat to establishing and maintaining racial and social equality within their school system um in closing i just want to assert that in

082canal winchester against those kinds of people and be cognizant of allowing others from with different perspectives and backgrounds um to have a seat at the table we must use and uh utilize objective criteria to set a standard when assessing situations that may involve taking disciplinary measures current literature suggests that people are more inclined to accept decisions or comply with outcomes when they believe the decision-making process was fair we cannot afford to overlook the importance of having diverse perspectives at the table when these decisions are made because these decisions have a great impact on the educational value that students receive thank you so much uh for sharing your your personal um just feelings about policy and decision making um that's that was really powerful just to hear you unpack that and talk about diversity and decision-making

083roles and how you know we have been able to see how that unfolds for you know our neighboring school districts um to get you know giving that specific example like just in regards to the social media policy being broken and having those different disciplinary actions uh divvied out is something that we absolutely need to learn from you know and have the opportunity to learn from um and also to dive deeper into that what are the implications of that um and and how to really get underneath it and so thank you so much for sharing that and for offering your voice tonight thank you yes thank you so much uh and next i have marquita thompson marquita are you available i see you're unmuted but i can't hear you can anybody else hear her hi yeah

084you can't hear her yeah we can't hear you i'm wondering if there's something uh you might have to log back off and come and go out and come back in like i did yeah um marquita just to keep it rolling we're gonna have the next person go can you hear me though jerome white yes we can hear you okay thank you um okay let's uh go with tamara okay thank you well i am i am a mother of four um i have three children who have been are in the district or one who just graduated um and so um i just have ideas um for how i think the district could move forward um and so my first one in some of these have actually been shared um but i think it is definitely worth

085repeating um i definitely think the school district needs to look at data to look at discipline trends and ask the question are students of color disproportionately disciplined more than white students and look at suspensions and expulsions in particular um there is a lot of evidence for the school-to-prison pipeline and um you know i think sending the message to students even at the younger grades that they're not welcome by constantly suspending them or putting them out of the classroom doesn't make them feel welcomed and it doesn't help in their education process the other thing that i had down is to i encourage the district a district-wide examination and interrogation of implicit bias and how it impacts teaching connecting to students and how it also impacts discipline all of our brains are wired they're hardwired for bias

086and it's a way of quickly filtering information but that bias when it goes unchecked has very negative um implications and outcomes for our students and so i think that we can't shy away from the fact that there definitely is bias in the classrooms um and that it does have an impact on students and in particularly probably students of color i would challenge the district to also look at curriculum which has been stated tonight and look at culturally being more culturally responsive and teaching practices looking at data to see how students are performing and take ownership and commit to change there is an achievement gap and one thing that's disheartening as a parent is when the test scores come out and i'm told to disregard where my student is standing and if they're if they're in

087need of support and additional help that it's not there for them um and so time and time again i think that happens not only to me but to other parents and so you know looking at that and really making a change um looking at when you're looking at looking at curriculum one book in particular that i've been reading is called culturally responsive teaching in the brain by zaretta hammond and i can put it in the chat but she really does look at promoting authentic engagement and rigor among culturally and linguistically diverse students and i think that that is something that needs to be examined by administrators and teachers in the district uh we are currently in i am a social worker and i'm working in another district and that is a book study that we're

088doing with teachers it's voluntary but you have to take a stand and you have to do something different and you need to look at teacher and student engagement you need to look at teacher and parent engagement it's disheartening as a parent i always come to the table i'm always willing and ready to partner with the teachers and that is not always reciprocated um and i think that that needs to change in our district um and you know very simple thing with looking at culturally responsive uh teaching practices is do the classrooms even reflect the students that are being served in the classroom how do students know that they're welcome into the classroom does the curriculum reflect the students that are being served and we've already talked about the the fact that teachers don't look like

