001hi dr gorski this is amber i'm the board president thanks for being here this evening hi happy to be here [Music] hi everybody hi laurie hi lori hey lori hi everyone hello hi everyone it looks like we're all here now i'm going to go ahead and call the meeting to order this evening and the first item will be a roll call of board members so i'll call on our board secretary for that dr bader yeah i'm here all right um ms concepcion here dr duffy no mr fazzard here uh mr leos here miss sydney here okay remember that dr duffy was going to be at the iu meeting yeah i just remembered as i said his name okay both david and dan had an iu meeting this evening that they really had to attend so
002yeah um okay at this point i will turn it over to dr o'donnell um to introduce the topic at the meeting which is our equity audit report and our guest this evening right thank you amber i know that we had shared in committee meeting yesterday we wanted to get right into the uh overview from paul and seema and so that we would have some temporary ass questions um surya for any of the feedback you got from ccl is there anything you you want to add on the front end to introduce paul and sema know i'd just like to um to um no there isn't any other feedback and we did get some questions but i've already submitted them as well so okay thanks so much so paul sema thank you so much for for making
003this happen i know paul has big changes in his family coming congratulations uh so we were glad to get this this evening on the books uh because we were sheree and i and our team felt it was important for our board to hear from you and sema directly and have opportunity to ask some clarifying questions so thanks so much and congratulations dad thank you so much uh yes july 8th is uh the due date so we still have a little bit of time we hope we have all of that time but my partner and i were both born prematurely so we're a little worried also very excited so well good evening uh everyone uh glad you could all be with us for this uh conversation and that's really what we hope this is going to
004be as a conversation i'm going to do a screen share so i can put so you all can see uh and hopefully you can see a powerpoint right now can i get a thumbs up i'm not in the head that'll do okay good so um i think you're in uh you're in your your view of it your presenter view oh so we're seeing the next slide okay let's let's try this again uh let's do screen share desktop one okay is that better okay yes right second try that's pretty good so um uh the way this is going to work is uh i'm going to do a brief report just on the policy analysis you know the best way to get a deep sense of the policy analysis is to look at the actual policy documents
005where we literally annotated line by line but i'm going to do kind of an overall summary of that and then sima is going to do a summary of the uh of the data the sort of data review or meta-analysis and then uh and then we'll talk about based on the data collection that and review that we did what we think looks positive from that what we think needs attention and then a set of recommendations so let's just get started on a brief report on the uh policy analysis uh well also we're also by the way saving times for at the end for any kind of question and discussion uh so i'm glad we have this pretty big chunk of time here a few caveats before i jump into the uh into just giving you a
006sort of oral report of the findings about the policy review in particular uh one is that in a way the policy review is really the most cosmetic of our equity assessment work uh what i mean by that is policy can look equitable but what we don't know is whether it's being applied equitably so and and i'm going to talk through some examples of that so what you want to look for in policy is not just whether a policy on its face is biased or equitable or inequitable what you want to think about is what is the possibility that this policy could be applied inequitably and well again we'll talk about some examples uh of that so you know another way of saying this is that a policy review is not a practice review we don't
007know how the things are being put into practice uh necessarily and also we're attentive to what's in policy and also attentive to what's omitted from policy uh so we'll talk about a little bit of that uh i have in this powerpoint and i did share uh this this powerpoint in pdf form just our way of thinking about equity um we don't want to spend a lot of time on this but i just wanted it to be in here so you have it but this just provides uh in essence the equity literacy institute's way of thinking about what is equity so i'm just going to do a brief like 90 second version of this which would usually be a semester-long class so we're going to take 15 hours and compress it into 90 seconds so uh
008so we think of equity as having three components and one is being able to distinguish between equity and equality uh equality if there's an inequity in place equality in other words giving everyone the same thing reproduces the inequity it might mean everyone gets a little bump in access but the disparity in access is still there equity is about addressing the disparity in access uh so that's part of the lens we're looking at we think of the second component of equity the heart of equity is being about identifying and eliminating inequity so that's part of what we're doing in this policy review is identifying inequity but also the potential for bias and inequity so that it can be addressed as it is codified uh or absent from policy and then the third component of equity is
009more fairly distributing access and opportunity and we do that when we eliminate the inequities that exist uh so so another way of thinking of this is we think of inequity as an unfair distribution of access and opportunity when we can predict what outcomes and experiences are going to be by what patterns of outcomes and patterns of experiences are going to be by things like race socioeconomic status and other forms of identity then we know that there's inequity operating okay so uh and we we do distinguish outcome disparities from experience disparities just in the sense that i think in education we tend to be very focused on outcome disparities grades test scores graduation rates those things are really important but experience disparities are also important so i can be a black student who's getting straight a's
010who's involved in extracurriculars and everything else and who feels invisible in the curriculum and who experiences policy discipline policies applied in racially biased ways so we want to look both at outcomes and experiences so finally we think of equity as both a commitment to action this is the process of redistributing access and opportunity again that's the process we hope that we're in now by uh looking at uh all of this these different forms of data but also a way of being so the state of being free of bias free of discrimination free of identity predictable outcomes and experiences whatever those identities uh might be so that again i rushed through that but that's just the way we're thinking about equity and that's the lens through which we're doing uh the policy analysis uh just some
011overall impressions uh generally speaking we think in your policy documents we looked at by the way the student conduct handbooks and then we also looked at board level policy that was related to or referred to within uh those uh handbooks we we do find some good equity framing we don't see a lot of explicitly codified bias in inequity in fact one of the lowest amounts of that that we've ever that we generally have seen however again that's the cosmetic part of it that's the optics of it what we're also interested in is the application of it and whether that's done equitably and that's a whole other set of questions that we'll uh pose so the concerns that we have relate to uh the potential for inequitable application uh which is related to a lack of
012sort of explicitly building in uh and accounting for predictable bias and application we'll talk about give you some examples i know that sounds kind of heady but we'll give you some examples of that what should be codified but isn't and then socioeconomic disadvantage we'll talk about this but if there's one thing that we see that that is uh more sort of inequitable on its face it's some policies that create a harsher impact on families experiencing poverty because of their poverty and we'll give you some examples of that as well so what we're looking for and what we found basically what we do is we have six or seven uh sort of set of questions through which we analyze policy and i'm going to go through uh there are six or seven categories each of those
013categories has a series of questions i'm going to go through those categories and tell you what we found related to each category and give you some examples so the first category is language the things that we often so what we're looking for here is bias to language sort of archaic language related to difference and again this is probably of the most cosmetic equity assessment thing we do this is probably the most cosmetic aspect of that uh what we're looking for is literally language that uh you know that might be problematic so so it's not necessarily a policy that's inequitable but we're just looking at language that might hit people a certain way when they're reading policy we see a couple examples of gender binary language it's very common for us to see those in policies
014i think that's a pretty easy fix by using plurals and again all of these is marked within your actual policy documents we see a couple examples of archaic language especially the word handicap which nobody in the disability world uses uh anymore and again i think that's a pretty easy fix we also see places where lists of identities could be a little bit more inclusive so i'll give you some examples of that uh here's just an example of that kind of gender binary uh thing uh you know and again you could just turn this into a plural if students prefer blah blah they need to see you know that that's right that's an easy fix uh so some of our recommendations around language off obviously as i was just mentioning address that gender binary language uh
015replace the word handicap i i don't know sometimes there's language like that that exists within policy that is uh that is uh sort of forced onto districts by the state or some other entity so i know sometimes you might not be able to change language if they're coming from that but in cases where you can change that make sure that when you have kind of lists of identities again where you can where it's not dictated by some other entity adding socioeconomic status adding home language adding immigrant status i think just makes a little bit more robust there in terms of uh you know who uh you know who we're attending to when it comes to equity the second thing we look at is uh tone a lot of times you know in our experience one
016of the biggest equity issues in schools is that schools tend to be pretty hyperpunitive kinds of places kind of reactively punitive kinds of places this is not a thing that is good for children and it's not a thing that's particularly happy for adults uh either but because of that we often find in policy documents framing that feels kind of condescending or kind of finger wagging uh or sort of a hyperpunitive tone we especially often see this in policy around you know tardies and absences around aspects of policy about family engagement where we're sort of lecturing families so a couple of examples one of the ways that this framing comes across is when we're unnecessarily bolding capitalizing underlining uh or doing combinations of these things uh so under this attendance regulations again this isn't necessarily about
017the content uh but you know this these words mean the same thing whether they're capitalized or not so the question is what is the function of capitalizing and bolding them because what it feels like to me as a reader is that somebody is shouting at me and wagging their finger and i don't think that's what you intend there's also a generational thing here because because think about what looking at that kind of wording feels like in an email or a text you know this is how people shout at each other in an email right so uh again it's in a way it's a cosmetic thing but it also has impact you know it also has impact so again sort of pretty easy fix uh use italics for emphasis if you want to you know we
018do recognize sometimes you want to emphasize something occasionally using italics for that is great but not bold not all caps the other benefit of that is then your policy documents will be consistent with basic writing principles uh where we are taught to use italics for emphasis not all caps or bold in our writing another recommendation is in policy documents policy documents in our opinion really aren't the place for commentary uh so we often see things like uh you know policy that is talking about how important uh attendance is and it's like well everybody knows attendance is important so that doesn't have to be in a policy document policy document should be the policy you know so uh at any place where you can sort of take out commentary that feels like you're lecturing at people
