School Board Meeting (1/7/21)

001sounds good all right corvallis school board meeting is called to order for january 7th 2021 and this is our first board meeting for the year so exciting and i want to acknowledge and thank our community members who are joining us uh first our item on our agenda is the pledge of allegiance if you're willing and able please join me for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all let the records show that we have all our board members with the exception of uh director tina baker who couldn't join us today uh due to uh emergency reasons and uh also i want to acknowledge that due to social distancing

002protocols and the distance connection some of our board members will not be able to join us through the camera all the time so they will be participating through audio and they might connect over the camera if they could uh today we do it is a special meeting which means uh public comments period will not be here however we value public input and we appreciate it we ask we ask you to participate through public comments over email by emailing the board or or by phone or register for the public comment period for the next meeting next thursday when you go to meet the board you will be able to find the information related to how to participate in public comments period also if you go to corvall school board meet to the board you'll find the

003agenda and the packets and for those who are watching we will be referring to so many documents so i encourage those who are watching to go to the packets and navigate through the documents we have today in our agenda we have a work session uh with the promise scholarship related to racial equity and also we do have on the edge and after that's a consolidated action regarding chs solar uh the solar panels and the playground equipment and on the agenda topic i see uh director adams needs to be recognized for what reason you want to be recognized thank you um i would say i'd like to move that we move item number five consolidated action to the front of the agenda to allow staff to get home in a reasonable time because we'll the board

004will be discussing equity and and we will be here probably at a late hour thank you without objection uh so now we will have the first item on the agenda is the consolidated action so do uh any of our board member have a question or want to pull out uh well a question about any of the items the chs solar panel or plague ground equipment and as a reminder uh the items under this portion of the agenda are for action vince so i would just well really a comment and a request the first comment is just the the solar project at chs is just immensely exciting and members of the community are very excited about this project and because sustainability is a front and center a priority for me as a board member i just

005really appreciate the district's emphasis and wenaha's emphasis on ensuring sustainability is front and center in the bond bond work so thank you very much and you guys have done a great job of keeping the board educated on this particular project so i don't have any questions i just i just wanted to applaud this work the other is a request you know i have to confess you know when i worked at osu i would go to league of oregon cities uh conference or i would go to association of oregon counties conference and there were these these playground equipment vendors and i was loved looking through the catalogs and sometimes they would actually give me the catalog and i would take them home my kids would literally shop for playground equipment it was just amazing thing is

006there any way that the board can get any renderings or design drawings or just something around or can you point us to somewhere on the internet where those drawings are at about what this playground equipment will look like i have the images up if you're interested if i can show them i don't know if that's feasible in this medium here uh absolutely i believe maybe uh if lindsay could uh give you a co-host or uh sharing author ability and if you don't mind uh vince i'll add to his suggestion that uh if you could speak to any accessibility and equity features or elements to the design while you show us the renderings uh that's something i am personally curious about as well kim would you narrate while i uh while i do the slides dude

007yes i will okay and do i need to do anything to become the presenter you should be able now to click on share screen and choose this got it okay are you seeing the image yeah we are this is great okay this is the husky one it excuse me did i say the wrong one yeah oh yeah you're right thank you ken and um i will scroll through it there's a few different views of of this particular layout so one of the um things that has occurred here is that we really wanted to make sure that we had enough play equipment we have one playground some of our elementary schools have more than one playground dividing uh primary and intermediate and so we felt it important to make sure that we had enough features that

008kids could spread out and have plenty of physical options and so um let's go back to one of the other views and start there so um the the uh this item here yes can you point to the whole is it called the glider and that is a feature that's one of the the accessibility features so this is can be accessed from a ramp so it can um support a student who has ambulatory um differences it could have support a wheelchair a walker and it is actually a an item that a ton of kids can get on so kids will crowd on that they can stand on the outside there where you see the ledge and they can get on the inside also and it rocks back and forth and it's it's uh body powered right

009so the students rock it and it's it's a pretty fun feature and we went with a lot of different options we got feedback from students about what they uh dreamed about for their playground and tried to uh dr kwemps actually synthesized that feedback and made sure that we got some features that were really identified by students so um this area um is not as natural as looking like it's not logs and rocks but um keep in mind that we've got this other area that that can be accessed it gives kids an opportunity to spread out even further and if you can click to the uh boulder so this boulder is also accessible it has a roll-up area where we could this could be an area for eating lunch it could be an area to roll

010up and talk with your friends or climb on and we've also got the logs depicted in the background um not every student wants to play the same so this gives some area for running on the tiles we selected the tiles over engineered wood fiber what we hear at our other elementary schools is that the engineered wood fiber walks away and into the classroom regularly and staff are continually having to break the engineered wood fibers back into place so we're going with this fall protection tile for more usability and less maintenance we also as a district spend a lot of money filling up our fall protection annually so the life this is a little bit more expensive on the installation but over the life of it is actually going to be cheaper okay you want to

011look at husky so husky has a uh more tree inspired design and again we featured the glider so that we'd have that same accessible option and it's got a lot of the same features just a different color and we've got the boulder right on the same tiled surface but um there's a little bit less flexibility on the hoover site but we still managed to get some space we we will have lots of um different options the twirly bars are often a highlight so you'll see those um horizontal bars for for doing flips lots of swings so we made sure to incorporate swings um but i think are there any questions i'm not sure what else ryan one thing i would add is just um as you saw in the write-up that um we are using

012some contingency funds to do this um we had an initial um design and it just didn't necessarily feel to us like there was enough um enough available on play structure so that's why we made that recommendation and aren't bringing this forward to you because it feels to me um like it actually feels fills the playground which is oftentimes something that gets value engineered out of new schools um because of cost and it's sort of near the end of the project and that just didn't feel um feel right to me as a principal about a new fairly new school that had their fundraise for additional play equipment we just wanted to get it done right and get it done at the beginning so i'm excited about it i really feel like that was a good decision

013that we made i also want to point out how much our playgrounds are used by the community after hours also and so we really have emphasized our schools as a community hub and i think this just reinforces that and supports that value beautiful any other questions from board members terese so you have a question yeah thank you sammy my question is so related to the cost um i don't have uh the original numbers in front of me but how much more are we investing in these structures than what we originally anticipated um at um at husky it's about 129 000 and at lincoln it's 140 000 and those contingency dollars that were mentioned are coming out of the existing project budget so we're not we're not increasing the overall project budgets to fund these okay

014so is it displacing something else in the existing project or is it just that okay great um and so uh and then the top the the ground the covering um sorry the tiles as opposed to the wood i totally agree with that those others are they are a pain they get in everything um what's the cost difference between uh using the tiles versus the um you know the other for the for the for the floor for the ground yeah it if our car cam this is off the top of my head it's in the double range okay for that element so it's a it's a that's an upgrade yes yes okay uh sammy i actually would like to comment on you talked about equity you asked about that and one of the things that i

015want to point out that oftentimes we see value engineering and we go with a basic playground knowing and expect ptas to fundraise for playground equipment and that is just not an equitable model that we wanted to enforce in this situation and so um we wanted to make sure that our schools all students had equal access to play facilities and this is how we ensure that beautiful beautiful this is good thank you i'd like to speak to the glider um i've been on the glider before with students and it's awesome and it is it is the definition of an inclusive piece of equipment as opposed to an accessible piece of equipment it's amazing nice i can't wait to play on it me too we should have a play date when things uh are permissive and hopefully

016that will be permissive when this is uh up there um so uh any other questions so this is kind of a hard question we've had a little bit of controversy with synthetic uh play surfaces in the past and i'm just can you talk to what the these tiles are made of and if any outgassing is possible i know that so there are members of our community that are concerned about that and i know that this is from a company that builds structures for children i have to i would i hope that they had already thought about but can you speak to that at all i don't know that i am able to speak to that right now i but i um and they are on a state contract and and i the vendor is the

017manufacturer and so i could get you more information on that event dale do you have any information on that i'm sorry i do not this is this that's the same product that you'll see at garfield and i think some of you are right and municipalities and and you know counties all over the country are using these materials it's just that i'm i'm i'm just anticipating that that question may come up and so if we could just have that information in hand what what's what are these tiles made out of and what if any you know chemicals and what are the levels yeah we could we can provide an update on that um i will tell you that um from it's been about a decade since i looked into it but these were more sustainable than

018the port in place um rubber surfacing and so but we can definitely update on that great thank you so much we have we have a question from lou yeah i was um kind of wondering about the swing safety um like i seen regular swings is that at all the schools um yes we have um you're talking about the bays of swings yes we have them at all of our schools um this will be the first playground that we put the rubber tiles underneath the swings okay i mean more of the actual swings themselves i'm asking like my child actually has a permanent scar from the swings on her face for that garfield and so i'm just kind of curious about that level of safety considerations with the swings because accidents happen you know and so

019yeah um so injuries can happen on swings and i i will tell you that some of the conversation we had in designing our play equipment was about students being able to have uh all kinds of different experiences and swinging is really important to a group of our kids who need that back and forth motion and they are very popular and so one of the things that we've looked at to mitigate some of those safety issues is how is visibility and supervision around the swings around all the pieces of equipment um but i i do know that there are inherent risks with swings but um i think we decided that they were such a desired piece that it was worth the the um extra supervision that is necessary thank you i was just kind of curious

020if there was any like with newer equipment because the ones that lincoln are quite old if there is any you know like kind of safety things that are part of the structure itself the more they sit back if they get hit with them could they get a laceration that kind of stuff oh okay so um they are rubber seat swings i believe um but we could get some more information on that these are pretty standard swing sets that we use in the district now one of the things that's really important is for us to keep on top of inspections to make sure that the seats are still in good condition that the chains are not um degrading and that especially the s hooks at the top that they connect to so awesome thanks kim i

021really love the thought that you all put in there and um and thinking about tracking back it also comes home those wood chip thingies shoes so i know i have i had lots in my car over the many years of being a parents and in the house i appreciate that all the thought you all are putting into this um my small child is going to be sad to not see the hot tub she suggested which i told her was not going to be there thank you but an interesting comment is that most every classroom had somebody suggest a water slide for the playground we couldn't pull it off though she wanted to see the drawings of the water slide in the hot tub so this is wonderful other comments questions we have one from vince

022well no i was going to see if you wanted to entertain a motion can i ask actually one more question uh weather conditions uh because i've heard about uh uh the building of uh husky uh in the 60s uh i i've heard from the community they say california designer and they did not think about the rain for the building so are we making sure that the weather conditions uh this is going to be durable with weather conditions in oregon absolutely okay it will be it is good and so we have thought about weathering conditions also you know we have a really fantastic covered play area that comes with both of our new schools actually all of our elementary schools will end up with covered play areas um and we also chicken to consider not only

023the wet and the cold but also the hot trying to make sure that we don't end up with metal slides that will burn students and things like that wonderful wonderful good this is perfect uh vince what's your emotion well with great appreciation i moved to approve consolidated action do i hear a second a second second i think teresa was the sad first second right so it's been moved by vincent's second by therese to approve consolidated action do we have any further discussion on the motion i want to remark uh my deep appreciation for this work we're doubling capacity for a solar energy helping our buildings to be sustainable but also have a good stewardship of community and taxpayer money and also i want to say the appreciation of increased investments in the playground that is

024responsible and that knows the uh the beauty of investing in playgrounds it pays a huge dividend which is a whole child so thank you for doing this work and on that note uh let's take a roll volvo say i if you agree nay if you don't uh on the motion to approve consolidate action uh director adams aye director conroy hi finger mcdonald aye director jones aye director white there hi the chair what's i passes congratulations and thank you very much and thanks uh vince for giving kim and dale uh the rest of their evenings as a break from us so the rest of your evenings without watching us doing the work for the work session so thanks have a good evening bye-bye all right with that's now the next item on the agenda is uh