089the students that they're serving and so that needs to change and it needs to change right away um i love the fact that we that they have they're working with you amanda and that there's this equity and inclusion um position i think that needs to be a permanent position and one that is empowered um to hold the district and administrators accountable it's not worth having if there is not going to be power behind that position and so those were my ideas one thing that a quote that i'll end with is from ayana presley and it says those closest to the pain should be closest to the power and so i just want to say that i definitely appreciate the fact that um you're giving us this opportunity to speak tonight i hope that is not

090a one-time event and that this will continue on and that there really will be some real accountability in the district to make the change thank you thank you so much uh tamara for sharing and also i just i wrote down i try to get down everything you all are saying so i'm typing and listening at the same time and i just i really it struck me this idea that maybe you could you all could be offering yourselves as partners in the community to the school district in different capacities looking to partner with teachers and maybe that that's not being reciprocated and i just i have that down as just something i hadn't thought about and also i i like the ideas that have been again repeated worth repeating looking at curriculum um looking at the

091culturally responsive teaching and i love the question of how do students know that they're welcome what are the ways that that we make the students feel welcome in that space what is the what is the environment saying um and you know is it being reflected by the things that they see is it being reflected by the people that are their their teachers um and there's so many ways that that can be just blown open wide having different languages having people who look different and so that's just a lot to think about and are really beautiful ideas that i hope we can really put to action so thank you thank you again um and i have next shawnee thomas um or actually let's see if marquita are you there can we try you one more time

092can you hear me okay yes okay wonderful we can hear you okay i can't hear you oh you can't hear me we can hear you i hear you now okay all right well the floor is is all you okay okay thank you thank you guys for um having these conversations and also thank you for allowing me to speak um i'm going to share some experiences that are not all canal winchester related so ever had bricks thrown at you from the top of a garage and called the n-word and other racial slurs as you were leaving leaving work well my husband and i have have you ever had a company come to your home to do an assessment for an installation and they ask what did you do to get this home and refuse to do

093the assessment will we have has your child ever been sent to office because the teacher said that they look sneaky and proceeded to ask why don't they have any behavioral issues documented that has happened to my child in the canal winchester school district being black is not a weapon being black is not a disease being black is not a threat call all the you know everyone um just take a deep look inside yourself be honest with yourself and just see if you have had um any contributions to this racism and injustice and an inequality no race should ever feel superior over any other race and i think that it is a learned behavior especially when at the elementary level you have kids on the bus telling my children that my family is going to come

094over tase you stab you and beat the black off your faces that too happened in the canal winchester school district so we should ask ourselves what can we do to help make a positive change whether it's individually or collectively we need to educate ourselves on black history some of the exposure that some of you have with blacks are only social media or tv so maybe educate yourselves and on you know who black people are to the district if not already implement a diversity equity and inclusion council cultivate a district that support open dialogue on some of these difficult conversations hire more african-american teachers include black history in the curriculum celebrate black history month i know there's a cbi class where the children ask their parents or friends anybody to come in you know in the

095workforce to teach them about um you know different job types well celebrate having um black educators come in and speak black doctors lawyers whomever to speak about black history all administrators teachers employees should take online classes or so for diversity equity and inclusion so um in in in conclusion i would just um you know ask that we all try to create an atmosphere where everyone can feel um love and uh have that happy pet place and feel feel a belonging you know feel that you belong a lot of times we're at work for more hours at work than we are at home so you'd like to feel like it's a family i would like to see that in the community and it's going to start with the community i know a lot of these things

096have been said already but just create reiterated it a little bit and um i think that's all thank you thank you um thank you so much again i know i've said vulnerability time and time again for you all who've offered your stories and your experiences and and who you are and the things that you've been through and so marquita i just appreciate the honesty about what you've been through and your spouse and your your children um and the ugliness uh that we don't always get to see firsthand depending on who you are um and where you are um and so i just appreciate that i appreciate just us being able to hear you offer that um and also again those are concrete examples that you gave about experiences in the school district that are really