019through and by the way we didn't see this so much in the board level policy uh this was more in the student conduct stuff the third area that we look for is what we call clear bias this is when a policy just at face level anybody looking at it through any kind of diversity and equity lens would recognize it as clear bias here are some of the things we found we did not find a whole heck of a lot of this in your policy and i think that bodes well i do think the use of language like handicapped could be felt that way by some people that seems pretty obvious and then something we'll talk about later the number of instances in which policy could be harsher on families experiencing poverty because of their poverty
020those things seem like pretty clear bias to us but also things that we often uh you know things that we often see and and we'll we'll talk i'm gonna actually show you some examples of that uh in a second the bigger thing is potential for bias potential for bias uh so this is where policies don't account for known or predictable bias known or predictable bias so this refers to potential bias and inequity and how policy is applied where we have national research that says generally speaking these kinds of policies tend to be inequitably applied so some examples uh we know nationally speaking that the primary cause of racial disparities and discipline in other words which student especially with students are being suspended or expelled we know based on national research that the primary cause of
021that is bias in how teachers interpret the behaviors of students depending on the race of the student now we know that that is no longer in debate the research has been very clear about that that the primary cause of disparities in who's being suspended or expelled can be tracked back to a teacher bias and their interpretations of subjective behaviors objective behavior is a student punches another student very objective subjective behavior the student behaved in a disrespectful manner the student [Music] the student was insubordinate these are very subjective the teachers have to interpret that behavior right so uh so again part of what we're looking at is the potential for bias so when we look at discipline policies part of what our question is is how is the district accounting for the predictable bias in that
022okay and again this is not some equity philosophical thing this is what we know based on huge national studies of a million discipline referrals right now well i'll get to the recommendation on this uh for for a second on the positive side we thought that some of your policies related to assignment to gifted and special ed which again national research would say that there is predictable bias in those things that your policy actually builds in some safeguards against potential bias and we marked those again in the policy where we found them so potential for pious disrespect is a completely subjective behavior okay completely subjective that has to be interpreted right and again national data show indisputably that this and other subjective sorts of problem behaviors are interpreted more harshly in students of color than in
023white students exhibiting the same behaviors so our question is how does the district account for this now we don't necessarily recommend that an accounting for that should be embedded in the policy itself necessarily because i i i just don't know what that would look like i i mean that would get off topic i think in a policy document i think this is more of a how does this connect to practice how does this connect to what's actually happening in the schools right and how are you reflecting on that although we will uh talk in the in the next one about another sort of connection we can make here so you do have data on who is doing the discipline referring and that could be used to track big sources but remember the issue is not
024just big sources in this national research what we've learned is in most schools that have this disparity students of color especially black and latinx students being suspended are expelled at higher rates that the tendency is that there's generally three or four adults in a building who are accounting for a pretty big portion of that so the question is do you know who they are and if you know who they are what are the uh interventions that are happening there if you don't know who they are you got to figure out how to use the data to figure out who they are because what's important here is most of them don't even realize they're doing this i mean that's the scary part of this most of them are just behaving through implicit assumptions and how they've
025been socially conditioned to interpret things whether they're doing it intentionally or not the impact is still a racist impact so what are we doing about that impact you know is the is the question there okay so potential for bias so this is the piece that's connected to potential for bias another thing we look for because we see this over and over again and think about this in the context of what i was just describing which is inflexible discipline policies so think about we have this research that shows that teachers even teachers who think of themselves as very well intended tend to interpret behaviors and say black students more harshly than the same behaviors in white students part of what that should make us think about is are we building enough flexibility are we codifying flexibility
026into discipline policies so that we can account for that uh so we often note things like pre-assignment of punishments for certain kinds of behaviors or infractions uh i'll talk more about this uh in a second but the lack of a trauma-sensitive approach which means we should not have policies set up so that we're just reactively assigning punishments what we should be doing is reacting to the underlying causes of behaviors and if we don't do that we're not going to fix the behavior anyway right so but but if if we just have a chart that says well here are the minor infractions and here are the punishments for those and here are the major infractions and here are the punishments for those you know it can get very easy for a busy adult to just say
027okay well here's the punishment for this we know that you probably have many many adults in your district who are already thinking in this more complex way but the question is how can you institutionalize that to make that the norm that that's the that's the question we'll get back to this trauma-informed piece in a second uh we do think that generally speaking the handbooks contain too much sort of vague behavior language assigned to specific behaviors with no mechanism on attending to those underlying causes and because of that predictable bias the impact of that is always harshest on students of color right again not because teachers are out to get students of color we don't believe that's the case at least not for 99 point some percent of them right but again because they're just behaving
028through what they're interpreting which which is often through a biased uh lens so look at so this example coming right out of one of your uh one of those handbooks negative attitudes or actions intended to defy a request by the daughter undermine the authority of an adult who who is interpreting negative attitudes even who's interpreting negative actions but especially who's interpreting what negative attitudes are you know uh you know there's this research about how again this national research on uh how teachers often interpret enthusiasm in black students as somehow threatening now that's often interpreted as problem behavior in black students when the same kind of enthusiasm is not interpreted that way in white students and again the scary thing about that is most of the teachers who are doing that don't even see themselves doing
029it right so so somehow the district has to account for that you know so our recommendation wherever possible avoid predetermination predetermining punishments before the cause of a behavior is known and understood i know that this uh is complicated uh i know that this is a little complicated because then you have situations where while this student received this and that student received that and that seems unfair and and so it might create this other sort of you know set of tensions uh but but i think the bigger point is build flexibility into the policy normalize flexibility normalize flexibility and part of how you do that is applying a trauma informed approach to policy revision how can we frame this in a way that is sort of trauma sensitive the sixth thing we look at is unequal
030implications policy that look equal on the page but have increased implications for families that are already marginalized this usually happens around socioeconomic status it also could happen around race gender or some other areas often this is things that require extra time and money so there are several instances of this sort of thing in your policies something like uh unexcused late passes uh for being late to school uh you know if i'm a middle-class student and i miss the bus chances are much more likely that my family has a car and flexible work and paid leave if they need to leave work pick me up and take me to school if i'm a lower income kid who missed the bus it's way less likely that i'm going to have access to that so we're both being
031held accountable to this thing but we both don't have the same level of access and opportunity it's got nothing to do with one of us wanting to be at school more it only has to do with access and opportunity another example of this is you know requiring a doctor's excuse the word excuse there rubs me sort of in a weird way too it's an explanation i think not an excuse but it costs money to get a doctor's note it requires time it requires parents to take time off of work to get that uh in some cases right so it looks equal well everybody needs this but the impact is inequitable the impact is inequitable so again it's not about setting things up so there are no expectations it's about just building flexibility into the application
032of it right uh detentions well you know after school detentions again much harsher impact on lower income families who are less likely to have transportation less likely to be able to take time off of work to come up and pick up their kids if they need to do that and those sorts of things kids at the high school level more likely to have to work after school to help support the family right so it looks equal but the impact might be inequitable there okay so recommendations make sure policy isn't formulated in that sort of way i would say minimize the use of after-school detention or other implications that might have a harsher impact on some families than others avoid policy in which implications are tied to whether individuals or families can afford various kinds of
033access and resources really quickly a way that this can operate around race is something like uh a dress code where there are certain things sort of policed about what students can wear when those things are attached to particular cultures or particular racial uh groups and dress codes are often very gendered uh as well like here are the ways young women need to dress so they don't distract cisgender young men you know that wasn't something that especially stood out to us necessarily in your policy but just wanted to give you all an example of how that could operate a couple things we look at kind of secondarily is we look for trauma informed framing uh predetermined punishments is not trauma informed because trauma informed would be we're responding to the causes of behaviors not just doing
034like what i call reactive rule flinging well okay this student broke this rule so i'm going to fling you know the rule we look for criminalizing language uh or policies uh i don't think we saw a lot of what i would consider criminalizing language necessarily um but uh an example this might be or or policies that confuse trauma impacts with behavior issues just that they i don't necessarily know that this is centrally equity related but policies that treat addiction or mental health issues as behavior issues rather than health issues so our argument is any policy that's related to substance use not substance distribution i think that is that belongs in a behavior policy but substance use should be taken out of behavior policy and put into well-being concerns because children a child who comes to