025the promise scholarship work session to highlight this is oh okay um i got logged out from then from this one i can still see you okay um okay so how about uh uh you unmute or uh yeah let me i apologize can you hear me can you still hear me okay never mind so i think the owl's still good okay i just got an error that's uh i shouldn't bother with uh so uh with that we'll continue that we have a promise scholarship work session uh which is generously sponsored and supported by osba it's helped us to do professional development and also give us funds to award for students in the district the school board has done work on mental health and social emotional uh learning in the past year and now we're focusing on

026uh public engagement and also most importantly uh racial justice and investing in a and our our time in systemic change that uh addresses racial justice uh so with that i want to hand it in to ryan and also we have kristin miles and marcianne yeah thank you sammy so tonight is um the second of three meetings that we'll have this year um where christian's been able to join us as well as marcian and so tonight the focus will um keeping in mind you know the the intention is to bring us towards further development of our equity policy and so tonight we'll be doing some learning together and also have the opportunity to review some other policies from across the northwest uh actually across the country um i think baltimore is included in there as well

027but some equity racial equity policies um and again to sort of make some considerations about how we want to move forward in our final meeting together and so with that i'm going to turn it over to um with gratitude to uh kristen and marcianne for their work to put together the information to be shared tonight hi everybody thank you thanks for having me back and as always it's it's a pleasure to see you a pleasure to work with you and it's been absolutely lovely collaborating with marcianne um behind the scenes i told ryan i want to write books with your staff um you have you have a great staff i love working with you all um so i'm going to hand it over to marcianna in a minute but i want to just check in

028and say did everybody get a chance to do their homework that we assigned if any board's going to be prepared it's going to be you all wonderful so we won't need to give any sort of like half hour breaks to catch up in the meantime but um i know we've got a lot to go through so i'm going to hand it over to marcianne to get us started and we'll uh we'll be doing a text protocol a little bit later great thank you kristen and it's just been such an honor to work with you um i look forward to our phone calls in our virtual planning meetings so thank you so much everybody good evening it's just an honor and a privilege to be here with you once again i was reflecting before uh logging

029into zoom today the last time we were together um and that was with our community members but prior to that was our august retreat so um i know a lot has happened in the last several months so i just want to thank you and to also just um thank you from the bottom of my heart for this for this topic tonight it's something i'm incredibly passionate about and if corvallis can't do it i don't think anybody else can so here we go um so kristen and i actually have um i think the content for tonight um we could do it would literally take several days but we wanted to highlight some pieces and we're going to be talking a little bit later around our purpose for tonight so um and we'll share that slide in

030just a second but really my intention with all of you tonight is really to create a place for community um to create space for reflection so i hope that near you near your desk you have a writing utensil and you have some paper because we're going to get you to spend some time writing and reflecting and sharing so thank you for that and i think before we start parker would you mind uh starting the powerpoint if that's okay there we go yes all right next slide parker thank you there we go um so um like i mentioned earlier a lot has happened over the last several months um and so here i wanted to just spend a couple of moments giving you some time to think about your experiences this year as a board particularly

031since we started this racial equity work with you in august and i think about this visual as something that is very um it visualizes really the the embracing of the past um in order to help us inform the future so really thinking about what are we doing today um and so what i want you to do is just take a moment to think about what the board has done over the last several months around racial equity okay and um uh sammy did talk a little bit earlier around the your board goals which is community engagement and the racial equity work racial justice so be so thinking about your board goals um the the time that you've had an opportunity to engage in the protocol and we're going to be talking about that in a moment

032the times where you've listened to community members when we had some delta parents our state some safe students come and present the time that you've had in the school renaming process as well as the sip the school improvement presentations from our amazing leaders at the elementary and secondary level so as you think about the work that you've done we know that our racial equity journey doesn't end it's something that just keeps on going and we add every single day a page to our racial equity autobiography through our beliefs our feelings our thoughts and our actions so what we want you to do we want to invite you to just take a few moments and do a personal reflection and here's the question i'm going to ask you what are your personal reflections so far this

033year and how racial equity has shown up or not in its coherence with board goals so what did you hear from leaders what did you hear from the community so again just take a moment just maybe a minute and a half to reflect on your year so far as a board member and how racial equity has shown up in the work that you've done so we're going to give you about a minute minute and a half to do that and then we'll come back together take about another 30 seconds okay all right so as we come back together lindsay would you um mind uh taking the powerpoint off thank you parker all right so hopefully that was enough time um so i'd like to open it up to board members that would like to share

034their reflections what comes up for you as you think about your racial equity work as a board so far i mean i'm happy to go first and i usually when i whenever i do this type of work i always think macro and get get at a more granular level so i was thinking macro and you know i'm i'm went back to the beginning of the year and i remember suggesting to this board that we take up an anti-racism resolution like other districts in the state have done and i've just been i've been consistently proud of this board because um this board rejected that notion that action was more important than just taking up a resolution that was that would just be words we're not we're not interested in hand waving we're interested in actually doing

035work and right on the heels of that we took up the the school renaming resolution but you know one thing that has really struck me this year is how the energy around racial justice social justice work has changed um in our community we feel much more more galvanized since in the community at the state in state agencies where there's much more support for doing this work and nationally i mean clearly there's a movement and i i've really noted the shift from equity we've been talking about equity for a decade now to anti-racism which is a different thing and there's just so much more so much more um energy there and what goes along with that is that we're also feeling some resistance and so we have to have the courage to stay with this work

036and help folks that don't understand um yet to come along and what they need to learn thank you vince others yeah i would just um i agree with what what vince is saying and i i cite a couple of examples are uh the task force to rename our schools as one example of an area that i think we really worked to address issues related to racial equity also um addressing uh the representation of columbus day through another resolution looking at making sure that we are recognizing our um the the literal geographic roots of the area that we occupy in this space and calling attention to that and uh director white bear's leadership in that process was um you know it was instrumental in bringing that to fruition i think those are two examples that i'm

037particularly proud of for this year uh and i believe that those are examples that have a powerful effect to a spillover effect and that we're bringing those examples of leadership our staff are empowered to speak out to align themselves in their classroom content and experiences with what they understand the boards but their vision to be and also but also our proactive uh steps it's not just a goal on a piece of paper but these are actions we're taking that are not necessary to make the district function from from day to day or to fulfill our responsibilities to provide super uh supervision to the superintendent um these are are things that go deeper than that and i i hope and i think the feedback we've gotten from the community is that they see that as um

038as something beyond just um what the board is is responsible to do at its base but that these are these are our efforts to grow deeper roots um around issues of racial equity all right thank you teresa that was real powerful others um so i was thinking about sort of the sort of movement from the past into the future and how we've been i feel like if you know with all the things that have been mentioned already um you know the not doing a resolution the the renaming task force the indigenous people's day resolution um those are all things where we've considered experiences and voices about what's where we've been and we're looking at taking that and making changes so that as we move forward we're doing that embracing those experiences from the past and

039using them to create a district and an environment for our students that is is better for everyone um and so i think that you're sort of using those voices and experiences and and acting on it and not just giving it lip service has been really a positive thing thank you sarah i would jump in to say that that uh i'm a little more on the concrete i appreciate all those things that have been mentioned i also really want to say i appreciate lou and the extra nudge of of sensitivity and awareness that she has brought for me so thank you lou a lot things that i would point to concretely on the positive side include just our look at uh advanced class ap class access uh as a maybe a note of what's that about

040and and what can we do about it to to uh to encourage more students of color or backgrounds different uh that that we can get them into those classes um i appreciated uh the sharing from chs about what their graduates of color said about their experience because i can just picture that staff getting an aha moment of wow this is an awareness that we maybe didn't have so i think that's really good to get that feedback um to them um and and then the ability to maybe hire some new staff members of color that i'm personally aware of that i think will be great assets to at least in my particular case the chs area so hooray my puzzle or question so not everything works out fine for me is is how anti-racism slash equity

041plays out in the discussion around our elementary schools and the math uh offerings i don't quite yet still understand the the um recalibration or not offering perhaps i'll call it uh advanced math or some higher level of math at some of those grade levels and how that plays out i'm not saying i'm critical i just i don't quite understand it so i think there's a heads up there that maybe we need to look at but i appreciate the work that's been done and thanks to marcian for her leadership i feel really good about getting awareness so thank you jay and i would just piggyback on jay's example um of the the things that he's talking about are things he learned more about during our school presentations and just to think about the way that those

042have happened the previous years that i've been here probably the previous years aaron was here and so it's probably happened like that for a long time where it was individual schools talking about what was happening in the individual buildings and for our principals and leaders to come together and speak with one voice about this important work i felt was really a great example of the progress that's been made so to me i know that you many of you left with um feeling um optimistic and hopeful from that and i feel the real strong sense of pride about the work that's happening so um for me that's one of those moments that um that stands out um to me and and my role in the district i was getting it were you about to go sammy

043after you okay i was like your light didn't light up but your mouth was moving because i forget you're using the um i was just gonna add in um all the things that have been said but also that when things are put out there that i feel like we really stand behind it um and not just be like we're just saying this just to say it it's something that we're looking for to help um create better support and think about racial equity very specifically and the shift to use anti-racism i think has given the board and staff the ability to explain why decisions are made because um it's different than using the equity frame because you're interrupting racism structurally with anti-racist work and i think that that shift in backing a lot of the statements

044that ryan has put forward in our actions as well as a board has reflected racial equity i was thinking about for goal number oops i'm trying to scroll goal number um one was student achievement i was thinking about actually i was thinking about the math thing example that jay gave um and thinking about the questions that we ask as far as like video requirements in the classroom during remote learning okay maybe i asked mostly about um but just those kind of questions that we asked for clarification that way we know what the policies and practices are that are backed up that help create more racial equity experiences for the students even in remote in this for number two and number three the school renamed task force i think applies to both of those the amount

045of learning that's going on by everybody involved with that and the other kids in the schools and all the staff that are involved in it that are looking into this and community members it's been like people are looking up who these names are and has created this huge educational opportunity for the community and it's really awesome i know i said it was beautiful before and i really think it is um and seeing that community engagement um with number two especially but i think that that renamed task force is also about real world learning and applying what you learn um or number four for health and wellness is as far as i got actually it's actually goal number six i guess and and four is thinking about um the impacts of coven 19 specifically disproportionately impact

046kids of color and i think that the way the slow pace that the district has taken in getting kids back into school while having a clear path to get kids back in school that that's something that i know i've heard appreciation about because of those impacts that especially impact black and brown kids what the deaths and the severe illnesses impacting statistically those students the most so i think about even with the coven 19 response that even if that wasn't the number one thing that it it really supported the racial equity work in itself um and then the last thing i was going to mention is some of the um behind the scenes learning that the board's been doing and i just wanted to appreciate you all for engaging with some of the material and um

047and the staff too that did with like the social justice tour booklets to learn more about our local history here in corvallis and the land acknowledgement modules and stuff like that where it's helping think about racial equity in a localized sense as well and so those are some things i thought of in that short amount of time rcn that's great thank you lou sammy did you want to go next sure unless this you want to go but if you're going to talk about governors here you're going to still steal my thunder no i just wanted to take a long view because i think on this call i think it's marcian and melissa are the only people here on this call that have been here longer than me um so i came onto the board in

0482013 and ever since the beginning we've been focused on on equity and back in 2017 uh 2016 we we changed superintendents we had a radical change on the board and you know you will recall that that was a tenuous time and we were worried about continuity and leadership and continuing this this equity work and i i want to bring us back to the sip the sips both our primary and secondary ships this year i think are really emblematic of how when a board keeps focus on a particular topic um what happens with staff and how much energy comes to it and i'm you know for those on the in the public we our teams had switched to where they were developing plans independently to unified plans and they were highly focused on equity so i

049just want to applaud the staff i want to applaud the superintendent for not just maintaining continuity on this work but accelerating it and so just keeping focus is just critically important and this board has done that nice this is good i want to add a governance lens the relationship between the board and the superintendent and both with the public and the community members there is something inherent uh that is kind of problematic with the school board and one of the things is we're seven board members we're never going to be reflective of the 52 or 52 plus languages spoken in the community uh it is a system and structure that's not necessarily compatible with what our community members are comfortable with i remember lou mentioned uh something about that and my middle eastern uh experience