097really intense examples and so i have i have written them down um and again i appreciate you sharing about the challenges of you know your your child getting in trouble what because they look sneaky i'm not even sure i know what that means um but the idea that this is learned learned behavior and that we can unlearn it and that should be our priority is how we unlearn um our biases and the things that negatively impact our neighbor and our community so thank you so much all right i have next on our list um i have uh johnny thomas johnny are you available i'm here okay wonderful okay the floor is yours um so we have our children have been in the canal winchester school district their entire life so we have a second grader

098and then we also have a preschooler but our oldest son started out in preschool as well i had the opportunity to volunteer at indian trails last year um before kovit came and shut everything down so i was there um on a weekly basis uh working with some kids in the classroom in first grade so one thing that i can say that i noticed that was um disheartening was to see how some young black boys were treated by some other teachers and some of the things that we've already heard this evening so um you can just see the frustration with some of the teachers with having to deal with some of the young black boys and that some of the white children would be doing the same things but only the black kids would be reprimanded

099for that and one of the go-to disciplines disciplinary actions with that um seems to be pulling the child out of the classroom um and how does that help anything you're just setting them back you know even more so just as it's been mentioned this evening already looking at some ways of discipline that doesn't involve that as i'm entering or exiting the school and you know there's those one or two deaths that are uh sitting in the lobby and there's a child that's sitting there that's not allowed you know to be at recess or be at lunch with everyone else it's only ever a child of color that you see um sitting there um in general in in canal winchester um my husband and i have had discussions this summer of do we move away from

100canal winchester um so it's like uh fortunately unfortunately i joined some of the facebook groups over the summer um and being in some of those you are really exposed to who you are living around and what our community is truly um like so as mentioned the discussions that there have been about keeping the indians logo and it brings you to tears to to think about that protecting a logo like that is more important than protecting black lives um or the things that you know with the owners of harvest moon or employee as they're now saying um you know that type of thing like these are the people in our community this these are the parents and the teachers and everyone else that are in the schools um so somebody i mentioned earlier this evening um

101it has to be a partnership um with with the community um i think it was um at the beginning someone had mentioned as far as like the email that came out about the golf course that um upset me so much to see that email it there was like so much passion behind that email and what we need to do to save the golf course and again it's saving a golf course is more important than the school district even coming out and making a statement about all the awful things that have happened um recently and about the you know uh unjust killings of of black people so it's like they could take the time to do that but it's like who approved that like why was that okay um so that was you know definitely upsetting

102as far as suggestions um it's like everything everyone has already said having the diversity inclusion officer um implicit bias are definitely there um you see that every day you know helping people realize what their um privileges are um so you know not as eloquent as some of you all have been but definitely want to um thank you for the opportunity um to just share a little bit about what i have um witnessed while i've been here in canal winchester well thank you so much and and you you voiced yourself very well and are real and you brought you brought your realness to the table and that's what matters and i feel it i feel the passion that you've brought to the table and so we can we can second the good ideas all night and

103i've got i've got it written down and just the things that you've offered up uh shawnee about just what you've observed about how young black kids have been treated um and just really as taking a critical eye to disciplinary action um and then of course you know the email about the golf course and a few folks have referenced that tonight and um i just appreciate i appreciate you sharing even if we are you know folks are saying some of the same things it did that doesn't matter i i just appreciate you bringing up what's been on your mind um and that's gonna be something that i'm gonna take away um and that we're gonna take away at the school district leadership level um to inform the actions that will continue and i do also hope

104that we'll be able to do this again um have this form and i'll be reaching out to all of you um after after tonight um and i want to go ahead and allow uh cassandra davidson to take the floor all right can you hear me yes i can hear you all right um my name is cassandra davidson and i have been a resident of canal winchester since 1999. four of my children have already graduated from the district with two remaining one is in sixth grade and one is in fourth i have lived on both sides of the 33 divide and i've heard the racial and social economic comments judgments and stereotypes that have permeated the canal winchester community for years it does not mean that i am less than simply because of where i choose