035school high or is in such a state that they are sneaking alcohol on the school grounds usually that child is doing that because they're self-medicating something you know not because they're awful kids uh and so uh and i do think there were places in your policy that were sort of built in like we're gonna find support for students you know uh for this so uh so recommendation remove references to drug and alcohol possession and consumption from behavior policy but again that's different from distribution if someone's coming in distributing i think that's a different question i'm not talking about that i'm just talking about someone's in the parking lot smoking a joint to treat untreated depression i don't think that should be handled as a discipline issue i think that should be handled as a well-being
036concern again i don't know local laws you might be forced into handling that as a you know behavior issue or criminality issue but best case scenario so uh just to sort of wrap this up a couple of things that we didn't see that uh we would love to see uh we would love to see the uh uh equity policy uh the uh inclusive excellence policy built in included in the stuff that's going to students and families we know that there's an anti-racism resolution we would love to see uh we would love to see sort of a reframed version of that that's a little more reader friendly that's not used in like board language resolution type language something like that put in that i think that would be a great message to families you know we
037would love to see again i don't know if this belongs in the policy itself but we would love to see some sort of attention to uh some sort of plan for curbing predictable bias and application of policy uh something about a policy on non-discrimination and equity and curriculum and classroom practice a lot of what we hear from students is uh you know we often in other kinds of equity assessments we often do focus groups and the thing that we often hear in focus groups is from students is stuff around curriculum and stuff around classrooms such as like when someone uses the n-word in my classroom my teacher is unprepared to address that in a in a you know reasonable uh way so um i think i'm going to just stop there i think what we're
038going to do is just hold off for questions all until the end right so i can hand it off to seaman now and we'll get the questions at the end is that the best strategy or do you want to pause and do questions about this and then pass it to if you'd like to you know go get through your whole presentation and then do questions that will be fine okay well in that case i am going to unshare and uh hand it off to sema oh actually see my i can't unshare right because i need to do i need to do your go through your slides or do you have the powerpoint um i have the presentation okay so i can share hi everyone i'm seema pothany coming to you from minnesota um and super
039excited to be here to present um i see there's 71 participants and i think that is awesome so that's really cool and um it's good to see all these faces so i'm going to talk about the data portion of it um you're going to have to bear with me for a second while i share my screen as well and let's see you should be able to see it present not from the beginning from current slide okay sorry i am i wasn't following a long haul you were doing it i was watching yours and not following this way so i apologize that you have to see this big piece uh okay so we're good right everyone yes i can't even see yes i her see what you're sharing yeah thank you if you have your hands
040raised i can't see any of it right now i don't i don't usually i usually share in google drive and not powerpoint so this is a new experience for me um so i just want to talk a little bit um about what it was that i was asked to do so um i took a lot of the data that was already given to me from the district and a lot of it was already kind of categorized and just looked for some generalizations one thing i always want to say when we start off talking about data is that sometimes when we look at these numbers it really depersonalizes um what they represent and to me um well and to all of us it should be that each data point represents a student right and so um
041keeping that in mind um it's really important that sometimes we think well oh that number is not significant it doesn't have um statistical significance um but it still represents a child a student a youth who and an educational system were tasked to take care of and to educate so i'm going to start with the demographics and this i just got from the district's website so it's easily accessible to everybody um one of the things that i did notice um was that when i was looking at data i didn't see well i knew i noticed that the percentage in the population of your indigen students who identify as indigenous changes from year to year um it's obviously a low percent but um this current school year there's it's 0.2 and it wasn't listed on the district's
042demographics and so um i just think about that like if i was somebody who identified as indigenous and i went on your website and and looked i would be like oh there's no indigenous students whereas um 0.2 means there's one student two students right and again those data points though it might be statistically insignificant it still represents a student and if i were an indigenous student and i went on the website and didn't see that i was represented it would definitely be a barrier to my engagement with my school and district so um i did include that statistic in there and i think that was from my public school review and so whenever they had taken that it was at 0.2 percent for somebody who identifies as indigenous american indian um okay so then we
043looked at some of the elementary school demographics um so again this information most of it was given to us by the district some of it we did have to kind of um change and put it into percent so take the account and put into percents um but one of the things that i want to talk about that we'll see happening as we go from elementary to middle to high school is that our percentage of students who are identify as fed special education receive special education services or lep services increases and so it says sped percents increase in middle and high school greater than any other categories and then currently um the lep number is highest in elementary and so typically when i see this there's two reasons for that um and again though it's low
044it's still the highest in elementary one is because students are coming in and then they're testing out of the lep program by the time they get into high school or the other reason the other cause for it could be that you just have a new influx of students and residents and people coming into your district who need the lep services and so i say like if it's the case that they're testing out then you don't have to really think about that as much but if it's the case where you now have a whole new demographic of students that are coming in it would be important to make sure that middle school and high school teachers are prepared so that as these students leave elementary that they can still access those services um you know i
045know a lot of districts were just the demographics change and by the time the students come to high school or middle school the teachers were like oh like this is a new demographic for us so it's just something to note that that number changes um as you go on and then the other thing too yeah so i have on here the middle school sped was 11 percent high schools that is at 13 um we looked at attendance um and i said overall we find um high-end consistent attendance across groups over 90 percent for each um i do think that it's notable that in relation to cobit and just the number of participants who were students who were not able to log in um and do virtual learning distance learning um it seems like that wasn't
046as big of an impact in your district that you were still able to keep those numbers consistently from year to year if i just looked at your demographic attendance i wouldn't know that there was a pandemic happening in our country because it doesn't vary so that was good to see so then we also looked at cohort attendance data because sometimes you know again numbers can be deceiving and it's how you interpret them um but this one we wanted to see what happens when you have a group of freshmen um in the spring as they progress what happens with their attendance and the reason we look at this is because sometimes in school districts we'll find that our bypoc our black indigenous or youth of color percentage is really high their freshman year but by the
047time their senior year rolls around the number is considerably lower and so when we do a little bit more digging we find out a lot of those students are getting referrals and recommended and putting into the alternative learning programs um and so that's just something to be aware of of where are these students going sometimes they naturally just move um so nothing to be alarmed at but so that's why we looked at these numbers and that's why we had asked for this so just looking at it i highlighted in yellow the only one that really was a big discrepancy was your students who identify as hispanic or let they know it was 20 or you had 20 students sorry those are student numbers um and in the actual um packet of information i think we
048do note and i apologize that it's not i didn't write in their students or percent but the 20 students and then by the time um the spring of their junior year it was down to 16 students so it's you know i mean someone could only could say it's only four students but it's four out of 20 right so that's 25 of um students who identified we're no longer there from that same graduating class and so just to think about like did those students just naturally organically move um or was there something happening within that demographics and so we just advise um when you see discrepancies like this to dig a little bit deeper and see what might be happening um high school graduation rate so that's another one to look at and um you know
049so overall um if you're looking at your graduation rates we're at like 90 around right around 93 94 percent um and again this is the data that i was given so i'm just putting it in a chart and then stepping back and looking at it from a broader picture and so looking at this number you can see what changes were happening from 2015 to 2019 um you know even something like the here we have this two or more races where we were at 90 so 17 out of 19 students um who are graduating who identified as um having two or more races and then when we're looking at 2018 2019 that number goes down to 77 so now we have 13 out of 17 students um so yeah so just looking at some of these
050numbers and where those discrepancies go if we look at our black students we had 12 out of 12 that were graduating in 2015 2016 and then we had 12 out of 14. so 86 um yeah and then here like i thought this was interesting um if you look at your yellow population um you had 75 but that in 2015 was three out of four students um so 2016 2017 we're not sure what happened there um but then you have just the one out of three and then if you look in 2018-2019 you're still back at 75 percent but it's 9 out of 12 students so your number of students who identify as needing bll services increase considerably yet you still stayed at the same percentage for graduation um another big thing that we look at
051is advanced placement courses and representation in those courses so overall high school percent was 35 and what this number looked at is multiple grades and it's students who were in at least one ap course so what we weren't able to get the data on was um you know how many students are in multiple ap courses but i don't know that you have to do that much digging into it sometimes you can just look at these general patterns and so when we break it down by race um we would see here and so when i say it's in 20 2020 21 so this current school year of the black students are enrolled in ap courses by raise so that's not 17 percent of the total population but of students who identified as black only 17 of
052them are in ap courses and so when you contrast that with your numbers for your asian and your white students there's quite a big difference so for your asian students 65 percent of them are in at least one ap course um and then for your white students at least um or 32 of them are in at least one ap course so again looking at these statistics you have to kind of sit back and wonder what is it about these courses that our black students are feeling like they can't be in or um they're not getting into and that number decreased from last year so last year is 20 this year to 17 um i think okay so then this one so we looked at so this is any ap course and then the next slide