050not necessarily my generation maybe uh before that you have medlis where people sit together in an open area and people could have the conversation with their leaders and we don't do it that way in this structure people sit in front of us and we heard that in our discussion with our teachers and community members during the meeting that the boardroom is not necessarily the place for all the work and all the discussion and here's the important caveats how can we empower ryan and empower staff to do the important work and some of that important work engagement work and needs to be done in task forces in the classroom and and you can't really do it unless the board tells you we support you on that and also something that's not completely there yet we need

051to work on it you have the policies that supports you and that's the discussion around uh racial educational equity that's stronger than what we have so uh our i so i can feel that's a our superintendent is fully empowered so really understanding what the board can do with its authority according to proper governance and also what the board can do with the structure that it has and what it can't do we should really empower our superintendents and team i feel this year has been much we're improving on that perspective better than ever before where i feel that superintendent is taking leadership on aspects that are very important and uh we are kept apprised about it but also we trust him that he's leading uh the ship toward the right direction so i feel that has

052been a work maybe not necessarily spoken it's not uh on paper well it is in our working agreement in our board policies board discussions it is there but i think it's very important appropriate board governance that empowers the superintendents that's great thank you sammy that was very powerful melissa is there anything you want to add i think that the one thing that i've noticed and and uh lou's already mentioned it but you know kovid really kind of shined a light on our issues around racial equity in education and um i think every plan that we've put forward to you and every consideration for our students about school and what it's look like has had a racial equity drive and i just it's so that's just kind of in the forefront of my mind thank you

053melissa did everybody get a chance to share okay thank you thank you um you know i am so glad that this is being recorded [Laughter] um because at some point it'd be great for you to listen back and hear the amazing work that this school board has done and um you know when we first started this work and thank you vincent for talking about our beginnings we there was this idea of random acts of equity right as opposed to transformation and so all of you shared such amazing um actions consciously consciously racially conscious actions that are really impacting our community and our students and our staff of color so thank you thank you so much for this amazing work and this is why we live the sankofa we need to embrace the past in order

054to inform the present and this is this is about racial conscious raising and this is what you are all experiencing so thank you so much for the amazing work that you're doing and we also know that this work isn't done right there's still a lot of work to do but without the work that you've done without that internal work as individuals and as board members without having done that work it's really hard to inform and transform systems so thank you for that so parker if you could bring our powerpoint back that would be great all right so if you can take us to the third slide the next slide and you all saw this before and this is something the protocol which is our navigational tool and something that you've heard from our leaders as

055they presented at the sip presentations you've been utilizing it you've been internalizing it i mean it's a tool that we use in our system and i i to this day feel like this has been our north star in terms of helping us create spaces for reflection and for intra and inter racial dialogue which has helped us examine and address institutionalized structures that have that promote racial disparities and so just as a quick recap on the left there you'll see the compass and the compass is the way that we enter into a conversation and that is where helps us understand how we enter the conversation and how and meet others where they're at um the four agreements these are how we contain the conversation um how we have the conversation so staying engaged experiencing discomfort speaking

056our truths and expecting and accepting non-closure and lastly the agreements and the agreements help us engage in deeper meaningful transformative conversation where we begin to eliminate racial disparities and one of the things that i appreciate about the protocol in its entirety is that it gives us a way to get into the conversation so again that's the compass it gives us a way to stay in the conversation and that's the four agreements and while we are in the conversation it helps us not just skim the surface and that's where the six conditions are so important so for the time that i'm presenting one of the things that i want to offer is that i'm going to try really really hard to keep us on the left side of the compass the feeling and believing because that's

057where adaptive work happens that's where adaptive leadership happens and that's where transformation happens usually when folks hear about something that's racially impactful most folks tend to react there's nothing wrong with reacting it just means that we want to spend more time at this point more in the believing in the feeling because that's where we really lean into the systems and structures and kind of understand our why as to how we're showing up in this space so throughout our time together i will do my best to keep us in the protocol and i also would like for you to just be thinking about parts of the protocol that you're using because it's important to recognize what parts of the protocol you're using and what parts may be um you know you're you're kind of hesitating because

058that's the area that you want to lean into tonight next slide parker okay so tonight's objectives and we have uh kristen and i have four the first objective is to understand and create shared language why race matters our articulated collective why for the critical importance of racial equity in board policy and i think you have all done a beautiful job of talking about your why and the work you've already done we will discuss and apply the promise protocol to racial equity policy packet which kristen um shared with you earlier and then lastly we will define the process to add racial equity to board policy okay next slide um as i think about why why race matters and who will be impacted by the racial power by the racial policy i wanted to start with one

059of our pillars and if you can recall when our community members presented a couple of months ago one of our equity transformational plan pillars is students at the center and we are all educators we are all here because of our students so we wanted to share this is about a four-minute video um in this video really represents the many narratives um that are reflective of the lived experiences of our students of color and so we just want you to take a moment watch the video and as you watch the video i want you to be thinking about puerto rican oh i want you to be thinking about the impact of race on students so again get out that um that piece of paper that you have and as you're listening to the video i want

060you to be thinking about the impact of race on students okay we'll come back together and we'll share thank you parker for starting the video i'm from haiti and nigeria um like three things like i'm dominican puerto rican and black i'm biracial i have an african-american father and an irish american mom my name is lameen i'm muslim i'm indian british scottish and american [Music] my parents are from venezuela and i was sharing like one of the foods that we eat and then i got made fun of they were like what is that ill oh ill what is that and they like i cried because i felt like oh there's something wrong where i'm from like maybe like it's bad like i'm different i am an african-american adopted girl lonely child and i live with my

061two dads i remember when i was younger i went to with my family to restaurant and they made us pay in advance just in case we like didn't pay afterwards and that was kind of upsetting you start to notice that people are different and you have comments might they might be racist or they might not be but by the time you get older you know that it is racist and you should stop i feel a little scared about if i you know just walk down the street you know cops might just think i'm i'm doing something bad and then if i'm trying to explain to them they won't listen and then just start beating me up and doing terrible things to me i think there's like this anxiety that kind of comes with being biracial

062like that kind of eats away at you like almost like you have to prove yourself like that you're one or the other like for example like i hear the phrase you're not black all the time people sometimes think that i'm supposed to like talk ghetto or like whatever that is oh she's uneducated because she's african-american because i'm hispanic or latino i can't have like a lot of money just this weekend i went with my friend to urban outfitters and we were shopping and i really wanted to try on this dress and then this lady that was just like there she was kind of like watching me and just like i'm not going to steal it or anything i think white privilege is the idea that in your everyday live life you're getting treated differently and

063sometimes with more respect or people just trust you more or they have certain expectations of you like you might be smarter or you might be wealthier because you're white it makes me feel guilty sometimes even though it's not my fault like i feel guilty for having a privilege that like i don't deserve if i was ever like the mayor or something that controls the policeman i would want to go out and look in the neighborhoods where there are people that's very friendly so you can pick them instead of like these guys as just doing all this training it's better to pick people that's more minded with the community than to just pick some new guy and get on the street like it's just not going to work out we have like these kids from there

064ecuadorian and they get make fun of because they look mexican and they get told on a daily basis oh you like tacos oh you like churros how come i saw your mom on the corner selling icees like it's like i feel bad for them personally because i'm like wow like they're not like even although they tell them i'm not mexican i'm ecuadorian they still get teased [Music] [Laughter] [Music] thank you parker if you could stop the powerpoint that would be great okay that's uh i've watched that video several times and it's um it's pretty impactful and so i would love to hear uh just from a couple of folks just when you think about the protocol and you think about the compass of thinking believing um where are you and what came up for you

065as you watch that video oh good i think i'm in a mix of the feeling and is it what's the action one the doing feeling um i like the compass but um i think it's a mix of those two because literally everything on there except for the white privilege is like things that i've experienced in school growing up and they're things that my kids still experience like literally in this district and so i think about the impacts in how real they are with kids and like having conversations with other parents about how to talk to our kids about these experiences i think that's why i'm in the feeling section in um the acting because it's not right and then like i was experiencing this i'm in my 40s and there's kids still experiencing this like

066how much has changed and so i'm always in that action mode the acting one because it's um it's not right and um even for the child who thinks about guilt that's something taught like it's not nobody wants people to feel guilty for their identities it's just understanding how identity impacts us is more what it is and how to in creating change and not using guilt as a way to not enact change so that's where i'm in a mix of those two i think thank you one more person sarah was first um yeah so you i have a very different experience than luke moving through the world because i'm one of the ones who's assumed to be you know lots of positive things because of how i look and what's you know i'm definitely a feeling

067thing because what i see as a bunch of you beautiful kids probably have amazing unique things about them and they're talking about how they're labeled and how assumptions are made about them purely because of how they look um and you know i think it's it goes with the whole you we we pigeonhole kids and we pigeonhole people um you're based on things we really don't know about them and i think we lose the uniqueness and beauty and gifts of a lot of these kids because they end up hiding behind assumptions that have been made about them thank you sarah sammy were you going to say something um well i was briefly i think when i was reading the policies i was on all dimensions of the of the account compass except the feeling maybe i

068had one of the uh paragraphs that maybe this fits the feeling and now i'm feeling all the feelings from this video so it just looks like now you're helping me fit the two pieces of the puzzle policy and really where the rubber meets the war the road but also i'm part of the feeling is driving me to the moral aspect which is this is not fair we should do something about it kids don't deserve to to enter this world and experience this world this way just because who they are and makes me feel angry and motivated that i want to make change and think about fairness and justice thank you and sammy thank you for modeling all parts of the of the compass thank you for that okay all right i think um anybody else

069before we move on these are powerful powerful testimonies thank you for sharing okay uh teresa's there okay great therese yes thanks sammy um well i first just want to say that that is um it's such a very difficult thing to watch um to watch and to know uh the to hear us a summary of the events behind you know what they're what they're sharing with us those children in this video are sharing with us and to understand that that was happening in real time in in real in the flesh for those individuals um well i don't think we could really if if you haven't gone through an experience like that yourself you can hear their words i don't think it's possible to really understand what what that feels like in that moment um i i

070am a white person i have i grew up as a white person i grew up identifying with the pieces of my community that were very typically white um i also grew up poor and i grew up with some experiences uh that i i could resonate with um in the video but even in the midst of that what i'm very aware of in my adult life is that my experience of poverty was very different because i was a white person um that there were i was afforded opportunities that uh the the poor people in my community that were not white were not necessarily offered weren't offered not necessarily i don't need to qualify they weren't offered those and i was offered those and you know it's a it took a time i think for me to

071to really understand and wrap my head around what it meant to accept my privilege when i was so very much aware of the areas where i did not have privilege and i think i am now as an adult i am finally reaching a space where sorry my dog is in the background i hope you can't hear him um he he thinks he should have my attention right now um uh as an adult i um i have finally i think entered a space where i'm able to grieve that as a child i had to um both experience the the loss that came with poverty and have that juxtaposed with the privilege that came from being from being white and that was that is still i think even now um many years later and not living in

072poverty anymore still very difficult for me to wrap my head around knowing that my experience of leaving poverty was very likely uh guided heavily guided by the fact that i was a white person trying trying to exit that so um i i don't i don't know where i am um i think right now i think i'm i'm very much in touch with the emotional piece of all of these topics and the general trajectory of what really can be done very much wanting to take action very much not entirely confident that any action will do any good um so i i'm grateful that we're having this conversation this evening i'm hoping that it will help me to reorient myself to why i believe that we are responsible to one another to um to create change in

073our community for for our children so anyway that's all i i'm [Music] that's what i had that's what came up for me as i watched that video yeah thank you teresa and thank you for that um personal reflection and that discovery that's that's really powerful um can i say one thing about that yes ryan please one of the things that i've noticed over time has been conversations around poverty and conversations around race and how often times how often times those things are um sort of intermingled in a way that um takes away from the um sort of the importance of grace and conversation and so i appreciate um i really appreciate trees sharing that because i think it's a great example of how um how it's off it's easier for us it's easier for me