105to reside within the district my four children have graduated canal winchester schools are far from less than and have gone on to have very successful careers and lives when you live in a free society you have to have a plan you can't be passive and ignorant many people say if you don't like it here in america or your town or wherever just leave however if you live here you fight for what is right and just like everything else in today's society education has also been made to become politically charged and politically polarized but the future of our children doesn't lie in political division it really lies in cohesiveness i'm not sure that many people are aware that last year i noticed a need within the two elementary schools and started a food pantry to assist

106with food insecurity that could lead to potential behavior problems i receive calls all the time on different needs within the community how to help somebody that's in need etc it's not because i can provide these services independently but it's because i have connections and resources to put people in places that can provide these resources cohesively with others um this was a little aside that was kind of shocking to me but last year i received a call from a teacher asking if there was a way to incorporate hair care teaching and resources into the school it's something simple that most white people would not consider needing extra education or assistance on but the amount of money that it takes to care for a person of color's hair and the amount of time that's put into hair

107care design upkeep is exorbitant but hair is a defining outward appearance on all of us and when you grow up conscious of the differences and are made fun of or the differences and the inability to pay for expensive hair care it affects a child for our generation times are evolutionary and somewhat revolutionary however to previous generations current times are ghostly haunting of history repeating itself and as for many black people this is the history they are all too familiar with making strides and then having it all stripped away not losing money in retirement funds or fallout from a bad experience or choice but by policies that are being stripped away or enacted in order to prevent future growth over the summer this has been mentioned there have been two public publicized instances of racial prejudice

108that have generated from community members i have concerns as we move forward that there is a potential for violence both in school and in the community as we move forward in this election process i think there are many of us who are pouring ourselves into the community its members and to try to create equal opportunities and fair treatment and in many other cases keep people healthy and alive and i'm a nurse as well and it's become utterly frustrating frustrating because i can't understand why someone would want to purposely hurt another or restrict someone for being the best version of themselves sometimes all it takes is for someone who doesn't have the best home life or opportunities to see that someone from the outside thinks they are special and worth something too um many people don't

109know we now employ an amazing social worker and that she is swamped almost every day we also employ english as a second language teacher due to the need of children who speak no english immigrating to the area we have a very diverse population now so it's not just black and white it's the incorporation of race and cultural diversity it must be encompassed in how we conduct and build our community for the future it's very easy for someone to condemn race racial cultural sexist or socioeconomic differences if they grow if they have grown up in the same town never wait away to college or never move to a new area the depth of their growth the knowledge becomes tainted and shallow and they really can't provide positive input to ideas for innovation and growth potential it

110also leaves a lack of empathy that are able to provide when they are looking at someone or a situation and jump to negative conclusions before even knowing or understanding the situation um they had talked about the divide some canal winchester council members would like to keep a large portion of the canal winchester students from students from receiving our taxpayer-funded vendor scholarship to maintain the city's heritage these are also our students no matter where they live and probably the ones where if they received a scholarship would mean the difference between a choice of colleges or even going to college itself i also believe that black history needs to be taught at all times with regards to literature historical and scientific contributions not just a superficial touch of black history much month in february social reform social

111justice court cases laws all need to be incorporated into our teachings we must do away with the white sanitized version in the current curriculum no political agenda just facts the history that we are programmed to learn is not fully exposed i understand there's a fine line with what you can do in the k-12 setting but there has to be more i think as we move forward we need to monitor all instances of implicit bias and microaggressions at all level and deal with them swiftly and appropriately it's hard to relate to many situations as white people because many have not endured a fraction of what pocs have however as white allies we all need to do is listen and band together with our poc brothers and sisters and create change that is needed my two youngest

112children are biracial and when the riots started this summer my older one saw a video of a resource kind of officer attack a boy from behind and she asked if that could happen to her if she was allowed to fight back and i was kind of perplexed i blew it off and i could tell she was upset when she left the room so i called her back and i asked why and i said that wouldn't happen to you everybody knows you everybody loves you and she replied you don't know that and started to cry i was like why would you think that everyone loves you and she said it's she started to compare her skin tone to mine and said she didn't think she was too dark she might be okay but it was because