053we looked at um specifically math or science ap courses at the high school and so there were 239 students um and then this is the breakdown of what that looks like and so i wrote this equity question here that just says what additional support is given to your students who identify as black and hispanic um to ensure that they don't feel tokenized or marginalized in your class um and then what system is in place to ensure that the curriculum reflects racially diverse perspectives so i think about like if i was sitting in a math or science ap course and unless something is presented in the curriculum that talks about um racially diverse leaders or people or strategies or methods um some of that conversation is not going to happen it doesn't happen organically sometimes when
054we have students who identify from racially diverse backgrounds and they'll say oh hey like here's a different way to do it or i learned how to do it this way but when you're not seeing that from your black and hispanic populations what are you doing to ensure that the curriculum reflects their history and then also to this um so this is 2020 2021 and i noticed i think um i don't have the chart here it's in the actual report but two years ago you had there was one black student who was in you know here we have three um but just thinking about what that experience is like to be the only black student or one of two or one of three in a course um is really challenging and and so often we'll see
055schools that say well these courses are accessible to any student any student can take it but what you have to do is wonder one what kind of support are they getting when they're in there to make sure you retain them two if there's only one or two black or hispanic students in the class the general perception of the other students might be well i don't want to go there i don't feel comfortable um and there are some phenomenal articles that talk about what it is like to be the only or one of two or one of three students who identify in a marginalized way in a class and then also what barriers are happening as soon as elementary school to present to prevent people from from joining those courses so i think about you know
056um you know i identify as asian and from an early age um i knew like hey there's these advanced courses like you have to get good grades now so that you can get into the honors courses right then i'm going to say that to my own children but how many other students are even aware that there's honor students or advanced placement courses as young as elementary middle school so they have that in their head and they're thinking about it because sometimes by the time they get to high school they're like well i'm not going to do all that extra work or i don't see the benefit and then lastly too the other piece is with ap courses there's a fee as well and and i know i'm not sure if we have a slide here
057coming up but um i did see that one out of five students and the high school um at the high school level receives um free and reduced lunch and so is that a barrier as well because students have to take the ap test and they might not be able to afford it um so those are some of those deeper questions that when you see the numbers you have to be able to ask and investigate a little bit more and like paul said we so recommend focus groups because that's going to put the story to the number the two students will tell you why other students aren't joining or your students who identify as hispanic will tell you why they're not going into those classes so then of course we also looked at discipline data um
058and just some generalizations obviously we go into more detail in the actual report but at the high school level the two most common infractions were tardies and missing class or missing detention um you know we talked about it back in the policy review of what that means and the implications of of that and so i looked at it and i was like well okay so students are getting tardies but then they're missing their detention too so you have probably the same group of students who are receiving multiple tardies and now they're asked to report to detention and then they dismiss detention so you could come up with all sorts of reasons for that or you could investigate as students for the reason some of it might be because they don't have rides they don't have
059access to transportation to be able to get to school on time and then to be able to stay at detention um and then at the middle and elementary schools the most common types of infractions so in fact over 50 of all referrals for the last four years were minor infractions that were coded as disrespect disruption or defiance and so we talked about that again um it's really important to ensure that teachers um all staff in the school feel like they've had sufficient professional development on bias anti-bias training there's um a video clip that i use in some of my professional development trainings and it's the study out of yale and this gentleman's talking about how they took a whole bunch of um elementary and elementary and preschool teachers and they would have them watch these
060videos of a group of students and they said you know we want you to notice when something disruptive is happening let us know and so the thing was none of this none of the students were asked to do anything disruptive there was nothing disruptive happening but what the researchers were actually doing was just tracking the eye movement of the teachers and it didn't matter the race of the teacher but overwhelmingly um they all tracked and followed the black boys and the black students and so when you think about a lot of these infractions that are happening and why is it always the black males well part of it is because sometimes the bias that the educator has is that that's just who they're watching and when you talk to students they'll tell you that they'll
061validate that data by saying they don't even pay attention to the white kids or when the white kids are doing the same thing we get in trouble for it so super important i think that professional development intense professional development on bias and just noticing and again like paul said you know so many times educators don't even know that it's happening until somebody teaches them or observes them and kind of points it out a lot of times they're like i didn't even know i was doing that um so yeah when they're based on subjective behaviors the behaviors that adults have to interpret which leaves room for that bias and inequity so then we looked at the discipline data for in-school suspension for iss and dr at the high school level and we just took these numbers
062and so we know that um this is obviously something that has been made aware to the district before our report that came in and so i just have highlighted here just some of the numbers that kind of stand out from year to year and then the group so obviously looking at the percentage of male students who are receiving these discipline school suspensions and referrals compared to the actual student group population so it looks like they're about half and half so 51 and 49 yet um 69 but up to 69 percent of students are getting the iss male students and the referrals excuse me um and then looking down at your black and latino students and those numbers you know and they look at like the students who identify as hispanic what they know from in-school
063suspensions from the 2016 school year to the 2019 school year that number went from 8.5 to 15.1 percent um so clear jumps i'm looking at our students who identify as sped for referrals went from 5.6 to 14.9 percent you know and we don't have that data from the current school year but my guess is that the trends would continue um in that upward percentage so if you just see this increase from 2 to 10 to 31 this is the middle school so similarly we're seeing um probably more though here we're at 50 for student demographics for male and female yet your male students are at in the 90s for in-school suspensions for iss um which you know i it's just you have to wonder like is it just the male students are always the ones
064that are doing that or do you have educators who are just used to watching the male students um and then again when we're talking about those discipline infractions so 93 or 85 getting referrals those referrals we said the most common ones are for the defiance disruption and disrespect right so again subjective ones it would be a different thing if they were all for fighting where you could see that there was a physical altercation a punch thrown something that you could definitely see versus something that's subjective so again just highlighting some numbers we talk we'll talk about this more in our recommendations about what to do with some of these numbers and how to look at them okay so um i know i think we need to swap powerpoint yeah yep [Music] okay so um i'm
065going to talk about the uh the things that generally we found across our efforts were going well some of the areas for improvement and then we will uh both share some uh recommendations so uh let's start with the positive these are highlights of what we feel like again based on what we did and again i would say you know what we did in terms of equity assessment was fairly limited usually we would do focus groups and other pieces that would give us sort of deeper narratives about things but based on what we did look at these are the things we found were going well i i would say generally speaking the student handbooks and board policies that we were asked to review we didn't look at all the board policies but the ones we were
066asked to review are among the most equitable appearing we have seen but again this is just based on the language of them that we we don't necessarily know uh how they're being applied sema pointed out the district attendant attendance rates uh uh so uh that uh you're doing pretty that you've been doing pretty well on there uh we think that in general the district appears to be making important strides uh toward institutionalizing his commitment uh to addressing disproportionalities and equity i think this assessment is part of it i think the board's anti-racism resolution and how direct and clear it is probably more direct and clear than 90 of those sorts of things i've seen from other districts uh we think it's definitely a positive that the district has a strong director of diversity that they
067had that you have that position and you have somebody in it with a strong skill set i will say on the other end of that um that that position could be more powerfully placed and send a different message about its importance if it was actually embedded in the uh you know the cabinet the upper level uh structure and i also think it's a bit of a challenge that you basically appear to have a one-person uh office for doing district-wide uh work there um and uh you know so so that's so i think it's great that you have the position and you have a great person in the position and i think you should see that as a starting point for that uh role instead of the en end point for that role uh uh the
068positive of the district's policy documents we believe include some great buildings safeguards and processes that could potentially protect against some kinds of bias and things like tracking assignment to special ed or or [Music] gifted and even in some disciplined practices we noted that that there was this petition filed by students and families related to equity concerns and you know i think a positive way of of interpreting that is it demonstrates that that the district should have a lot of support for its efforts that the community cares about about these efforts i will say that another way of looking at that is that they had to do that you know or they felt like they had to do that that there wasn't enough movement being made you know uh there but the district's responsiveness to that
069i think is a is a positive step uh uh the district has developed solid plans for addressing concerns outlined in the petition for progress and for uh tracking the progress of that so we think all of those things uh we think look like they're going pretty well or at least things to build on and it's important to acknowledge those um i'll talk really quickly through some areas for improvement and then sema and i will sort of go back and forth reporting out uh the recommendations did i get that plan right seema okay thumbs up who seemed my good okay um so areas for improvement highlights of what we identified as important areas needing additional attention so uh and again all of this is in the written report uh this is just a summary of what's
070in the written report uh disproportionalities persist as you saw just now in the data uh uh predictably reflect national and equity trends related to discipline patterns of events course taking and other areas right so we're so that's why we're doing this right we're plugging away at what we know that the issues continue to be boys black and latino students students assigned to special education and students who identify with two or more races have disproportionate referrals um and uh iss is in school suspensions is that that's what that stand i want to make sure i'm getting that right okay and both the middle and high schools uh uh another area for improvement is that policies that in language on the surface seem equitable appear that they might be applied in an equitable or disproportionate way so