074to talk about poverty than it is for me to talk about race and i think that's true for many people and i think that is um but in the example that tree shared with us tonight it's it's saying that i recognize that i i had poverty had an impact on me is what i heard her say but i also heard her say that race had an um impact on me and those weren't the two things were um weren't necessarily the same the outcome wasn't necessarily the same and so i just um again thank you trees for sharing that yeah thank you ryan mark if we could put the powerpoint back up i really appreciate seeing your faces so when the power points up i can't see anybody they're reconnecting all right there we go um

075so if we could go to slide there we go the next slide all right the next one all right um so i'll just spend a quick second on this particular slide this is one that i shared with you back in august and i think all of you and your sharing um talked about um what uh justice sonia sotomayor added in this particular um in in this part in this slide right here where race matters to a young person addressed by a stranger in a foreign language which he does not understand because only english was spoken at home so race matters because of the slights the snickers the silent judgments that reinforce that most crippling of thoughts i do not belong here and so i think that video that i shared with you um really attests

076and really explains what sonia sotomayor was um talking about here and one of the things um when i shared this slide with you last time i did ask for the board to just talk about what came up for you and one of the things that resonated with me was what director lou shared and so i if we can go to the next slide i'd love for you to read what director um lou said about that slide so just take a moment to read what she said and so in the statement she talks about the norm is based on whiteness and being othered when a person or group is not part of the dominant right and so um i believe that this part of this work is the importance of this work is to surface where

077the othering originated from and um so we can go back and go back okay and then a common question that i get a lot is why are we talking about race and i think ryan was talking about that and as i think about public education i reflect on the origins and its impact on historically marginalized students so in the next couple of slides i wanted to share if we can go to the next slide parker i wanted to share some notable pictures with you and as we share these normal little pictures with you i want you to get that piece of paper out again and i want you to be thinking about what comes up for you when you see these photos and what additional below the line narrative would you want to add and

078what does race have to do with it so when we talk about below the line what we mean by that is above the line is information that is commonly shared right but what i want you to be thinking about is below-the-line information maybe a personal story maybe a fact that you know or a statistic or something that you know that is below the line information that maybe isn't commonly shared and so this picture here is of is uh was circus 1700s and it's a massachusetts bay company and they make proper education compulsory as schools become private and cater to wealthy boys and young men some children attend school but not all and ameri african american and indigenous students are forbidden to attend picture this picture is native american board is of a native american boarding

079school also known as indian residential schools were established in the united states during the late 19th and 20th centuries with a primary objective of objective of assimilation of assimilating native american children and youth into euro american culture next photo in this photo here we have nettie hunt and her daughter nikki sit on the steps of the supreme court building in may 18 1954 the day following the court's historic decision in brown versus board of education nettie is holding a newspaper with the headline high court bans segregation in public schools this photo was taken in 1979 and this is my family um and it's three generations my mother my grandmother my sister myself we came to this country knowing very little english and we came to this country to a school where there was no english

080language support and there was no dual language program in sight to this day i think my mom for two things i thank her for doing her best to advocate for me in my education and for never ceasing to nurture and honor my native tongue in our home next picture this next picture was taken january 8th 2002 and it was uh no child left behind us congress implemented the nclb to create standards and measures to improve outcomes in education states could create their own standards but but would need to complete student assessments to receive federal funding and here um president bush signed that he's here signing the no child left behind act into law and then our last photo is uh every student's succeeds act president obama is here on december 10th 2015 signing the bill

081into law on december 10th and repl and this one replaces the nclb and modified standardized teaching requirements and at the time states were able to choose tests to implement and the law replaced its predecessor of the no child left behind so as we think about the photos that we just shared with you um if we can um take this the powerpoint off i want you to be thinking about what did you see in these photos and what additional below the line narrative would you want to add and what does race have to do with it i'd like to hear from a few folks have sarah yeah i um i was struck by how much education has been used to standardize children to fit the dominant norm which has been whiteness you have a stone full

082of white children who all looked only other i was surprised there were girls there and if things um the use of boarding schools to remove culture and language um and the use of standardized testing as a measure of success that doesn't be a testing that doesn't um is it isn't an equitable way of teaching students because they're not you they're not fitting every student um and so you as we were looking at things also like desegregating schools you i had an interesting conversation i think melissa was there at osba um we heard a speaker and he was talking about desegregating schools and what that actually ended up doing to the population of black teachers and that before schools are desegregated there were lots of black teachers and when schools were segregated those black teachers all

083lost their jobs and so we moved we desegregated schools yes black students were you know allowed to go into schools that had more resources not always resources that fit them and not always resources were equitable but we also lost the experience of having teachers that look like them um so even though we think of that as this big positive thing that we just desegregated schools um you know the the outcomes didn't always work that way and it was desegregating schools but making students come into a system that assumed they were going to fit into a system that was built around whiteness so i mean as i was watching the particularly the early slides i was i was taken back to my own education experience the first thing in the first slide the one from what

0841700 or so um was just the conformity the you know what you touched on sarah was the the standardization and the separation by by look by gender um also by what they were wearing there was a stratification across income even even then as well and so i was i started thinking about my own experience growing up and how that was completely reflected right into the 1980s how i as a white male was taught to not only conform not express my own my own self i had to conform to what the model was and was was asked expect to do that and when i deviated from that i was socially controlled both you know socially by my peers but also institutionally but also to reflect that back out by with through my own uh behavior of

085you know hazing i'm on haven't always been this person you know and i thought about how forcing conformity out beyond myself across you know gender lines across you know sexual preference sexual identity um you know race even secondarily along you know income lines and how i was expected to be adept in the language of othering and to develop that the skill in deploying that lexicon to force conformity in those around myself and as i think about the change and you know the the images you selected are very are actually very apt because what you're seeing is a recession of of white male aggression because that's what it really is is that white males aggressively impose their control over institutions over community and so that's what i'm pulling out of that and so as a white

086male i have to learn to roll that back to control that to unlearn that lexicon of behavior thank you vincent there is a timeline or a trend except for your unique experience mercian over time there i would draw a line where uh you're expecting every people to conform expecting to in 1700s and 1800s even to treat people differently based on on the things that were mentioned and the trend of how the systems were working is okay let's not standardize on a national level now the best case scenario which is every student's success every student succeed is uh states you do what you want so you can customize but have a standard for the state still they're expecting standardization on a state and you broke that narrative with your own unique experience which is no you

087still can't have a family and nurturing mother who will honor you for who you are to appreciate your heritage and celebrate that and and that was a highlight as i listened to you is we can get there we can have uh individualized learning experience for students despite of their abilities or racial identity or any identity where they can learn the way they that works best for them to be the best of themselves and and standardization might work for us engineers with widgets and and products but humans are unique and we can't really standardize uh their learning experience everyone is unique and your experience was just like the highlight for me here's the trend and here's what we can do better thank you sammy blue i didn't know if we were raising hands or not in

088this section so i didn't read the last time that i was like am i supposed to write so embrace it it's all yours yeah the very first picture that came up literally the first thing i thought it was this is exactly why a pedagogy of the quest exists that was what i first thought because of like looking at the kids that were made to be a little like in their spots to receive this information and to have a uniform identity in a classroom and i mean of course that was the whole premise behind boarding schools to the killed indian state demand slogan um to replace culture that was constructed out of that norm but whenever i think about the ways that those earlier images were constructed it's so old right it goes all the way

089back like the way that education is modeled here is really tied a lot to like greco-roman stuff and thinking about the construction of the academy in schools in that aspect of like who has the knowledge and who's the keeper of the knowledge was all men and all cis men at that time period too and the terms we would use and that was replicated here in the united states and i think then still heavily that that greco-roman time period is viewed as like the height of civilization and the standard of civilization is still reflected in schools today even though there was other existing civilizations as well even here and so that's where those older images always take me back to even farther and then seeing the more current ones and thinking about how much change has

090happened and how much change is still needed because i really like what you're saying sammy about like standards work for some things but not all things and so like how do we gauge things using a standard and the standard is always built upon something that holds dominance and in the context of society we live in this is still heavily a white dominant society and it's heavily a white male dominant society and so i think that all of those things are important to think about and those that's what was coming up for me in the picture so i was reflecting on the earlier stuff as you're going through the slides and thinking of like how much changes happen but still some of that is very present still even though it looks different now yeah i think

091that's a really good point lou um so as we think about and in all of what each one of you shared is is so impactful and that's the reason why we need to take a look back in order to embrace the past maybe not embrace it but um to be reflective of the past so that way we can transform the future and so um thank you for for sharing that and a couple of things that stood out to me was um you know the the unlearning right because we've been socially constructed in a lot of images that you saw was about social constructions and the way that public education was designed and somebody once told me they said you know public education isn't broken it's actually doing what it was supposed to do and if

092you look at that first picture right and so part of our work and part of the board's work in the racial equity policy is to reimagine how our schools can be how our students of color our indigenous students families and communities can experience public education differently and i think some of the testimonies that you shared at the beginning of our time together really exemplify that in such a short time amazing things can happen and so before i hand it over to kristin and again i could spend all day with all of you because even the conversation about public education that uh that could be a two-day seminar um i wanted to and at least end my piece for now on on something that i it just means a lot to i think our district and

093one of the things that you hear a lot of us say and i think you might have even heard our administrators talk about this is their purpose and their why right so when we think about the work that we've done as a school district and accelerating our racial equity work our north star has been um to really understand our purpose and our why and um i like that saying i've actually sat on a billboard long time ago it said a goal without a plan is just a dream and so the racial equity policy that is our plan and that is our north star in um having um uh language that means something that um it's not just words on a page and so in a moment um we're gonna share this last video and kristen

094i shared it with her and she said oh the board's seen this before and i'm like great because i've seen it a thousand times and i can it never gets old but in this last video um and park if you could put the the video up for us um it is a video i've seen gazillion times and it never gets old and it's uh know your why by michael jr but what i want you to do this time is watch it again but i want you to see it with a different i want you to again get your piece of paper out and i want you to see it with a different lens and the question that i want you to be thinking about and we're going to watch the video we're going to let

095you go to break because we've been um we've been sitting for quite a while and when you get back from break this is what we want you to share um i want you to be thinking about your personal and collective purpose for the critical importance in the adoption of a racial equity policy so when you watch the video what is your why your personal why what is your collective purpose for the critical importance in the adoption of a racial equity policy and this won't be hard for you because all of you have already talked about it you've heard others share their multiple perspective and their lived experiences so i think this will be an easy assignment but we're gonna watch the video and then we'll take um i'm not sure sammy how long breaks we

096get maybe a five minute break but when we come back we would love for you to share um it could be a word it could be um a couple of sentences but i'm hoping that every board member could quickly just share their purpose and their why so let's go ahead and watch the video no and a lot of times when people hear the phrase how do i know the next thing they say is what how do i know what but the key really isn't to know what the key is to know why because when you know your why you have options on what your what can be for instance my why is to inspire people to walk in purpose my what is stand-up comedy my what is writing books my what can be going out

097with some friends to eat in fact another what that has moved me towards my why is a web series that we have out now called break time so every wednesday at three o'clock you should subscribe to the to the channel uh we do a series called break time on youtube so three o'clock we drop a new episode one episode in particular i'm about to show you a clip to we were in uh we're in winston-salem so break time this is how it works i travel the country i do stand-up comedy probably an hour hour and a half at an event and in the middle of my show i'll just sit down and start talking to the audience and funny just happens or i'll meet somebody who's really interesting so i met this one guy and

098he said that he teaches music at a school i was like all right you teach music you know um can't you sing and then uh i'm just going to show you the clip check it so your musical director yes sir all right so um let me get a couple let me get a couple bars of like a amazing grace can you do the first part of that go ahead grace how sweet the sound that saved like me that bro could see you know what i'm saying all right all right um now once you give me the version is if uh your uncle just got out of jail you got shot in the back when you was a kid i'm just saying let me see the hood version real quick if you know what further i'm