113she was black um when my friend is a lithopoulos councilwoman and the summer for the first time ever she was spit on as she crossed the street by a man in a truck who was chewing tobacco a recent social media post stated a woman at the canal winchester kroger was called the n-word in a parking lot as a car drove by and shouted out the window during today's canal winchester chat meeting franklin county public health director lisa dent announced that she and the chat team will be presenting before the canal winchester council on racism as a public health crisis on november 2nd um there are multiple forums for everybody to become involved in greater canal winchester community action team and the chat team for franklin county public health um i think that this definitely is

114something that has to continue um it has to continue at every level and we all have to to bond together here during this time well thank you so much cassandra and um i have i've taken some some notes you you squeezed in quite a bit um i know you you got through quite a bit and i just appreciate you reiterating uh various things i did just want to pluck out i i heard you talk about the food pantry and hunger and security um for students who uh don't have and um that's a beautiful that's just beautiful work um and something that we also need to be thinking about is uh just hunger and poverty in our area um and also just really critically thinking about policies that prevent future growth for minoritized groups of people

115um and so and also just i think you also said really beautifully the fact that diversity work that it's not just a black and white issue and that's something that folks have brought up a lot it's not just a black and white issue um dealing with racism in america is multi-leveled and has lots of intersectionalities um and so we also recognize that we have more students who are not english speaking as their first language and that that's something to take into consideration as we look at the big picture for what do we vision is yes having uh incorporating black history everywhere all the time alongside all of these other things that you know have to do with religious diversity that we're seeing uh language diversity that we're seeing differently abled students neurodiversity lgbtq plus and

116making it safe for those students who are lgbtq plus and their families um and so all of those things are so many different levels so i appreciate you uh for bringing that for bringing that back to the table again um and so i wanted to see i didn't see eric uh eric mcgee are you are you here tonight i don't think he's here so we'll have to go on to the next person uh leah hi there hi yes i had to switch to my phone so it's a smaller screen um but i just wanted to say i'm i'm a new fairly new person to canal winchester i've been we've been we moved here four years ago my daughter just graduated uh this past may as is um from kanawha winchester high school and we have

117a sophomore um enrolled now um so i just wanted to start with a very non-technical vigil visual aid i don't know if everyone can see that but that's a really old picture from over a hundred years ago and you can probably see that there's white and black children in a in a class photo and that photo is actually from the city where my maternal family comes from which is called renville ohio and it was a coal mining town and what was unique about it was that the owner of the mine decided that he was going to pay his black mind workers the same as his white mind workers and what that did is it brought an equality into the town that even my older cousins who were now in their 70s and 80s didn't experience

118any kind of racial discrimination until they came moved to columbus in their you know middle school or high school years so i i just bring that up because we know that there is systematic racism in the world and racial there's a racial opportunity gap which really is partly i believe knowledge base where a person or a group of people may not have the knowledge that they need to get from a to z and there's also part of that opportunity gap is just that there's you know discrimination in the world but what i would like to focus on is giving our students the holistic knowledge and skills to be able to compete and that's more than just book knowledge you know it's an understanding of how the system works and what they need to do to

119be successful in the in our world and i think it really um happens with the help um just like way back then it was uh leadership um instituting um that the i want things things are going to be different here and i think that that's what can happen in canal winchester and it's just a combination of the district and teachers and and community businesses and professionals and parents saying we want to give our students the best platform to launch into the world and so um you know we recognize that parents want the best for this their children but they may not have all the information or the even the awareness of what they need to help get their their students to what they need so um i was really excited last year i sat in