071we have policies that look equitable but we have data that says that inequities persist so we have safeguards in the policy to protect against disproportionality and who's assigned to what and yet the disproportionality persists so there's something deeper there to look at another area for improvement discipline policies in particular appear to be somewhat rigid and not trauma sensitive you know i think having people who are you know disciplined specialists with a trauma-informed lens i think it helped you think about how to reframe that you know i think that's a framing issue uh which i don't think is a huge uh i think the big thing about that is the professional development how do you get staff on board with applying policy and uh equitable trauma sensitive way just as kind of a overall reflection about
072this is that it's important to understand that policy is a symptom not a root cause so part of the question is is a district open to reimagining its discipline policies because that's how you get at the root cause not just changing them cosmetically not just changing the language but sort of looking at looking sort of beneath them another area for improvement the inclusive excellence statement is strong and is comprehensive but we think it could be strengthened a little bit with more of a central focus on equity because a lot of it feels more like a diversity statement than really an equity statement and that's an important distinguished uh distinction uh to make but i think you have a great start to that better than we've seen in many districts so uh we're going to share
073uh some recommendations here we're just going to take turns so sima you want to uh start us off yeah so definitely and oh i thought it was muted um and we'll go kind of quickly because i know it's difficult to just sit and listen and take all this in so we want to make sure that we leave time for questions and um interactions and suggestions you've got both of us here we'd love to just give you tips and and advice as well um so are some of our recommendations first we have analyzed data for patterns of discipline referrals by individual educators at each site and so i know that that information was there um and we were provided like extensive extensive lists um but the reason why one of the reasons why we don't analyze
074that is because i know in certain schools um let's say mr johnson uh is the dean of students and it's his job to refer students or to to give out the in-school suspensions well if i'm looking at all of your things as a consultant i would be like well mr johnson seems to be giving an awful lot because i don't know who that is so it logically would make sense that i think at each school site to have teams like the administrator at each school and then maybe a couple of other staff members sit and look at your data so that they can look and see um okay who's doing most of this referring well it's this third grade teacher or it's somebody in the cafeteria you know and so they can put faces to
075the numbers and the names much more easily and quickly than i can so definitely i would recommend having a team look at the data um for those patterns of who's doing it where are they happening are most students getting referrals at lunchtime in the cafeteria you know if so then that's needs to be a place where we can work on anti-bias training so just to have that time as a district to sit and do that i think the key to that point too is also the interventions so you have the data what are the interventions that are happening with the people where it shows that where the data is troubling you know around that too as seen what was saying second recommendation maybe some additional assessment that can really target why disproportionalities exist in advanced
076course taking i think simon was right on with that that maybe doing some focus groups with students i think it'd be a great idea idea to identify students of color students experiencing poverty whoever else maybe even white students who are who would be eligible to take those courses but are not taking them i think that would be interesting i think it'd be interesting maybe to take another look at the systems that are created to give students access to those as well um then we have ad focus group components to districts equity assessment efforts so we know that you have this comprehensive equity assessment that you're doing and it's great um we also suggest taking time to do focus groups even if it's like seven eight students um we suggest like identifying social um focus groups
077so students who identify as lgbtq students who identify as asian if you have multiple different types of asians so students who identify as east asian um and it's super important to get that type of data because again like if i were to just look at your school district and look at numbers i would say like your asian students are rocking it like they're they're in the ap courses they have high graduation rates you know but what i don't know is what those asian students are giving up if anything at all to be in those positions of good numbers right and so um if you can have conversations with them you'll find out more about the microaggressions they have to go through or the racism they have to endure the aspects of their identity they have
078to give up in order to assimilate um and some of that stuff again like it's not just about the numbers and improving the numbers it's about exp and improving the experience and paul talked about that in the beginning like that experience disparities sure you might have students who identifization who are taking all these ap courses but if they can say you know there's a lot of racism happening in the school and people aren't doing anything about it or um the reason i'm getting a tardy you know i'm looking at some of those tardies and sometimes you know in one school that i was working with we found out that the reason their tardy numbers were so high was because there was a particular hallway um of in this case it was white students and the
079students of color just knew like we don't want to walk down that hallway because when we walk down the hallway we get called names um it's just kind of a hostile environment and so they would take different routes thus getting a tardy and so the tardy numbers for students of color were really high but there's a sub story behind that um so do those focus groups to find out what students are thinking what they're feeling and what they're really like okay uh our next recommendation and a lot of these are things that we sort of mentioned as we're going along but uh we would love for you all to make a kind of a more accessible public version of that anti-racism resolution and incorporate that along with uh with the inclusive excellence statement into the
080handbooks just because we think they set a great tone and and just generally having a more accessible public version of the anti-racism resolution that is written in a way that's accessible to people who don't talk in resolution language you know i think could be very uh powerful very powerful thing to share um the next one is to build flexibility into your discipline policies and systems and to avoid pre-assigning punishments i think in that quest to be equal people sometimes make systems inequitable and so when you say an outburst in class will result in an in-school suspension well what if that outburst in class was because a student was just called a racist slur or a homophobic slur right and so now you have a student who's the target of something that's now getting a consequence
081because the policy says it will um and so and you know paul talked about that if it's applied equally equally it might not be equitable so just simply changing that word to instead of having it say will result in an in-school suspension um change it to might you know or can result in so it gives the administrator that flexibility and i know sometimes people get really worried about the flexibility going the other way of well now um we're being completely inequitable but i think if with the right professional development people will be able to say like okay we get to know the story and now therefore it's not going to be this consequence okay let's see uh we would like to encourage that uh for each site to conduct a separate review of practices and
082policies based on the ques question to what extent might this create an extra burden on students and families experiencing poverty and again we talked about that there are many examples of that marked in the uh policy handbooks um and then we have obviously we can't stress the professional development enough but um anti-racist discipline practices and procedures um and bias like what is it how is that happening what's um how does your bias show up in your discipline uh so uh another recommendation uh ensuring that interview processes assess the extent to which uh applicants have an understanding of equity broadly uh part of that is just because you know a district that's committed to equity would want to hire people who are bringing some commitment to that part of that too is of course we can't
083expect everyone's going to come in with a perfectly formed you know understanding so part of the value of this also is just getting a sense of you know when we ask that we also are sort of collecting data about what professional needs are of people that we're bringing in so that we can make sure that we provide uh you know that we provide that to people who need it and i'm gonna just add to that too if you have a question on your interview that relates to understanding their depth of understanding equity make sure that your staff who is doing the interviewing is trained on what different levels of answers might be because sometimes we take that for granted and we think that just because we have the question on there that the people who
084are listening to answers know what an equitable like a better answer would be than another one right and so um it's not just about having the question um having hr put out a question it's also about making sure the people who are interviewing know the difference between a strong answer and one that is celebrating diversity right if you you're hiring someone who's like well we'd love to just celebrate diversity i see all children the same i don't see color and then your interview team is like oh that's so awesome you know that's not where you want to be with equity so making sure you have that professional development done what are some stronger answers oh okay this one's mine too um so collect also data you know again this is like something that isn't reflected
085um in the information we got but sometimes looking at your extracurricular activities like talk to your athletic director at the high school level or what's happening at the middle school level with students engaging in sports students clubs and those other opportunities are there certain groups that are left out are there um you know and then you can look at what are those barriers is it stigma is it um fees and rates is you know what is it that barrier because we all know how important to how important extracurricular activities are to feeling included in the school community so just it's just something else that doesn't usually come up when people think about assessing data but look at your extracurriculars as well we just have a few more of these so we can wrap this up
086and get some questions uh developing a long-term professional development plan one thing you don't want to do is a piecemeal thing develop a long-term plan build it around adding depth of layers to people's understandings and practices um getting at both institutional and ideological underlying causes underlying causes so not just things that are here or five practices to deal with symptoms but here's how to understand and respond to underlying uh causes of the disparities and disproportionalities yep and we talked about the bias and the professional development um and then i'm just gonna do your lesson there paul and um you know oftentimes we focus on you know teachers who might be writing a lot of referrals but i would encourage your administrators to spend time in the classrooms of um where students feel empowered and engaged
087and again if you do focus groups you'll hear that they'll tell you like oh you know mrs so-and-so or mr so-and-so um we love that class so spend time in those classes so that you can see what the difference is and that's what you want to have modeled and reciproc reciprocated throughout your building not just focusing on the negative behaviors so uh that's all we have in terms of our oral report so i will just open it up i'm going to unshare my screen uh so we can just open it up for uh some conversation and questions okay i will look for board members um or any anyone else among the panelists who have questions or comments i did have i had some questions um about the discipline bias and it i think it's clear