099talking about just see if that exists let me see what you got [Music] how sweet the sounds [Music] like me [Applause] right now i'm fine [Music] i see [Applause] so here's the thing the first time i asked him to sing he knew what he was doing the second time i asked him saying he knew why he was doing it when you know your why you're what has more impact because you're walking in or towards your purpose wonderful uh marciani said just five minutes said anyone wants more than five minutes if not we'll be at ease for five minutes we will reconvene uh at eight oh nine uh let's say 8 10. i just want to say that i need the five minutes because every time i hear amazing grace it makes me cry and i

100keep seeing this same video during movie during meetings and every time he gets in his second performance and it's a breakdown we're gonna have a policy that will sing like the second one do we can't hear you sammy now we're on youtube i was just mentioning to sami that when we used to all convene here in the board room we would take a break for five minutes and it would never be five minutes because uh board members would be out talking to one another or members of the audience it would always be at least 12 to 15. so this is uh this is something we're going to take away from the pandemic and continue [Laughter] breaks all right and yet ryan i don't think we're getting done any earlier so we're not sure that we

101i'm not sure that we should make that change all right the board reconvenes and mercy and you can start whenever you want all right um so chris and i really want to be um mindful of time as well and we know that this uh this conversation is is so important and it can take us forever but we want to also just make sure that we we keep you honor your time so you can go back to your families and so forth and so before i hand it over to kristen i was hoping that um if you had a chance over the break uh to think about your wine your purpose for the racial equity policy i'd love for each one of you just to share a word or a few sentences fine i'll go first

102then um so shortly after i left high school i went in the navy and went from a very white environment to a very uh integrated environment and that's where i got grounded in a sense of racial justice and working towards that i had no skill or vocabulary or capacity in doing any of that but i knew that it was a value for me and that fortunately i ended up on the corvallis school board and can actually do some of that work but i'll tell you i read an article this year that really changed my perspective you know and we're all you know fairly we're familiar with the idea of a white ally and i've up until this year have always considered myself oh i need to be a white ally i need to be working

103with people of color to fight racism and work for racial justice but this article that i read shifted uh the locus of control and and the thesis of the author was that there's no such thing as a white ally that that racism fundamentally is rooted in the behavior of white people and the culture of white people and therefore it's it's white people's responsibility to address racism and it really while that is a tough pill to swallow it's also very freeing because it it allows you to just we need to take the bull by the horns it's it's our job people who look like me it's our job to deal with this and so sorry that was more than a few words okay vincent if you could put what you just said which was very impactful

104in the eye and so could you rephrase it using it's my responsibility that's racism and that's my why great perfect thank you all right next next person i can go next i am i don't know i don't know if i can ever do anything in just one word or even in a short sentence but i'm gonna try um but as as i was thinking about this i i found myself reflecting on moments in my life and people in particular um and i just started jotting down um the moments and the names that were coming to mind um the first one that came to mind was was my friend nora and being at the swimming pool and nora was one of maybe only like three people of color that i knew and i remember kids not

105swimming by us and making comments about about her skin color things i won't repeat but that were very obviously very hurtful um i was six um and i remember that and they didn't say them about me and i can't imagine what she remembers about that moment and then later um was a woman named deborah who was in the king county jail for far past her sentence because she did not have a place to an address to be released to that the court would approve um and she was a black woman and she was serving far beyond her sentence with many other black women and um [Music] and so sitting there with her and thinking about feeling powerless to do anything but then also realizing that i wasn't actually powerless and finding a way to translate

106the position that i had in the homeless shelter that i worked in to prioritize reserving beds for for people that didn't have an address to be released to so that they weren't incarcerated for longer than their sentence which was already longer than a white person sentence would have been anyway and those those are just their moments that come i don't know if it's a word it's it's people who i have watched and been able to interact with and known in those moments that if i was sitting in their position those moments would not look like that and it shouldn't be remedied because they learn to look more like the white norm it should be it shouldn't be and it isn't i don't know i i appreciate what vince said about whose responsibility it is it

107is it is my responsibility to address it it's also my responsibility to make sure that what needs to be addressed is actually the thing that needs to be addressed not what i think needs to be addressed but what does nora think needs to happen in that moment what would what would turn that moment around for her not for me and then i need to be part of of doing that not her um so that's yeah that's what i will say that's it therese i think you just said it it's my responsibility to address right you just said it that's your why thank you um i can go so a lot of times when i think about why racial justice work and anti-racism work is important i think about two boys i think about tamir rice

108and i think about my son and the reason i think about those two children is because the policeman who shot tamir rice said that was a big child and i didn't realize he was just a kid when i shot him and i live with a child who is a big child i have a 15 year old who's 6'4 and weighs 300 pounds and he wears a hoodie a lot and nobody makes assumptions about who he is because his skin is white if his skin were a different color he would terrify people and so it is my responsibility to address racism in our school system and in our society because every child should get to walk down the street like my son does without assumptions being made about who he is thank you sarah i can

109go um what this uh jogged in me is is my fundamental i got into teaching at age 36 when i realized that every kid has so much to grow and that i have something about me that is passionate about that so the what is we'll get into education and help every kid no matter race economic background country of origin um i can play a role so my my why is uh for me is is every kid um i could go on and on that's that's enough thank you jay blue or sammy um yeah it was i've been thinking about the y part i'm like yeah that is a good question the why and um been thinking about it too for other reasons with my term and stuff like that and so i would say like

110for me the why is um all right i can't i'm trying to i'm having a hard time with words today too so but i'm trying to drink more coffee as more meaning but um for me it's my responsibility to use the knowledge i've gained in the skills i've learned to help advocate for community and students that feel unrepresented and that feel like the system has failed them and so that's what i feel like is part of my responsibility in addition to supporting all students but especially those ones thank you so i'm still processing it i'm not sure if i can articulate this in words yesterday is my why i i think a quote i just read earlier today is that uh the best safeguard for our democracy is is education i think fdr said something

111like that and we owe it for our kids we owe it for this country that there is one thing i want to fix in my life is this education so our kids don't need to feel differently or experience the world differently at least in the classroom at least we want to give them 12 13 years of their lives where they can be the best of what they can be regardless of their identity so maybe they can fix the mess that we're giving them that's my lie thank you sami melissa ryan i can't go ryan i i would be that my my why is um that all kids are known and um i look at that i think a lot about myself wanting to be known when i was growing up and going to many many

112different schools throughout my lifetime and never really being known um uh so i think about kids that way and when i think about it in uh perspective with well when i think about it with with regard to racial equity um race is such an important part of knowing who our kids are and knowing what they need um and and so that's just kind of how those things keep coming together for me i always feel like i'm going to have to change my why but it's not about changing it it's about understanding it's um it in context and in context of racial equity it's about knowing who who our kids are where they come from and and honoring that thank you melissa so sorry to just add you know i appreciate hearing um all of your

113perspectives um and you're wise um i think it's evident in the work that you do and the decisions that you make so um so i think not only is that your why but i see it in action which is which is pretty cool to be able to say um so for me it's really about um sort of similar to st what sammy shared i think that public education is the is the place where we all come together um and i would say that's more important now than ever um it hasn't always been the place where we all come together as you can see from some of those pictures we saw earlier but it is the place that we come together now um beyond our school our educational experience we can decide um who we interact

114with um how we interact we can racialize that and i think that school public education is a place where um where we still all together come together as a society and it's like and it's the only place left where that's really um accurate and so i think it's such an important part of who we are as a people um who our kids can become and so i'm just really passionate about that um with regards to this policy and why um it needs to become a racial equity policy instead of just an equity policy it goes back to that quote by sony sort of mayor you know race matters and i think that that um that's why this work is so important um right now um and and always really has been thank you ryan i'll

115hand it over to you thank you thank you all for this is why i love working with this group and thank you for all you know comparing to the conditions and being personal local and immediate and and focusing on race um if we could bring up the uh the power i've got a couple of slides and then i'm gonna share something else and it will be the slide right after the break slide and while we're we're doing that so in the beginning of this marcian asks that you stay on that left side of the compass so now we're going to expand that i'm not asking you to abandon the left side of the compass but we are going to now sort of reach into the right side which is the intellectual side and the acting

116side we wanted to share this quote that individual behaviors can shape the success of individuals and policies determine the success of groups what a wonderful quote by dr kennedy for this this project right here and as you talked about your responsibility and so many of you have this theme of this is my responsibility that that now as board members as a collective you are taking the opportunity in in light of your responsibility to advance a a policy that is meant to be much more inclusive the other the other piece that i i couldn't find the source of this um but as this quote came up and marcianna and i were talking about this i remembered another quote that i'd heard that exception is the death of policy and what i thought of in terms of

117what we're doing now is if these policies are if this practice is not for all kids you don't have it right if equity is not embedded in all of the work you don't have equity and so um i've kept those things in mind as you are talking uh go to the next slide and then you may have to click through i think there's maybe a couple of yeah go ahead and click through so prior to the meeting thank you um and then i think that's it yeah go ahead and go to that last one prior to the meeting this is what you were asked to do you were asked to read that policy packet and to highlight the sections in your in your policy packet that corresponded with the four compass points and then to

118keep the district's equity lens questions in mind and i think i put those on that that sheet that you got that was with the homework so now um in the interest of time everybody's gonna share one per section um you may have a bunch more but we're gonna what i'm gonna ask you to do is pick the one that resonates with you most and and we're gonna go by section so now if if i could share my screen we can stop the powerpoint and i will share this so what i'm going to do i made a little compass here and we're going to go through the compass and i'm just going to ask you everybody to name one section that resonated with you in each of these points hopefully you found at least one in

119each compass point but as we as we collect information about what works for you what resonates with you in these policies um you know how much in common do you all have with each other about this because the one thing that we really want to leave with today is is a process by which this is going to be developed and so in order to do that we're going to talk about conditions but but we really want to crystallize what are the expectations now and what this process is going to look like and so we can get from you a sense of what's really important and if as we apply the pro the um the compass to this this will give staff really good information so what i'm going to do is we're going to start

120do something a question sorry i want to clarify one thing uh the south east uh uh the compass that we had had on its uh doing and the one that you have is rational uh yeah do you think they're yeah there are a number of layers on the compass that you know there's like believing is moral and acting is rational and thinking is intellectual and feeling is emotional so it's all it's laid out in the same way there are just a number of words for for each of those got it okay so we're going to start with the the believing moral section and i'm going to zoom in here and what i'm going to ask uh if you've chosen you know larger sections obviously i'm not gonna be able to type everything but what i

121would like you to do is pull out the one that resonates with you maybe not most but a lot you're gonna let me know which policy you're pulling it from i would like you to read it out to your colleagues the section that you highlighted but i'm probably just going to capture the theme of that and then check with you to make sure that i've captured that well so um does that make sense yeah sounds good okay all right so we can we can popcorn around whoever's got one ready to go go ahead and let me know i got one christian great thanks vince which pps paragraph one and it's the actually the first sentence but the whole paragraph is great the board of the board of education is committed to the success of every

122student in each of our schools it's a why yep awesome great who's who's got one thank you on baltimore city really specifically i in the the last sentence of the second paragraph where it says this district recognizes that these disparities contradict the beliefs and values we articulate about what students can achieve and the results of ensuring and ensuring conditions of success the disparities contradict it broke up just a little bit so that are these disparities contradict um the beliefs and values we articulate thank you spelled that wrong okay who else has got one i'll go uh pps uh page one as well second paragraph they say in light of this mission and our beliefs portland public schools historic persistent achievement gap between white students and students of color is an underline that's unacceptable but the

123achievement gap is unacceptable guys are stealing my stuff i have i've got one go ahead um so in baltimore on page two what's the a disrupting and eliminating systemic inequities it's the third point under the sub point b it says decenter dominant narratives that problematize students of color um in bellevue on page 1 um oh no where'd it go it's the um uh e the first the one that addresses inequities and biases that create feelings of fear lack of belonging and academic and psychological barriers for students just the first part again so the first part of that sentence sorry i lost that you want to address in equities and biases that create feelings of fear lack of belonging and academic and psychological barriers for students thank you okay jay have you got one yeah well