120a meeting um in the cafeteria and they talked about the three e's framework the enrollment enlistment education that's already uh part of the in the district and um i didn't hadn't heard about the concept for until last year and my daughter was already a senior but i thought wow that's that's a really cool concept um but i really wish we were talking about it a little bit sooner and just a quick example is like me and my husband both kind of grew up you know with not a lot of money in our houses but when i was younger in elementary school and i would come home with a bad grade you know my grandma would be like you're not going to get into college with those kind of grades so it was a thing you

121know concept in my mind early that i was going to college i mean you just implant that concept early my husband on the other hand nobody talked to him about college until he was a senior in high school and it was an aunt from somebody that you know didn't even live in his house so we both ended up going to college but my point is talking to students and and talking to them about their future early can really help them become interested talking asking them what kind of challenges that they see in their world that they would like to solve can get them thinking early about what they need to do and start asking the questions and getting excited kids are really smart so they they want to help they want to be contributors and

122i guess so my point is that how how can we supplement our students as a community show them what it's needed to get into college what it's like the same with enlistment and employment if that's their their goal you know job clubs and having a holistic community come together and take them in as you know as mentors or you know shadowing opportunities or just help them along where they can and i know that we have a future business leaders of america club at the high school level but you know even starting back into the middle school or having the high schoolers reach back and things like that i think can really bring people along and we just want to be able to say that we've given our canal winchester kids the information it's up to

123them to take the initiative sometimes but just having the information i think is is a key point a july 2020 fortune magazine said that closing the gap in employment and education can help the black unemployment rate lift communities ensure black americans are proportionally represented throughout the entire workforce and i truly believe that my heart is in careers and career development and helping people along and i think if all races uh learn to work together we just kind of get along better so that's all i had to offer well thank you so much leah um just for i think that that connection between uh just education and and employment and thinking about how to support students at an earlier time uh towards sort of goal setting and visioning like picturing where they want to go and

124supporting them in that and really getting that information to them in different ways uh earlier on than senior years that's that's late um to be getting that information um college education and or enlistment um uh or whether you know they're gonna be jot looking for a job um being able to support them in that is huge for like economic development for minoritized groups and so i appreciate you lifting that up um and really i think just lifting up the success for empowering our young people um let's take a look here i have mr white jerome white i know you're here hi you're five minutes you just need to unmute yourself now there you are there we go can you hear me i can thank you so much this this has been such an enlightening experience

125i'm the elder i think i'm probably the oldest parent uh i'll be 65 in january i remember um you know growing up during the times when we had a lot of uh unrest you know part of the 60s and the 70s and um i was a we were trying to do a student exchange from the black community students from the white community coming to a black high school and black students going to the white high school and i remember opening up a textbook and i knew immediately that there was a disparity because they had colored pictures and i knew that at my high school all of our pictures were black and white so i knew that our book was published and we had books that were published like maybe 10 years but you know before

126we actually you know got to partake but uh listening to everyone it gives me great hope because we have touched on many many areas there's a huge elephant in the room and i think it's only fair to all of us that we continue to push the envelope we continue to raise our voice i'm hoping that we will have this opportunity again and and build on this i think as a community in reference to our school system and reaching out to those in the community and having various festivities that will give uh um insight to um other cultures you know i know that we have a couple events that take place in canal winchester uh i think we need to expand on that so that um you know a rib fest or something of that nature

127a jazz rib fest to bring in diversity um you know it's it's important to me because i have uh i believe in education i believe in the foundation of education my mother had a sixth grade education she raised uh it was 11 of us it was a blended family she raised eight of us my mother's claim to fame was eight high school diplomas on her mantle we were first generation college from that eight um one of my brothers started his own business um i along with three other siblings we went to college i went into health care which is a another form of disparity in terms of people of color in their health but um but we found out at least our mother understood even though she had a sixth grade education she understood how

128important it was to not have a repeat cycle we all grew up on welfare and she did not want any of her children to have a repeat cycle so out of the those eight children my mother had uh close to 30 grandchildren out of that 30 grandchildren 15 of them have college degrees five of them have master's degrees and so it's a continuing process and then i have a young son a 10 year old okay and um he's attending winchester trail and i've spoken to the principal i've spoken to some of the faculty and some of my concerns and some of those issues have been brought up as far as staff and development as far as creating diversity in the classrooms reaching out to our students so that they have representation that is so important