088like the work identifying some concerns um such as that of some of our discipline policies or repercussions might be occurring because of how adults are interpreting the tone or making assumptions about students intent um and how we how we remedy that seems a little less clear um and one of the things i was thinking about is students who um you know have that sometimes discipline is particularly targeting behaviors that are literally a characteristic of certain neurodiverse conditions that students may have so when a behavior is simply um maybe a a characteristic of certain um types of neurodiversity then how then that kind of aligns with how we might be misinterpreting tone or making assumptions about intent and how we can do better so i think it's a something to focus on maybe how we approach
089students who who may be um on a spectrum of neurodiversity and that's not always necessarily clear to to anyone who's just an observer yeah i think that's a great point uh but that's why i talk about you know uh i think oftentimes in education there's there's just almost a culture of like a hyperpunitive culture is the best language i've and so i think part of what frameworks like trauma-informed education some other frameworks have helped us too is to think about how do we just slow it down a little bit and just be reactive to behaviors and i think that's the trick i think that's a trick and i think we we really have to give teachers tools for that because it's a difficult thing in the middle of instruction something whether the student is intending
090to be disruptive the thing they're doing might feel disruptive uh and uh and it's like i might not feel like i have time to slow down you know but i think giving people opportunities to practice that like we use case studies that help people practice it what would you do in this situation uh having professional development that help people understand that that neurodiversity continuum and and just practice not being not being reactive just not being reactive but again it's hard because there's a million things going on and i'm trying to teach and and so we got to give people a chance to to practice and i would add to that too i think part of that um part of that training too is also the the unreally understanding equal and equitable you know i think
091a lot of people like even when coming up with classroom rules or you know they're like but it's equal i have to have a b equal i have to have that consistency and so if my rule is if you speak without raising your hand there's a consequence for it you know so many educators think well that just makes it easier because everyone can understand that that's the rule it's equal it's applied equally so there's no room for bias not understanding that that's not equitable right and so even just talking to teachers and having them talk about those gray areas and process through like what about this and what would i do in this case you know and and even how do you have those conversations with students right like how do you teach students equal
092versus equitable like you know the whole concept of if everybody was equal and we were running a race everyone would have ten issues but equitable means they all have shoes that fit them right and so especially if you have students with um experiencing all different levels and coming to you with all different backgrounds you have to be able to feel comfortable making things equitable and and um and sticking to that and a lot of administrators you know that's one of their hardest things is like i don't want to get called out and unbiased in a way that i'm favoring this student because i didn't suspend them and so they have to be really comfortable with saying like this is the equitable thing to do this is the right thing to do in the situation because
093we know that the student is historically marginalized or we know these the student is experiencing something and we want to provide the best education thank you yeah great question though amy yeah my question was um about a different topic that i just want to back up and reiterate what amber just said about her question just because i think um i agree i think trauma informed training is really the the foundation that we can use for for all different kinds of kids and people and peers and co-workers as well um in terms of how we temper our reactivity to a variety of situations in daily life and all not just in the school setting but everywhere but i do think that idea of neurodiversity um we really have to have some big conversations more about what
094that is um because i think we typically tend to think about it with our autistic students or kids that are given a label up on the spectrum and it really involves a lot more than just that kids with other specified learning disabilities kids with dyslexia like have time management challenges and a variety of other executive function issues adhd falls in that bucket just a lot of different things fall in there that some people just don't always equate or realize um can result in disruptive situations in classrooms so um i'm glad you brought up all those things and that had that question amber that's a great one i just had a tiny little clarification one i just want to make sure um there was a lot of effort and wordsmithing that went into the anti-racism resolution
095and um just to prevent us falling down a deep hole with that again when you say like make it more accessible and but you also said the language is really strong which i appreciate those comments so are we mostly talking about just removing it from that resolution speak like all the whereas is and really just make them straightforward statements as like we as a district believe that yadda yadda i mean is that the main thing that you're talking about in terms of adapting that for other uses like website and handbooks cool i just wanted to be sure we don't take it too far that you mean something much more than that because we're all a lot of writers in this group and we like to dive into writing and so we want to make sure
096we talk about it i think you should re-debate every comma don't do that don't don't thanks i just want to make sure we had that clarified up front yes sure and just to follow up with that question if you had particular language um suggestions in terms of what what might not be reader friendly might be helpful so yeah i could i can uh i'd be happy to take a look again if someone just sends it to me again i could take a look at it and say and make a recommendation like a suggestion laura yeah thank you um i wanted to go back again because i think it is a concern that i know i've heard and have had sometimes about how and there's not necessarily an answer right now but how you balance wanting
097and needing to be responsive trauma responsive and responsive to different needs and abilities of children with also helping them understand expectations because it's actually i think easier for us as adults to go in and say well this is this situation this situation and you can you can begin to help children understand that but how you balance those things out and also letting parents know these are our expectations versus the um versus a more a looser definition of how we're going to address situations uh i'm really glad you brought that up because i think sometimes um you know i think sometimes the idea is when we say we want to be flexible and take context into account and address the underlying causes of behaviors it can be heard as well what you're saying is that people
098are no longer going to be accountable which can also look like low expectations uh um uh like i don't expect that you are capable of something right and and it can very easily devolve into that which is not what we want what we want is for kids not to be held accountable to uh for failures of adults and institutions in their lives when the failure is not their failure um so it's more sort of looking through that lens the last thing we want is to lower expectations of what people are capable of but what we don't want is people to be punished because of ways they're already marginalized i'm going to give you a quick example of that well i'll give you an example of myself i experienced sexual abuse as a kid and i
099in class and i was getting in trouble for little behaviors in class never for anything big but for behaviors that were very reasonable for a kid who had been sexually abused no one ever asked me if i'd been sexually abused no one ever wondered whether i'd been sexually abused but so i get in trouble in school then i get low behavior grades in school and then i would go home and get in trouble at home for behaving in ways that are very reasonable for a kid you know like i was very i hated being in confined spaces with adults so i would violently resist that and that was reasonable for me to violently resist that but i would get punished of course for violently resisting that so it's more about uh it's more about taking
100context into account it's more about taking context into account uh but i think you're right we have to be careful because if you if you start with that idea and you add somebody who has kind of a savior kind of mentality that can quickly devolve into well i have no expectation that you're capable of following any rules or you know and and that's the danger so the trick in every institution is that there's a sweet spot in there and we got to find the sweet spot we got to give people tools to find the sweet spot but but i do think you're con that i think you're adding that caution to the conversation is really important well and just a quick follow-up i'm also thinking from the point of view of the child so if
101you just to use the example you gave if you didn't know as a child that and some of it is the age of the child right but if you didn't even know that the expectation of your behavior is that you had ask um act a certain way now there might be reasons you you couldn't or didn't act certain way and i think that's part of the job of the adults i saw your cat's tail sorry earlier too so you can sympathize but um so that's part of the adult role but how we go about and i'm thinking particularly in terms of handbooks or something like that not that the children necessarily read the handbooks but how we ensure that they know the expectations so they don't fail them simply because they don't understand yeah thinking
102of things even like indoor outdoor races sometimes children act a certain way they don't even realize that they're breaking the rule and then they get in trouble and they didn't realize they were doing something wrong so how you go from having something that's clear enough and i think that's often what teachers are trying to do with say classroom rules clear enough and and superimpose on that the adult's job of looking at context and individual things so that's where my mind is is finding some challenges i would just add like one layer to that part of my fa part of my ethnic background is polish and part of my ethnic background is italian the polish side the family is very quiet somewhat passive aggressive but very quiet quiet voices the italian side is very loud and
103people speaking over when you said outside voices i was like those are the inside voices of that entire side of my family and the thing is uh and there's nothing specifically wrong with that other than that's a rule you know and it's a role based on some norm that is not a norm for all people so even still understanding that context where it might for some students that's more of an adjustment than it is for some other students not because they're culturally broken but just because the norms and their home lives are different from the norms in in the in the school right so uh but i think you're right being very clear about expectations but also having some flexibility is going to take the kids on the italian side of my family some time
104to adjust to the inside versus outside voices or it's more like they have outside voices than very far away from each other outside voices that's their range right so uh yeah uh one other quick thing about that just because a lot of what we're looking at is race stuff there is a you know a big push in schools around pbis positive behavior interventions and supports uh part of the pbis framework is about what you're saying which is how do we help students be much clearer about behavior expectations i think there's some danger in applying that as a solution to the racial disparities because there are no studies that suggest that racial discipline disparities exist because for instance black students don't understand behavior expectations that's not what the research shows so we have to be careful