124i've got a number and i would piggyback on top of vince's uh but i would then point to the words from either corvallis or lebanon that's in the second it's in paragraph one it says achieving equity means students identities will not predict or predetermine their success and right behind that the next sentence in both of them that again it's boilerplate but it's real good boilerplate educational equity is based on justice in allocating resource opportunity treatment etc those are good okay ryan did you have one ryan did you want to contribute oh sorry i you broke up i didn't hear you oh no problem no i i didn't want to i wanted to observe this section right and with six members present tonight i think that's that summarizes that um area of the compass got it

125okay yes thank you all right let's stay on the left-hand side and move down to the the emotional feeling quadrant so we we've talked about belief and now we're going to talk about what resonated with with with your emotional side so again anybody can go same same pattern i i have a word uh or a sentence in uh pps as well first page uh there is a statement there that says race race must cease to be a predictor of student achievement and success declarative statement i related to it thank you i have one also from pps it's the last starts the last paragraph on the first page the responsibility for the disparities among our young people rests with adults not the children and kristin put a asterisk on that because that was what i was

126going to say okay and i have to admit that i approached this a little differently so i didn't find anything in this section because i was i was sort of like does the text you know convey this not how i responded to it so i didn't really have anything okay so can i raise a kind of a similar comment i didn't approach it the same way but but when you're talking about emotional quadrant it can be positive emotion it can also be a concern or a negative okay so i'm gonna so i'm gonna uh when i read the um darn it i don't um it says greg baker is the superintendent which which i just printed these off what is that from um it's one page it's one no that's not that bellingham it might

127be it's one page with a one and a two on the front that's all it's got and here's my my reaction is that it it is all about the superintendent that policy and my emotional reaction was no it's not it's about the superintendent and the board and the staff and the kid my emotional uh concern is is that we we in trying to do good we take on um and identify a responsibility level that isn't in my mind balanced um so so um i just it was a red flag saying if it's all about if the race and equity is all about the superintendent it it doesn't fit for me well i i'm going to jump on jason and and quickly do my homework um i did write at the top of that one negative

128in big letters because that whole one the way it's wording worded is you shall not fail to do this you shall not fail to do that instead of you we will do this thing and so really i didn't like because it was so negative are they a policy board vince do you know i mean it sure looks like it based on it right yeah it looks like the the policy yeah salem kaiser has policies like this too there's a there's a program big p big b policy board where they all of their policies are the superintendent shall not fail to do x it's all so it sounds like what that's what they're doing yeah that one's that one stood out to me for the reasons that sarah and jay said too i didn't even look

129at it a super yeah the baltimore one for me um then a tire on page two under um a1 all of the a1s i feel like um is emotional work because it's about providing learning experiences for staff to build personal professional and organizational capacity on understanding the impact of race on educational equity and inequality and seeing all the things the staff will do and understanding your own identity understanding root causes of systems of oppression and equities is very emotional either if it's reaffirming experiences or if it's learning something new it's emotional work you can ask just that one too i nailed that for feeling as well so since kristen's gonna let me play i had done my homework um and the funny thing is is in that bellingham policy there is one that um that

130filled my cup and it was the last one recognize and value the funds of knowledge that students and families bring to each classroom school and our system as a whole and that just uh is really spoke to me and it's it's um 2g so i agree with lou and jay about kind of the beginning of it um but and but that's a great great summary at the end great do we miss anybody there we go okay all right we're gonna shift to the right side of the compass this is your intellectual your thinking quadrant you're like you're comfortable here and it's hard to get out of it we gotta push yourself out not all like me but uh all right so so what made you think what put you in uh in a contemplative spot

131uh i'll go uh what is this it's a page four of uh baltimore uh honestly it's everything under three a one uh or three a one two three so in three a one two three it it's it's it's where there's a commitment for oh sorry i should read it i don't want to read it all but basically disrupting and eliminating systemic inequities and it talks about providing learning experiences for staff to build personal professional and organizational capacity on understanding the importance of race on educational equity and inequity so it talks about supporting staff on on this work thank you who's next i'll go but i'm not sure if i quite interpreted intellectual as how did you describe it made me contemplative you don't have contemplative split of choice it's okay okay good i'm not assigned

132i mean i that's not like usually a challenge i mean not just it's not a challenge i mean often my problem is that i spend too much time in that stage um but anyway i so i found one that was kind of pragmatic that i thought was really that stood out to me and it was under d um building staff capacity for equity-based teaching i'm sorry on baltimore baltimore yeah i think it's on page four uh it's number four purchasing and procurement practices provide access and economic opportunities within communities represented by students of color i'll stay in um baltimore too this will be the baltimore page section yes um i was looking at the um [Music] e2 on page 3 where it says specialized programming and support models will create opportunities for historically oppressed learners

133to thrive in academic programs thank you so again because i approached this little differently i sort of looked at it as like these are the things we know these are the things we believe and feel and these are the things we're going to do and so i'm a little off on this quadrant multiple perspectives so they were you know if we want to stay in baltimore you know in my thinking that like these are the things we know at the beginning when they talk that the we acknowledge that historical generational compounding reality of systemic structures and practices have intentionally created and continued to afford advantage to some groups while perpetuating racial inequities together so these are like this was to me it was like these are the things we know these are the things we

134believe and so this is what we're going to do is sort of how that was structured in my mind but if i sort of then quickly shift to what other people are kind of mentioning i don't have a specific citation from the policies but one of the things that kind of made me think was that several of the policies talked very specifically about assigning resources in a way to support their equity work and i know that that's always been a um sort of matter of contention um in community when you talk about equity work and you know this sort of ends up sort of pitting us against them for resources and so that really had me thinking about how we can take this real need and i think it's important to state this like we're

135going to put resources behind this work um but how do we do it in a way that brings in the community who might be resisting it to start with so that was that was sort of my that was a piece that kind of got me thinking a lot as i was reading these right yeah there might be a data piece there could be convincing and i know that your board has had this conversation before i remember this a couple of years ago kind of live with uh with one one idea yeah um page five on bellevue so i'm gonna change it up uh with bellevue and this is paragraph three a two numer roman three a two there's a paragraph that says the district should consider other relevant research and data supported measures qualitative or

136quantitative that may be closer to classroom teaching and learning and should include those as they are identified i have one from bellevue as well okay so i think it's page three but it's section two paragraph three and the tone of the it's talking about it's characterizing kids with and inequities and i think it's a it takes a deficit-based approach and smacks of um assimilationism and it couches uh intervention as addressing deficits of children rather than seeing the system is not meeting the needs of children where is that vince it is on page three section two third paragraph reads as we recognize students face inequities that are associated with the aspects of their identities their context including race ethnicity culture disability learning differences gender gender and blah blah blah blah you get all the factors we

137are committed to addressing these inequities and helping each and every tune equitably access learning opportunities it's just the way the the phrasing is it's just smacks a little bit wrong i get what you're trying to say but it's not quite right tell me again what's wrong i i was i was trying to find it it it places the the deficit on the child not on the system the problem the problem with education outcomes are not with children it's with how this the system serves children okay and i don't know it maybe it doesn't fit in the intellectual it certainly made me think maybe it fits over in the moral quadrant it fits if you say it fits you know if it made you think that it fits all right who hasn't gone yet mine i

138want to spin right in behind there on bellevue page five my intellectual part says policies are great but they are meaningless if you don't make them come alive and are accountable so i just the context of putting in accountability makes great sense and we can be more about that down in the x next quadrant but i like that whole section right i think i'm the last one and what i um the intellectual piece for me was um npps in the second paragraph where it talks about recognizing that there are other student groups that have not reached their academic potential this policy focuses on the most historically persistent achievement gap on the most what achievement gap what was the historic historic yeah um yeah his most historically persistent historically persistence thank you so for clarification ryan

139is that saying race it is saying race um and i and i just um yes i guess i don't want to editorialize it but yeah that's what it's talking about and in pps that's definitely i mean that that's their context okay anybody else hasn't gone i okay now the acting what made you think about what there is to do go ahead vince so it's uh pps page two top of the page and it's just one sentence but i want to edit it a little bit uh it says portland public schools will will significantly and continuously improve its practices okay and you want to edit it so i'm not writing anything yet in order to achieve and maintain racial equity in education okay um finish typing and i'm just paraphrasing right now what i'm gonna do

140is go back and find these actual sections and um well i'm gonna i'm gonna put a bunch of stuff together for you so as you see it right now is not how it's going to be yeah mine that was one of my favorite was the first pair the first part of the third paragraph of baltimore city where it says rather than continuing to perpetuate and contribute to the institutional racism baltimore city schools must move to disrupt and dismantle it in every area of our work [Music] i felt like that part of the baltimore one was taking responsibility and yeah that's sort of what we talked about earlier very good thank you what page was that sarah sorry oh you're muted third paragraph of the first page okay okay baltimore sarah i even i like their

141i kind of like their stuff um i like their i think their racial equity c on that same page um kristin and qc is kind of something that we've discussed with our own policies our own goals about um about how people's um sorry i'm told you haven't it's horrible um the disclaimer that's on all our board goals that i'm always like shouldn't it say should not no it does not because it actually does and so because of systems i like how they wrote their racial equity line um it says the result achieved when you can't predict advantage or disadvantage by race and that's specific to racial equity but it reminded me a lot of the conversations we've had about that equity um lens that we're trying to use because it's like this is what the

142result looks like not this is what it is or what we're striving if that makes sense thank you okay who's next for me looking at bellevue page four paragraph c so maybe i'm nudging against what i thought we might be going towards it their their first two sentences say it's the district wants to bridge inequities in all different ways program culture system for different groups so it's not about race only that's part one and part two is that the practice not just the policy the practice will be followed through with this uh para on page five paragraph roman numeral three a one and two where we evaluate certain specifics and that that makes us not just say nice platitudes but we get down to what is it we're really gonna hold ourselves to thank you

143i have one out of uh i think it's portland portland public schools on page two um so uh it's it's d uh the district shall remedy the practices including assessment excuse me that lead to the over-representation of students of color in areas such as special education discipline and the under-representation in programs such as talented and gifted and advanced placement and i wanted to pair that with b because b says the district shall create multiple pathways to success in order to meet the needs of diverse students and as i read that one i thought those really they i think they work together because they this need to have a multiplicity of ways to measure student success understand success um not be beholden to a single epistemology framework of knowledge but to have ways to validate other

144ways of knowing and to accept those as valid i felt like b and d they went together and so i i didn't feel like i could totally separate them thank you who's next i've got another one bellevue wait but vince has everybody gone first oh is everybody gone everybody has to go once for anybody goes twice so one that i um that i liked um in terms of um in terms of acting was um staff use a shared volume of research and vocabulary that strengthens and grounds diverse perspectives and that was from baltimore i'll go with portland public schools page two paragraph one where it starts saying educational equity means raising the achievements of all students while number one narrowing the gaps between the lowest and highest performing students and two eliminating the ratio predictability

145and disproportionality of which students groups occupy the highest and lowest achievements uh categories and then goes on the concept of educational equity that might be another one the concept of educational equity goes beyond formal equality and they explain it i think that defines the objectives when when are we on top of the hell when we think that we achieved what we want right wait what is that okay has everybody gone okay vince what was your last one okay it's bellevue page 4 b first paragraph and it speaks to the experience of education we are working to achieve inclusion in our schools such that all students and families have safe and equitable access feel a deep sense of belonging and experience a welcoming classroom and school community where instruction is strength based aligned to or exceeds

146grade level and subject standards and to the maximum extent possible takes place with all grade level subject peers so it gets technical there at the end but i was really i yeah ensuring we have kids that we know we have kids of color that are performing academically but have an adverse experience in school okay sorry vince where was that again i was that was bellevue page four section b first paragraph thank you okay what i'm going to do with these i mean this gives us a good idea i feel like i saw marcian taking notes probably looking at those sections as well and um and what i would like to do is is you know give this back to you the form that you can use because you can't use it on this although i