129for our children to see teachers of color and i'm so happy that uh mr bruford is is a black male teacher because that is so important you know i had said that if the school can look at their staffing and increase uh their staffing to um 10 to 15 percent and include in each building at least one male black male teacher you know whatever i think that would make a huge difference um there are many many areas that have been covered uh i don't need to go back over that but i'll just share this i remember seeing a post about illustration in terms of the illustration in our children's books about one percent you may see native americans about maybe three percent you may see asian americans 10 percent you may see african-american 25 animals

130and 50 percent caucasian so it's all how we present what we're truly trying to create and if we're honestly serious about making change then we have to hear the voices who are speaking among themselves the african-american families that i've spoken to who have children in the school district we talked about the third grade reading test because we understand the prison pipeline we talked about the uh implicit biases um ready to label your child iep okay um because they exhibit some kind of aggressive behavior so i know there's a lot of work to be done but um this is a great beginning and i really am inspired by the speakers uh i'm going to definitely share this i've coached for over 30 years i coach primarily in columbus city public schools because i believe giving back

131to the community i work with young men and women of children at risk and trying to help them see a pathway to success so i just want to thank you for creating this uh conference is it's just been very moving and thank all those who have uh added to this here um experience well thank you so much mr way um and it is now the eight o'clock hour uh we've filled up our our two hours i'm i'm happy to go over time a little bit if you all are okay with going over a little bit um not another hour just like maybe another few minutes for the last speaker um and maybe uh any additional points at the end before i close us out um but i just i just want to share mr white

132thank you so much i know you offered up being the oldest the oldest parent and um i just there's so much wisdom in age and i just appreciate you sharing your family and the stories and your insights as well even if you did second uh some things that other folks said again i think that they need to be said and um you just offered up you know where you came from your mother and and her strength and um i just so appreciate that um and just to get us uh get us out um i want to um give the floor to mike if mike are you ready all right okay can you hear me okay mr white by the way you're not the oldest one here and by the way your mom seems to be

133my hero now i mean that really got to me what i would like to see from this as i don't have any more to add because i'm just learning from all this i i can thank you all because i'm learning and i'm not too old to learn about all this and um what i want to see is to is to become a non-adversarial society where for example mr white can come to me say mike did you know what you just said or do you know what you just did and i'd say no i didn't he said well you're wrong and here's why and we can have that discussion and that's the only way for us to learn because we become adversarial we have this site in this site nothing gets done we've got to meet

134in the middle and pull the wagon the same direction i want to see a human growth i want to see us find a way to rethink our habits for example when somebody said you people my wife yells at me all the time when i say you and your people with her family it's it's nothing more than just stupid habit so and i would never use that outside but again you don't think when you're doing that i want somebody to say to me hey did you know and and that's the kind of thing what i want to see is self-sustaining growth for all of us and that's all i really want and i want to really chew on this i really think about this so that i'm on the school board and a 43-year educator so

135that i can improve and get better in my last number of years so it's good for all of us and miss hout i really enjoyed your talk it was amazing to me so i'm done basically so i just want to say i've i've took notes i've i listened to everybody and and that's the key is learning to listen wonderful thank you so much mike um and i do want to go back to evangela to discuss we had someone who couldn't make it um but arnetta did send her thoughts along so angela if you don't mind sharing what those are sure um arnetta was not able to make it today she's a social worker and she had a crisis with one of the kids that she um represents and um she just most of the things

136that she talked about um were covered the only two things that she that i didn't really hear covered and maybe they were um but the one thing was that um her kids tell her often that they feel that they're not included in activities for the school that they're often overlooked and that um they they're targeted for being aggressive when trying to share their views with the staff and the other thing that she said is the kids don't feel like they're in safe zones to express themselves on many racial matters such as why they don't want to stand for the national anthem and how they fear getting kicked off the team if they don't um so i just wanted to just throw those two things out those are the two things that she mentioned other than