105about you know how you know i think that's a great sort of general i think what you said is a really important sort of general thing but not necessarily a solution to the racial disparity other board members questions jim me on newt uh you know so i think um sema that you said something that's important when we take a look at enrollment and advanced classes so i i'm somebody who taught you know introduction to astronomy at the college level for about five years so i know that you know it's a basic requirement people have to get a science requirement and to graduate and usually those students aren't going to go on to become physics majors or astronomy majors or chemistry majors right they're just doing it to check a box so when you talk about
106advanced classes there are some and you mentioned about you know that they might not even have known in middle school that they were you know that these ap classes were available well sometimes that decision really needs to be made in middle school to get them on the proper track and and and that's that's one of the things i see as a problem is is when you get to you know bc calculus or something like that a lot of prerequisite courses have had to be taken along the way and if you don't then the the number of people that are eligible for that class you know or or that you know you might say everybody's eligible for that class but but certainly somebody that doesn't have a real good foundation in in math or science is
107set up to fail in that class because they don't have the prerequisites so so that when we we take a look at that by the time they get to that you know not a lot of kids are eligible to do that and and and those kids that have done it you know i have some friends that you know with their students in ap and they told their kids in seventh grade you need to be taking algebra one now you need to be taking this now because that's the progression that you need to do to get in those advanced classes yeah and to piggyback on what jim's saying this really starts in elementary school because recommendations for your sixth grade math placement are based on um elementary math assessments so i think there's some concern like
108i think we need to be looking at how what our criteria are in terms of how we're making course recommendations to the extent that a student's opportunity to take calculus depends upon how they were doing in fourth and fifth grade math um you know and then that has implications when they're like a totally different person five or six years later um and then in in in regard to you know students in who may be disadvantaged or minority students being less likely um to be in those ap courses maybe there's some we need to be looking at how course recommendations and what the criteria are in various academic departments for the course recommendations that are being made yeah because like you said i'm sorry to interrupt but like you said we really need to examine what
109the what the root cause is right it's not just we we say everybody's eligible and that sounds fine on paper but what's the root cause that truly not everybody else is eligible yeah so and i just want to add like i think that's great and and some of that will come from your focus group sometimes you know i was working with the school and i was looking at what the counselor was recommending and for a lot of students who were struggling in their courses already um i would hear counselors say things like well you know an ap course is so much more difficult like you really shouldn't take this you're barely making grades in your other courses and again like just not understanding it and not understanding like why is that student even barely making
110the grade in those other courses because there's lack of interest they don't see themselves in the curriculum um and then just because you might not want to take like ap calc it doesn't mean that you're not going to be interested in ap world history right so many of our backpack students thrive in ap world history and those courses because it's a whole new world for them to be able to have in-depth conversations they didn't get that in elementary middle school and then they see this course at the high school level where they can truly talk about justice and justice and all of that but they're never given that chance because the system has kind of allowed them to not succeed academically in others so then they don't get recommended to take something and so the
111intent of the counselor was we don't want to stack the deck against you but the impact is discouraging students who are getting who are failing or being failed by a system that's oppressing them so yeah i mean a lot of that is just conversations and did you know and talking to students who aren't doing it or talking to the adults who are doing the referrals like what type of student are you referring what if they come to you and they have low grades they're they're pulling c's in all their classes would you refer them if they said i want to take this ap world history class would you refer them and i think honestly a lot of people would say no there's no way i would refer them but again unpacking some of that bias
112um i see lori's hand and saria saria did you were you going to answer this particular question or um no just i wanted to um yes i was responding to this particular question and i just wanted to get um sema and paul's thoughts on this because as i'm hearing and i think it's really extremely important for us to get to the root cause of these concerns but i think at the same time we have to make sure that we're paying attention to the kids that are ready in high school and the kids that are already in middle school right and what are we doing in order to help them to be able to have opportunities um as well and so it's kind of like not a either or but of both and and so my
113my question would be is what would some recommendations be for those kids that are already at the high school level for example and you know yes we have opportunities in our high school where all kids can quote unquote op to take an ap class but as we've discussed if that if that has not been introduced to you in elementary or middle you may not necessarily be aware of that so what would be some suggestions you know for those kids that are already out of elementary school and in our middle and high school so i would say you know um just initially on a very basic foundational level educate the students about what why would they even want to take that course right like um dude like i look at like i have a 17 year
114old and i listen to some of the conversations he has with his friends and you know they're like why would i want to take a harder class right and he's like well actually if like a and i don't know if you have weighted grades or what your system is but in our school district like um a b in an honors course is looked at differently than an a in a regular course right and so just even having that in your head of like well colleges look at this and they look to see if you're taking advanced courses um you know and it's you know what are the benefits a lot of times students just see them as like those are difficult classes i'm gonna stick with this course so even that foundational hey here's a
115reason why you should take it um at a very minimum trying to explain that to them if you take this course you won't have to take it in college if you're going to college right you know just some of those things here's a way to get credit for it um yeah one thing i mentioned too is uh because for some groups uh for some racial groups uh you have pretty small percentages of those groups and i'm not sure what your percentages of those groups are in the teaching staff uh but it's also hard and seem like sort of alluded to this earlier for students to feel like they're the only one i'm going to be the only one and especially if they don't know that the teachers in those courses are you know trained to
116manage conversations that might come up about race or whatever so i would also think about who's teaching those classes one way to think about representation is who is represented student-wise in those classes another way to think about it is who's represented teacher-wise is there someone where you know that i can connect with and that's something that you know white students often take for granted at least middle school middle class and wealthier white students pretty much any classroom i walk into there's going to be a white teacher and mostly white students and if i walk into a class that is not mostly white students chances are if i walk into the next door that's going to be mostly white students so and i think that creates fatigue uh you know can create fatigue for students of
117color so thinking about who's assigned to teach those classes even thinking about diversifying the teacher core to have more representation especially have people teaching those honors and ap courses is another thing to think about lauren i i'll be really quick because i want to leave room for our uh other folks but i was just going to make the observation about how just how complex all of this is because of the layers of implicit bias with teachers who may think that a student from a background of poverty or a particular race may not be capable of doing the work and so playing down to them and and just how that feeds in to those things and then families for whom education has not been able to be a priority because of their background and so how
118limited their knowledge may be about what can be expected or what can be considered uh something that their child can can aspire to and you know just thinking about ways in which we can advocate for those students at every level and i think what i just heard you know related to the high school question that surya asked is a great example of ways that we can try to accommodate those situations where students have been um who sort of missed things because of low expectations or being intimidated by something because of extraneous factors so i'll just end that there so that we can move on but i think this is an important discussion thank you i think that's a good point and there's other wars there too that we could add on or because their parents
119couldn't afford to hire a tutor a math tutor for them when they were in elementary school or or or or so so a lot of times we think what we're seeing is a measure of potential and really it's a measure of uh you know access and opportunity and how do we reimagine how we're looking for potential in students taking those things into account uh that if both of these students families could afford tutors then maybe they would both be seen as more advanced and now are we going to punish are we going to reward this student because their family can afford a tutor on this other family it's not that they don't value education they might literally just not be able to afford a tutor and it could be something like that i mean there's
120so many layers yeah just there's a great this american life episode about equity like this and and they look at the university of uh texas austin uh and what's happening at the college level for students like this who didn't have access to tutoring and think because of financial it's great so yeah i think there's an issue of seeing opportunities for advanced learning as a scarce resource rather than that you have to be competitive for rather than trying to make sure as many students as possible have those opportunities for more advanced courses if it's if you have to compete with others and it's seen as a scarce resource that creates a different dynamic right okay other board member questions um i had another question about you talked about needing to get data on participation in extracurricular
121activities in sports um and i just i guess it's not really a question but really i guess i'd like to point that out as an area of emphasis for ensuring that we're as we go forward perhaps with the next phase of our strategic plan um but that we're kind of tuning into proactive ways to encourage students to plug into those events and and knowing um you know that we're getting broad representation of students in those across our extracurricular activities so yeah and it's one that you know oftentimes people miss and they don't really think about it um and you know and i don't know like what your district is like but sometimes like some of those um like in some districts it's the traveling programs and the programs that have students in third grade they
122start in third grade and then they go all the way up you know and they've always been the part of the traveling program that can afford to pay the weekend getaways and all of that and so then by the time it comes to high school it's kind of a given of who your team is right because they put in all of that work versus students who didn't have that access who maybe just played basketball at the the park down the street but are equally um could make the team but don't try out because of that perception or because of the cost that they think is associated with it and um so yeah definitely just looking at some of those numbers like if you can say like a lot of our byproduct students are not um