147will send this to you where we're really pulling out what are these key pieces that you want included because as we get to the next part we're talking about what are the marching orders you can give staff as far as process and as far as the conditions that you want to see included in this so i'm going to stop sharing this and i'm guessing we can go back to the slideshow we may have to we want to keep you too long we may have to shave off a little bit of what we were going to do but we want to make sure that we get through the proposed process i think and so i don't know marcian where do you want to i i think um just in the interest of time if we can

148jump to the proposed process um that will be amazing and um yep yeah slide 21. yep there you go kristen did you want to jump on this or um why don't you go ahead because i want to make sure that you get what you need out of this sure yeah um so i think the exercise was just so fruitful so kristen thank you so much it was uh uh i i read the policies as well as well and you all brought up very similar things that i saw in those so thank you um when kristen and i talked about just kind of what the next steps are with racial equity policy we thought about just a proposed process for the school board and so this is what we are proposing and again we can have

149a conversation around around any additional needs but the first is you know school board provides conditions to be included in the racial equity policy and i think um those things that have were articulated in the previous activity i think will be really really helpful and the um the and then again we would be um let's see let's see um yeah and then for example collaboration here's an example i think that you all are familiar with but again we would um you since one of your goal board goals is community engagement then again we would want to reach out to us key stakeholders such as our district equity leadership team advisory board our students advocating for equity and another example is our we have a racial equity rapid development team so that might be the board

150stance is you know we want to make sure that we go out to these groups to get their multiple perspectives about around the racial equity policy next a draft policy is developed by staff and shared with the superintendent and then presented to the school board and then lastly the school board adopts policy in accordance with board policy bfc and so i think what would be helpful for um for me is to know just to kind of have a conversation around what are those key elements that the board really wants including the racial equity policy um you know to what extent is the is the board wanting to get involved in the community engagement piece and then are there any other parameters that the board sees as as something that we need to consider as we

151um move forward in next steps with the racial equity policy and again the timeline we can talk about that as well so just wanting to open it up for conversation wonderful kristen was there anything else you wanted to add to that or ryan or i think that's great i think you know as marciana and i talked about this because next session is our is our last one this project doesn't mean there's urgency behind this work too that um that if if staff can go away from this meeting knowing that the that there's a plan for development of this and the big ideas that the board wants behind this then they can do their work efficiently and so um as you as we talk about this i'm i'm gonna take some notes too uh about these

152big elements and you know the involvement of community and other groups or how how this goes i mean part of it will be constrained by how you have to adopt policy but how it's developed you know the board the board doesn't sit and write policy out of whole cloth but but you do get to say like you're going to adopt it eventually so giving as much information about those big ideas and you just did a bunch of that that you want in there and um and the values that you want reflected will really help as staff goes to write certain elements of this oh yeah go ahead um i guess i want to jump in and ask as we start down a path do we ever stop and say is this the right path or

153do we have a new thought and my new thought is that i like going back over our educational equity policy i like it i also like elements of those other buildings districts that have quote educational equity but i don't think i see as much i guess what i'm saying is is that have we decided that our that the racial equity policy should supplement or be within or a part of the educational equity because my recommendation having struggled a little bit with this is is that it should racial equity deserves focus and it should be part of educational equity and so in designing it or putting it together i would recommend not having a separate piece but a um a moving it within but i'm just kind of a reaction not really a good analysis my

154understanding was that was the plan but i'm not but i but i don't work there so i want i don't need to i don't remember a concrete plan so that that's probably my problem sorry so as we started talking about that this um back in the fall or late summer in our first time together um we talked about the equity policy but also the fact that um it didn't really um our policy doesn't really emphasize or call out race um within it and so i'm i'm in agreement that i think what we need to do is take the current policy and we need to address race um specifically in that equity policy and so i i believe that's where we're headed um and that's sort of the intention of tonight was to really have conversations

155related to race and also get a chance to look at some policies that um are providing some additional um language um you know that helps us to move this policy forward and then to get some input and bring it back to you so that's that's where um my vision is of where we're headed thank you awesome all right so uh i think where we are right now just to summarize is we have this proposed poli process personally i i like it it has the elements of where the board should be engaged and where the board uh is better off by authorizing the staff and superintendent to engage the community in in the best way so number one i like the process number two on the first step the parameters and conditions i do have one

156parameter i can think of which is for folks who are considering developing this policy the growing board is as flexible as you need it don't be constrained by the current system or existing systems um i don't assume that's where we have any constraints except for of course the law i think we want to empower our our teams to be able to uh aspire but be ambitious with the policy and i think under that or maybe another element or dimension is as you as we think about racial equity which is in my understanding putting resources where they are most needed to address the racial equity gap i wanted to also think about racial justice which is reconstructing and maybe building new systems in place that are more racially just so it's not only about the resources

157but also we want to address systems that are built or rebuilt whenever that's appropriate so we need to address both equity and justice thanks sammy that's something i was going to say too is um is including a systems approach because it's um it's one thing to have like the individual development and understandings which will help shift systems but like using a systems approach with the policy could be super helpful um and helps help us and help everyone understand like how embedded um inequities are systematically when it comes to racial equity i had another one i'll come back to it though so the question for me is um so kristen and marcianne are coming back february 4th which is about a month from now and so um in terms of the proposed process i do um

158sort of want to think about um as a team do we feel like we have time to meet with each of these groups before coming back on february 4th or do we come back with a draft get bored input and then bring take that out to those groups um i can see how each one of those would work but the timeline for me feels a little tight to really make sure that we get authentic feedback so i would just looking at the proposed processes right now and knowing that timeline i think that i would i would prefer the time and attention to be able to have come back to you with some additional language knowing that you're very thoughtful and have some really great ideas that we want to make sure are incorporated and then

159take it out i like that too ryan um in one of the reasons i like it is because i feel like marcianne and tristan have a really good understanding of the needs of the stakeholder groups that are listed and have um have done some great work with them already and kind of may know a direction that they would like to see um to propose to them after house input and i'm not trying to make assumptions that you're speaking for all these groups but i think that you kind of have a pulse on them that probably helps the timeline a lot i'm just thinking of marciana and all these groups she put down i'm like oh dear that's great thank you ryan starting this quite a little [Laughter] jay my comment or question goes to it's

160around this accountability measurement thing and this board has done a lot of work around metrics and we took with medford a stab at you know some big policy metrics and so on and i don't think we've gone there frankly but you ryan have you you you have asked your principals to look at some things like how close are these people to graduation and you've done some digging and my question would be do you as a superintendent leader want the board to give metrics or not because you're aware of of the need to put your money where your mouth is demonstrate uh graduation rates or whatever but i don't think our policy today spells it out and i'm not sure whether we want the if i were a person of color uh would i want those

161metrics to say god got it you guys keep talking i want to see some concrete metrics and what would they want so i i'm listening for your advice and what the the people of color or other people would want in the way of commitment or metric enforcement on a policy so what i can share about that is that i don't necessarily know that that um fits within policy but where i do think it fits is with within those board goals and my my goals that i'm evaluated on and i think that as we think about those board goals we are segregating data for student groups academically we're looking at hiring and retaining staff of color so there are a number of places where our equity work is built in to those board goals that inform

162my work and the sips that our principals brought forward so i do see a pretty clear through line right now and therefore if we're not needing to be written in policy no because because it's dynamic too as this policy is a little bit different than other policies but there is um a resistance generally in policy to get too specific because then the only way that i can change is if the board keeps re-adopting and i know that like the point of this is to be specific in certain ways but probably the metrics piece which which can keep changing my comment would be we spent a lot of time training around some people from far away talking about some specific metric you know policies and we did not buy it and so i'm just wanting to

163be clear that that i mean i'm not saying wrong or right we just we didn't so i'm happy to as long as we keep ryan around and he keeps building the metrics i'm fine that's the plan i remember i remembered what the other thing was um is just around um being straightforward and clear with things i think that would be great because sometimes i feel like things can get danced around and especially when it comes to racial equity and and anti-racist work sometimes things are not named specifically so if it's if it needs to be said i would hope that it's said and not like a roundabout way um because that's part of doing the work and what we would hope well at least what i would hope i would see in a racial equity

164policy is that it's very direct with the way that words are used and i think um from that training that we participated in with crss i think that i think i do see this as a transformational policy though so i see that this is one of those policies um like d.a there's there's a few of our policies and you've heard me say this before but there are a few of our policies that really are transformational and really inform our work and i see this is a policy that has done that and will continue to do that sarah yeah um as we're talking about things that we want to have included in the policy um one of the things that i've really felt was strong in the baltimore city policy was the start of it where

165it really called out that there were his there are historical systems that have been built that have disadvantaged and you created these inequities in our society and that it is our responsibility as a school district you claim we have these goals and values to work to dismantle those systems and build systems that work for all of our students and so i really liked having that that sort of beginning that's the why like this is what we know this is what we believe and this is how we're going to do it and i think um for our community having that really laid out and clear is really important start with why there was somewhere i can't remember which policy it was where it was um like everything sarah said yeah and then also um there was

166somewhere in one of the policies i can't remember which one where it said that it's not the responsibility of the students to make sure that um the inequities are no longer there and so i think that that was really powerful i can't even remember which one it was in but that's the one that i i put up on the so it's on our it's on our okay i think it was baltimore but i i don't know now i can't remember because they're all running together in my head well there was three that started with being one of the ones that started with b we didn't really like that much yeah it it it wasn't i didn't it wasn't bellevue or bellingham because i didn't pull anything from either of those so baltimore thanks teresa it's

167on there it's on one of the it's on one of the little post-its that we made on that yeah okay and vince your hands up so yeah just dovetailing on the conversation that's uh that was just happening i i agree that that the beginning of the policy should have a clear statement of value you know as i was going through these i found found myself moving towards thinking about them in the terms of the golden circle and the why and how and the what um so i think we need to open with that and i think that there's that's a really good contrast in the the policies that you selected uh some really state portland public schools is a good example where they clearly stated their why right in the beginning and then restated it

168uh periodically throughout the policy i'd love to see us replicate that um and then there are there are others con ours is an example so is lebanon where we don't really talk about our values and i would take it even a step further is i think we need to state why racial justice is important why is equity important well i mean we need to bolt this into the bedrock of what we're trying to do and i think sammy alluded to it earlier it's about what happened yesterday the reality is that in america we're trying to build a nation of diverse people that ensures that everyone has opportunity and justice and that's something that has never been done on in the history of humanity if we think about that there's always been you know despotism monarchy

169strongmen right up until today right up until now and then what we're trying to build is something completely novel in human experience so i think we need to have some language about that now what are we trying to do well with this policy um so yeah clear statement of values and then um you know should set clear expectations for the oh you know overall and on ongoing outcomes that's stated and myriad of different ways and all these policies but we pulled some of that out and then you know in broad terms um how we expect the district to go about its work and i pulled out you know using not a deficit-based model but going from a strength space to viewing diversity as a strength that we want to cultivate and really avoiding assimilationism um

170and then there's there were a couple places where um districts chose to provide some context or history and not in a lot of detail but talking about the history of racial justice or injustice in the united states as kind of the grounds for why we're doing this great thank you sarah did you have something else oh yeah i forgot to put down my hand but i do um yeah so and i also mentioned how important i think it is to really call out very clearly that this is something we believe in that we are going to put resources behind and the allocation of of our resources will be done with this policy in mind because i think that's something that is kind of controversial controversial in some of our community and so i think we

171just need to say it i was muted thank you um i think i think this gives i mean marciano i'll defer to you on this but does this give you some good information to get going this is gold this is gold yeah i took a lot of notes thank you me too we will we will get together and compare our notes and start compiling um i think i think we want to let you go soon so is there anything else that we wanted to cover marcian i will leave that to you no i think uh this this the information you shared is it really gives us our marching orders moving forward it's really really helpful thank you for this time to be able to listen in to what the board is thinking and it's very