137everything else we've talked about and um that's all i wonderful thank you um just i just added those things to my list about young people kids feeling unsafe and sharing um or being targeted for being too aggressive when they just are sharing their thoughts or not standing for the national anthem um and what what can we do to create safe space for these young people um amanda there's one thing i don't know that everyone knows about but um it's something i've experienced and i call it systematic racism and i'm not sure if it's that or what it could be um but that's what he said about the ieps um i often get kids and they're white and black um so it affects all kids it doesn't just affect black kids but it may affect black

138kids more and that's meds being categorized as adhd or add and having ieps it prevents them from jobs it prevents them from getting in the military it slows their their ability to expand their life after they graduate just because of that record that they have and i don't know if we know that or people knew that but i didn't find that out until i started having kids in that category and i think a lot of the 80 80 80d and adhd is a lack of activity that these kids don't have because they're just in class with no ability to have recesses or get out and get that energy out but i didn't know if we knew that or not and i don't think we touched on that yes that's that's actually another really important piece

139of over diagnosing i like to call it over diagnosing minoritized groups of kids with particular things like add and adhd and the things that go along with inhibiting their growth their their education and then their future uh down the line and i i appreciate you sharing that as well so i i've got that on my list um and so just you know to continue to be respectful of your time i do want to just go ahead and close this out of this conversation this has been an amazing conversation um i am so overwhelmed and just touched by each and every one of you and your your vulnerability your frankness your intelligence your insight and feedback i have taken notes this is something that mr sotler and i uh we'll we'll discuss and i i will

140be reaching out to this group and also we'll be thinking about future events um it seems like you know just for my first take that this was something that was really um positive for each of you as well um having this forum to lift up your voice and to hear from other people and to connect in this way um so that will not go unnoticed um that's something that i have put a pin in for us to continue uh with the district um and so i just want to say where where do we go from here um mr sotler and i we have decided that this is definitely a season of gathering information from you from the community so right now we are going to continue to listen and gather information so that may look

141like future events um and also we're doing the same with teachers through the feedback they've given me from their education and then also looking at what you all have brought up today what kind of data might be important for us to be gathering right now so that will inform our actions that we'll be taking over the next year and then into the future like we all have said this is definitely a marathon this is going to be lots and lots of work on many levels um so my hope is to incorporate the things that the community brings to the table into the actions that we will take together in the district so i just want to say again we will reach out to the community and to you all with ways to stay involved and

142ways to stay engaged so look for us in your email um and all that i i'm gonna be debriefing via email with each of you so i just wanna again say thank you um and just send you all out with lots of like just blessing and and goodness um and just all of the warmth that i can muster virtually since we're not in person please stay safe each and every one of you um and please stay healthy uh during these times um and i just honor the the history that you brought to the table yourselves your stories your children and mr sotler do you have anything you'd like to say just to close this out yeah first of all i just want to say thank you to all of the participants tonight it was an

143amazing conversation the only way that we can make change is by having open dialogue and with this open dialogue we're going to go back amanda and i and we're going to talk about what's going on what what we heard from here because this is just not a one-and-done deal this is something that will be meaningful purposeful intentional and lasting for our school district because i truly believe in empowering all students for success academically socially behaviorally the whole way around so to me this is very important got a lot of great ideas and i'm very appreciative for everyone who opened up tonight um and telling us your stories and giving us some great advice too so we'll take all this information it like amanda said this is a marathon not a sprint um i i got

14410 pages of notes that i took so my hands a little tired i don't type very well so i have to write but a lot of great information again thank you everyone i i wish everyone a great evening stay healthy out there and uh if you're buckeye fans let's go bucks on saturday how about that end on something positive wonderful all right um and you log out by the leave red button on the bottom right of the screen um thank you all again bye take care