123our black and latino students are not taking our higher classes well what are what's their participation like in extracurriculars and activities and looking at socioeconomics are free and reduced price students you know just look at that how many percent what's the percent of those students that are in sports or after school activities are your board member questions should i go ahead and open up for public comment sure may i just say i appreciate paul sema um sri also for keeping us moving forward with this i know heather katie will vernon have been a big part of that too for the board i mean how we move forward with considerations of this obviously certain things in the report are already a high priority and we'll need to as we head into the next year the action
124plans are related to this proportionality the summer is the time for us to work on our handbooks we did last summer we didn't we didn't integrate our restorative practices into the handbooks as well um we will need to take steps because when we talk about 650 teachers who need to understand how things impact them it's just not changing language and writing and we need to consider the challenges they have at the classroom level and what our solutions would be if we make changes upon them so um and then as you mentioned amber the strategic plan in the fall i think the data needs to be part of that consideration how do we prepare to present it to them uh we're planning on doing something with preparing for the fall with our admin team this summer
125when we have some time we'll blocked with um with them we're considering using mucu to help us kind of run through a simulation so that we're prepared for the fall and and i think we don't want to overwhelm people because we do have a ton of information ton of data and what's the most important data we need to bring to the table and i think this point this report will help us to do that so saria before we transition on since you've been up to your eyeballs with this and you've brought us to this point with paul and steam is there anything you'd like to add before amber goes to public comment um i'm i want to be real quick because i want to get to uh public comment i just want to thank paul
126and sema for um all of their work and their time with us as a district this is a very important report that is going to propel our work forward as we continue to put our head down and keep doing the work and i just also wanted to just say that there is a lot of work that we are doing but it's really important to have outside eyes to look at the things that we are doing to give us that feedback and so i really wanted to say thank you thank you thank you we enjoyed working with y'all great okay i will go ahead and open the public comment then i see vanessa tamasco has a hand raised vanessa if you would like to introduce yourself um and then you can unmute yourself hi amber this
127is a vanessa tabasco i actually i actually accidentally raised my hand but i just wanted to thank um everyone that was here today and the information that was shared was very valuable thank you thank you vanessa um cynthia young i see your hand raised um if you'd like to unmute yourself and introduce yourself and then you can speak uh hi i'm cynthia young i have two kids in the district um 10 and 12. i'm the head of department of african american studies at penn state and i'm on the i'm a co-chair of the ramp um group which is the race and marginalized populations group um so i had two questions that are unrelated actually one is could you give us a little sense of how coveted and the restrictions around covet impacted what you were
128able to do or impacted what you could kind of glean i'm just i just want to get a sense of sort of scale and perspective so that's one question and the other question is um i as you might imagine have been impacted by disproportionate discipline um and so i thought a lot about processes around and how to get those processes right and we just had an event about it and that question kept coming up like so what are the best practices in other places and so i'm wondering if you know and i've thought about some slow the process down involve parents and a larger group of people making decisions but are there particular other suggestions you could give to us about how our process could uh help to end the disproportionality thank you cynthia and
129then um dr gorski and uh sema i'm not sure do you have answers to those questions now or um yeah i could do uh quick answers log off right at uh do you need to go right at eight okay but um but really quickly i'll say for the first question and thank you for your questions and uh but for the first question i would say because of the specific kinds of assessment work we were asked to do which was the policy analysis and the data review um i don't know that it that we were specifically limited if we had wanted to do focus groups that would have been really hard to do online uh if we uh or some other uh sorts of things um the other question in terms of you know i think
130i think uh in terms of best practices i think involving the community i think is a great example uh as you uh mentioned i think that part of i think if we're looking at underlying issues my understanding of the underlying cause of racial discipline disparities and other kinds of disparities are things that are are institutionalized conditions within uh organizations like schools and then ideologies that perpetuate those underlying conditions so i think a mistake that districts often make are doing professional developments that are built around strategies here are five strategies without addressing the underlying institutional conditions or the ideologies that are perpetuating those conditions so in my experience working in school districts also in higher ed that's the most a couple of the really important things are one to look at the discipline disparities as a
131matter of institutional and equity and what is underlying it institutionally why are those patterns allowed to exist institutionally why are inequitable policies allowed to persist institutionally why are disproportionalities allowed to persist institutionally and that's going to be different in a lot of different institutions and they're going to be some similarities as well but that's what most schools never get around to doing how is inequity embedded in our policies our practices our institutional cultures how is it embedded in our leadership and ideology of leadership uh how it's embedded in subtle ways and and not so subtle ways and policy and curriculum so i always think of it as if we're talking about racial disparities it's got to be a willingness to maybe bring a group together like you were mentioning and map out what are if
132we're talking about race specifically what are all the ways racial bias racial inequity what are all the ways racism is operating in this institution we have to be willing to map it out to name it to literally list it here are the ways it's operating in the curriculum here's the way it's operating in hiring here's the way it's operating in institutional culture and then go directly at those things so we always say the way to eliminate you know the way to racial equity is identify racism eliminate racism actively cultivate anti-racism so so i could answer your question more specifically and practically related to curriculum really related to leadership in these other areas don't have time to do that right now but but i think that's the thing get out the underlying institutional causes and get
133at the ideologies that are perpetuating those underlying causes thank you um and i will answer that but i do know paul needs to go so if you want a lot because and then i can answer and then i can go too but thank you thanks thanks that was a great question thank you for asking that question and thanks everyone everyone asks really good questions thanks um i see we have another public comment so wait i actually hold on i just wanted to get back to that sure okay yep so yes the paul answered the part about coven so yes it didn't impact us um except for like personally within our own houses like right like of being able to like do things um but i i do want to get back to that piece too
134because a lot a lot of times people ask us like what can we do um and so paul touched on a lot of it and the type of professional development that's happening and i feel like a lot of times educators know they know what's happening in the schools they know what those gaps are and then they know um why it's happening but they're not given the time to have open and honest and authentic conversations and have it facilitated and and to feel safe about it right and so i do feel like um the type of professional development if it's something that's just strategy focused like here's five things you can do like that's not what you're looking for you're looking for um and you're also not wanting pd where people are saying like okay well
135everybody's on this journey at different points and there's a continuum and some people are here and their understanding of you know racism and some people are here so we need to move slow i mean that's not helping either because at the same time there are kids sitting in classrooms who are experiencing this like i understand like you need to meet people where they're at but with where they're at is racism and bias you can't meet them there um and so really just thinking about providing space and opportunities for educators to talk to be open with each other to feel comfortable asking questions and calling each other out or to say when something doesn't feel right to them and to practice like you know what would i do if this happened in class and what would
136i say um it's it's missing in so much pd there's a great um it's kind of a plug i'll do because i also work with an organization called humanize my hoodie and they just put out this workshop and it's about um educators as allies but it really looks at the youth perspective of how race impacts and all it is is having people dial you watch a video and you dialogue and you say like how is that happening in your classroom and then the teachers get to talk about it and have it be authentic um and it's just something that's missing in a lot of professional development is that like let's just get real and let's see what's happening and then let's see how we can help each other work to eliminate that thank you seema
137um spencer um if you would like to speak um you could unmute yourself and introduce yourself um and then if you could um keep comments around two minutes all right thank you hi my name is spencer i'm a parent in the district i'm also a co-chair with cynthia on the race marginalized population work group uh cynthia actually asked my question and i just wanted to make a really brief comment um that i very much appreciated the emphasis on the role of implicit bias and specifically because when we had this event on disproportionality just a couple days ago there was in our specific case when we looked back at the records when the administrator looked back at the records for discipline that had been disproportionately meted out on black students all of those cases met the
138student code of conduct and there were a lot of community comments saying using that as evidence that there's no bias here and i wanted i thought it was really important to recognize that even though things may fit what's in the student conduct i think you guys did a great job of recognizing that what's in the student conduct can be heavily influenced by bias um and the teacher may not even be aware of it and that that alone is not good evidence to suggest that you know we don't have a racial problem here it's you know more and it's not simply just student focused so thank you very much for that good point thank you spencer okay would anyone else like to make a public comment um if you would like to make a comment if
139you could use the raised hand function okay board members any final questions or items for the administration in regard to this i'm sure we'll be continuing to have discussions around this and culture climate and learning okay all right take five minutes when we're done and then convene exact section okay so with that i'd like a motion to adjourn to executive session so moved bedell waiter second okay so that's been moved and seconded um we uh all in favor of adjourning i anyone opposed okay we are adjourned sema thank you so much for all of your work we really appreciate it and thank you serea and all the other administrators who have been working on this as well i know it's been a big team effort so thank you yes thank you all for inviting us
140that thank you nine everyone good night