172helpful thank you thank you um i have one thing to say but i also have vince you had your hand up well two things i wanted to express appreciation for the fun although voluminous homework assignment because it was a really good exercise i really appreciated it but also there there briefly was a question about the role of the board in hearing from stakeholders and i'm wondering what opportunity is there i know for me personally i would like to be very much involved in that so i will just put that out there is that i'm sure and i'm sure that all the other board members would love to be deeply involved so just try to include us i guess awesome and i don't know i mean i also i agree with vince i don't know if

173d involved is quite the right that but you just to be able to hear what our different stakeholders are saying because it it's those things below the line that i don't know that i think it's really important for me to be able to understand better and so you know just to be able to not even say anything in a meeting but just be able to come and hear what is said i think would be really valuable yeah and now that's the role of the board thank you sarah perfect and uh christian mercy and ryan i think i would what i want to follow up on that is uh feel empowered to have us as liaisoning or uh listening in as you see fit uh i know there is uh strength into that there's drawbacks into

174that so the strength is we get uh up to date with what the community is saying and maybe we can have uh i'm thinking out loud one board member attending one meeting and the other attends another but the shadow of that is we're going to have different experiences than the whole board also another shadow or drawback i would a caution from if our existence just our existence will hold some people from speaking up or talking because we want to acknowledge we are figures of authority that might not make people comfortable sharing uh feel empowered to choose what you feel works best so you tell us how we can be of support and help good thank you okay i think um i think mars have some work to do next which is good i'm excited this

175is great this is like a dream come true that's awesome i have a question i do have my pdf with so many highlights is that of any use or not really i think so i if any of you did this like electronically like feel free to send them to us i think that's really helpful um if you did it on paper and you want to scan them and send them to us that's also good um i have stamps anymore you can mail them pictures sounds good so any means of giving it a highlighting you want to share it with lin with the parker and our secretary and then uh they will forward it to uh tomorrow sian and kristen great awesome this is really good work uh we're doing good work and you are thank

176you thank you for your leadership uh board uh i you you are filling my cup not maybe for the whole year of 2021. ryan you want to say anything um no i think we know where we're headed and um again i appreciate your thoughts tonight and the facilitation of marcian and kristen to continue to move this work forward so i'm just excited to come back to you with a draft that we can again spend some time working through and then take out to the community wonderful thank you all well thanks all right uh any last comments uh from christina marciano or you're good i just want to thank the board for this time it's uh an honor to be with you so thank you the honor is ours truly truly wonderful well thank you so

177much and for anyone who's listening in uh uh thanks for joining us let us know if we missed anything so you have the board email and reach out if uh you're a staff or student uh reach out to marcian because we want to hear from you and if we're missing anything we are your students here so with that uh we'll move for the next item on the agenda we do not have any consolidated information for today and the final uh point of the agenda before we adjourn is board member comments or future agenda topics so any board member wish to propose a future agenda topic for discussion or deliberation or have uh comments that they want to offer and with that i'm leaving you you have a wonderful evening good night you too i'll go

178with you kristen bye everybody bye all right we have sarah first i'm so good yeah um so i felt like this i have to apologize there's a noisy 15 year old in the next room now so you may hear grunting or whatever noises he's making i felt like this was a really important conversation to be having today because of what happened yesterday and how the visuals of that in contrast with the black lives matter protests this summer maybe um impacting perceptions in our community and how our black students and other students of color may be feeling about um how those those terrorists were treated um yesterday so um i think as we're trying to build a school system that reflects like racial justice i feel like we're doing this one little piece of the world

179for for those students in that community the community members who um the impact of yesterday which was huge on all of us was even more profound for them um i also want to share that i just was listening to a podcast called white picket fences which was about the impact of white women in politics and policy making and the role we have often played in um supporting the white men in power um often at the expense of other populations whose experiences um may actually be closer to our own sometimes then then those are the white men we're supporting but it's you know it's a really interesting podcast but one of the things they were talking to a mayor about equity and policy making and she was talking about centering equity in her city's policy and

180how much resistance she got from the dominant culture because of that and that it really took sticking to her guns and making good policy and that the community eventually saw that that good policy benefited everyone and the attitudes were changed not by convincing them ahead of time but by making good policy and then allowing the community to see the results and i thought that was a really important message um especially as we're working on this policy today so i just wanted to share that with you thank you sarah lou my um sentiments were very similar to sarah's that the timing of having this discussion um on the heels of everything that transpired um is a little bit it's like bringing a little bit of breath of freshness in because that's pretty heavy what happened and

181i really encourage people to um try to understand why some people were not surprised by both what happened and their lack of accountability that has transpired as well and the reactions of community members that are often targeted for protests and to learn about why people may not be surprised and why people may be feeling a different level of hurt at the moment and because there's different levels of hurt going on by what happened and i think that it's important so people don't understand i think it's a good opportunity to learn more and to understand that those feelings are very real and valid that um are being experienced and to remember to practice all that self-care that you can and whatever that looks like to you and find moments of peace and love and gratitude in

182your life if you're able to and i think it's important to not look away from what happened and to learn from it and to face it but also to be able to pause and hit pause and turn off notifications on social media for a bit if that's what's needed and that's okay and people shouldn't feel guilty for that either i know i didn't like watch anything all day yesterday because i was in meetings and i was like i really have to stay focused for week one and even though i it was in the back of my mind something was happening but i was like i can't right now and um you shouldn't feel guilty for doing things like that um and it's it's not new and it's been ongoing and i'm just really excited to

183be doing this work with the board and the district that'll help people understand what's going on and help change the trajectory of education in the local community so people understand how not to respond like that any other board members vince yeah and just following along um you know i echo the things that have already been said that yesterday was shocking and i think it really underscores that the importance of the work that we do i think was fitting that we took up this topic on this day right after the incident but keep in mind that democracy doesn't just happen in washington d.c i mean pound for pound democracy there's way more democracy happening in school boards on city councils on county commissions all over this country so it just really underscores the importance of local

184governance and how that's conducted and i just wanted to express my appreciation to be able to serve on this board and in this community that so deeply values civility that we just don't have tolerance for such shenanigans that we saw yesterday not acceptable at all and so and i know that it never would fly here and so i just really appreciate uh all of you and the way that you hold yourselves and the way you conduct our business thank you okay let's tell you a story so my grandson will who is about 13 today called me uh and said dad what grandpa what do you think about the incidents that are going on um because he's at home able to watch tv while he's not in school blah blah so it was a great opportunity

185to reflect on what what message i would send to my grandchildren and to the community that i represent and to you so i'm going to try to be as blunt and honest as i can i was absolutely offended i've been to the capitol a lot i value democracy i value free speech i value the right to peaceably protest those are just so ingrained in my heart they're just fundamental i'm older but i walked in an anti-vietnam war statement once i stood outside of a clinic once and protested what was going on inside it matters to me okay i have a hard time with the letter that was signed or that sammy forwarded because domestic violence in the name of a cause bothers me whether it's damage to a courthouse shooting police uh knocking down doors

186of representatives um things that are not peaceable protests so i i will not be signing that because i think that the letter is too narrow some of you would say well jay you're just not empathetic with enough but i'm trying to empathize with the people who were there that did not do terrible things yesterday but were protesting and um so my my conveyance to you and my conveyance to my grandson is uh real clear do not do the violence do not do the disruption of democratic process uh martin luther king is a hero of mine because of his passion for uh calling out the bad but doing it in a peaceable way so i just wanted to share why i won't be signing the letter but i will i asked sammy where he was going

187to be sending it i'll try to put together my own paragraphs that mirror a lot of what's in there but do not reflect the fact that it's just this instant yesterday so that's just where i wanted you understand what i'm about thanks for sharing jay any other board members wish to make a comment um hearing everything that was said um and also um shifting gears somewhat to just let you know that next week when we come together we'll be bringing another update related to um you know school reopening and the the changes that have been coming our way this week the things i've been paying close attention to are related to vaccines and that vaccine rollout and where i can help and assist to make those vaccines available to our staff is priority number one

188for me also understanding that there'll be some additional access to testing potentially coming and also recognizing that still continuing to learn more about what the um changes mean based on the the um the um the letter from the governor to i'm colt gill at ode and pat at oha and the implications that has for us so um i'll continue to spend some time with this over the next several days getting additional information and also knowing that on the 19th of january the safe learner safe school ready learner guidance will be updated and so we'll have some additional information then too so um we're sort of in a period of flux and at the same time i still believe that the plan we developed for k3 to come back into school is solid and we'll just

189continue to bring more information to you as i have it thanks ryan and i just want to echo what you said i i want to say this publicly i fully support your prioritization of our students health and our educators health you've been steady and i have seen other entities the districts across the nation go back and forth but you want to privatize certainty for our community so thank you for doing that and i know uh i want to report also i've been in a meeting with governor k brown and the epidemiologist and a couple of leaders from uh the state uh with osba board and uh i'm optimistic there is some work to be done and there is some coordination that needs to be done but i am very optimistic vaccinations will ramp up in

190a much faster pace than what we see them right now she's prioritizing educators and i hope that local coordination as well will make our district in a very good place because we have a good relationships with our partners here in the community so good things are happening and i know some of our community members are anticipating when we can get back to school and we're working on that plan and it's a gradual plan so i really appreciate all this work and we i look forward to see uh the updates next week uh based on all these developments that are happening thanks um we have vincent then jay i was just going to express my appreciation and report to the board you know as you know that i'm i'm sitting in with uh with the team

191that is developed that has been developing the plan uh for reopening i just want to again express appreciation i'm going to say it tonight and i'll say it again next week just the the tremendous collaborative work that has been unfolding between our our leadership team and our teaching staff building this plan to get our kids back in school but doing it in a in a way that is safe for for everyone and it's just really impressive and we are in a good place um compared to other districts and that's because um our district staff have been working so hard to make that happen so thank you ryan and thank you to the staff who've worked so hard to get us to where we're at so we're ready when opportunity comes jay i want to say

192thank you sami for your advocacy and sitting in and and vince for your work and ryan i really believe in the input we've been getting from our community about come on let's get us back into schools but there's no way legally that we want to get involved with with undermining or shooting below the standards because it just sets us up i wish the standards will be adjusted but i appreciate your leadership we're doing the right thing i just wish we had a better standard so thank you for your hard work thanks all right any other comments with that i want to say just uh uh i'm not going to say prayer but contempl uh a reflection i think today is a better day than yesterday uh it's a little bit better i know the suffering

193many communities are suffering more with covet but at least in this setting that we are and today is a better day than yesterday we were doing some work that uh hopefully will outlast us as school board members and maybe outlast our lives with the systemic change we're doing uh with the policies and tomorrow will be a better day uh but if we make it so so it's a mandate on us that we continue to make to take it one day at a time and take care of ourselves just like what board members said we need to take time to care care about ourselves and if we can people around us and keep making it when uh each day we make it better than the one before therese sammy i love your optimism and i would

194much rather end on the note of optimism i do just want to say that there are many people in our community for whom today is not better than yesterday and i just want to make sure that we remember our responsibility to them not better in terms of covet not better in terms of watching uh the the i don't know what to describe the actions of those in in washington yesterday uh what i do know is that that there are those people are in our community as well they are in the communities around us and i am grateful that uh that that demonstration of violence did not happen on our courthouse steps but i think we would be naive if we don't think that that could happen um because we are i mean there's a there's

195a level of vitriol that drives uh these misbeliefs um that allows them to continue to take root and we were talking earlier in our in our workshop time with with kristin about the theme of responsibility and i just want to make sure that we both as community leaders but also as just neighbors to the people around us remember that um that some of us are going to sleep better today but we need to make sure we're not sleeping better today at the expense of others that don't have the opportunity to do that thank you therese wholeheartedly agree with you and thank you for for saying that with that let's continue to speak up and let's continue to make sure we hold ourselves accountable and our leaders accountable and thank you everybody is there anything else

196for the good of the order see none we are again you have a good night