Welcome

Purpose

The Community Focus Team dedicates itself to engaging all school district stakeholders in conversations about racism and its effects regarding equity and disparity of marginalized student populations and provide advice/counsel and recommendations to the School Board to foster student success.

How Statements

Process

• Being a constant voice to the district and community that our current district systemic racism is not what we want to be as a community. Ensure continuous conversations
• Creating a system of transparency (i.e., having open meetings, community listening sessions)

Conversation

• Being a conduit for input/conversation and engagement with community groups and business
• Gathering input – community conversations
• Holding regular opportunities for discussion and feedback with stakeholders
• Identifying and holding meetings with community groups
• Initiating discussions on equity – racial, economic, ethnic and other diverse groups
• Initiating discussions on improving communications and understanding to bring out misunderstandings and assumptions without blaming
• Planning to educate community
• Using the word “racism” – this is why we’re here

District Accountability

• Asking for regular, public updates from the District on progress being made
• Holding schools and school administrators accountable for base action and conversations using data
• Making specific recommendations on budget, staffing, programs
• Writing a plan to implement recommendations
• Randomized assessment of discipline issues going forward, with emphasis on students and their families’ perspectives
• Reviewing “best practices,” other districts, OCR, etc.
• Reviewing district data

Evaluation

• Devising a study of racial bias in district staff
• Engaging all district staff in developing a critical equity lens, of which the first step would be to complete an individual intercultural inventory (e.g., IDI), participating in both group and individual analysis, and completing next steps for deepening intercultural competence/white identity development/understanding of differences/knowledge of systemic privilege
• Expecting and analyzing behavior data from schools
• Finding out what gaps exist in navigating the system for students, families, staff, potential staff, and potential partners through focus sessions with each group.
• People don’t know what they don’t know. How would they find out what they don’t know? Note: there was a community focus world cafe a few years ago on “Why there is a lack of minority teachers?” One reason was that minorities who wanted to be teachers needed help/mentors with the licensure process. Many were the first in their families to attend college so it may not be as easy for them to go through the process.
• Investigating how our community and school systems might be contributing to the inequities and disparities in our schools (housing, employment, accessibility to preschool education and extracurricular/enrichment opportunities, student-teacher ratios in schools, racial/ethnic/socio- economic balance in our schools, etc.)