Follow up to the Sept 29th BOE meeting

First, I would encourage you to look at the draft proposal of the EEE committee community members; it starts out with a Executive Summary (pg 5-7) that provides some background on why this document was written and by whom, hinting at the built up frustration of various community members and groups; page 8 sets out an Introduction, rooting the proposals in the June 24th BOE resolution to declare racism a public health crisis; and starting on page 9, the proposals sets forth several Recommendations.

I am still trying to find a good way to have a public discussion about this document; I have interacted with several individuals (mostly via email), and I know some folks are talking about the proposals on facebook, but I feel strongly that the various viewpoints and arguments, for and against, need to be out in the open – there are firm opinions on both sides.

Secondly, I asked some questions about the Strategic Plan to the Board, and recently I received a reply. Here is the email I sent to the Board:

During the Sept 14th BOE meeting, Ms. Angela Ward and Four-Point representatives presented the Strategic Plan that you and the district administration have been diligently working on for many months. If I may, I would like to submit two clarifying questions to help me understand some of the nuances of the Plan.

Question 1: How exactly will the district “look closely” at the correlation of Special Ed and race?
I very much appreciate the emphasis on the “opportunity gap” and the “achievement gap” throughout the presentation, and it is very clear that we as a district have some major issues to address. We already know there is a high correlation of Special Ed to race (and likewise, discipline to race), so I guess another way of asking the question is “what are we going to do about it?” Board President Amy Armstrong spoke, near the end of the meeting, about addressing these types of issues from the policy perspective, and I would like to hear more of that discussion.

Question 2: What exactly are the non-negotiables?
I believe it was Scott Joffus who was talking about slide 10, titled “What are the non-negotiables?” However, I don’t think the question was answered. Was that intentional? Or did I miss it? Mr. Joffus spoke at length about some excellent overarching, structural concepts that I whole-heartedly agree with (eg, K-2 literacy), but I still do not know what the non-negotiables are.

I look forward to seeing the new Vision, Mission and Objectives statements prominently displayed on the school district website once the Strategic Plan is approved at the next board meeting.

Meghan Neary of FourPoint responded with the following:

1) In response to your first question, the strategic plan contains several ways in which Unit 4 will “look closely” at and address the correlation between special education identification rates and race:

a) Analyzing and reporting special education referrals by race and school is both an outcome (high-level indicator of district success) and a measure (shorter term indicator of implementation progress). This means that these data will be reported to the board and public regularly (frequency is still TBD, but it will be at least twice a year). While this doesn’t solve for disproportionality issues, it will place them front and center for Unit 4 and its stakeholders. 

b) Achieving instructional excellence is the first priority of the plan and it includes several strategies. Improved instruction is the best way to lower special education identification rates among Black (and other) students because students may be mistakenly identified as having a learning disability when in fact they have experienced ineffective instruction. There are a number of ways that this will be addressed (which may be easier to discuss) but one key approach is through the non-negotiables (see question 2).

c) Similarly, implementing tiered interventions—both for student behavior and academics—is a critical part of the plan as well as the new board resolution. Students, especially Black students, may be referred to special education prematurely before they have had exposure to small group remediation, tutoring, etc. A systematic approach to providing these interventions will be put in place, which should reduce the number of inappropriate referrals.

d) Addressing systemic racism is a key theme in priority two of the plan (educational access) as well as in the new board resolution.  Similar to ineffective instruction, national research shows that Black students may also be referred to special education not because they have a disability but because educators and administrators hold implicit biases or are not culturally proficient. This will be addressed in a number of ways, including through training of educators and administrators beginning in January 2021.

2) In response to your question about non-negotiables, the strategic plan defines an approach to school improvement and includes a strategy for focusing the central office’s work with schools. The central office has a finite capacity and schools can only do so many things well at once. So the idea is to focus on a number of high-leverage initiatives that have widespread buy in.  These non-negotiables have already been defined with the help of principals and central office staff and are in different stages of development and implementation (again, happy to discuss), but they are as follows:

a) All schools will take a consistent approach to school improvement planning that will include the non-negotiables and additional strategies to meet the needs of their students and to eliminate opportunity gaps for children of color. 

b) All schools will take a common approach to School Improvement Leadership Teams focused on ensuring effective implementation of the school improvement plan. 

c) Principal and leadership team members will meet regularly with central office leaders in Data Consults to review data, discuss implementation of the school improvement plan, and coordinate central office supports. 

d) The district will engage elementary school teachers, interventionists, coaches, and school leaders in developing and implementing a data-based K-2 literacy plan. 

e) By January 2021, each school will identify and begin building staff capacity on at least one component from Domain 3 of the Danielson Framework.  Over the course of the 2020-21 school year, central office will also convene a group of teachers and administrators to develop a comprehensive instructional framework that is based on the Danielson model, with a specific emphasis on culturally responsive practices. 

While I was hoping for more concrete steps, I appreciate that this these are high-level strategy discussions, and my take-away is that some of the low-level action steps are still being finalized. I am glad that focus on addressing systemic racism is baked into the new scaffolding of the Strategic Plan – it is up to us, the community, to hold future Boards and Administrators to the promises in this plan.

I am a little worried about the cavalier use of buzzwords like “instructional excellence”, “improved instruction” and “school improvement”. Do we not always try for “improved instruction” and work towards improving schools? What were (or are) we doing for the past 50 years if not “instructional excellence”? Will new/incoming teachers be required to be trained and/or educated in the ways of “instructional excellence”?

The response about non-negotiables did not really satisfy me; when I hear and use the phrase “non-negotiable”, I think about a goal or objective that we will not compromise, no matter what. The “non-negotiables” listed above all seem to point back to some “school improvement plan”, which will include non-negotiables…. In re-reading the response, it seems like a re-hash of the slides and presentation on Sept 29th.

2e mentions the “Danielson Framework”. I had never heard of it, so I looked it up (the framework may have been mentioned in the Sept 29th BOE meeting, and if so, it went over my head):
https://danielsongroup.org/framework

If the District is going to fully embrace this framework, I would want to see community buy-in, which would require that the community at least has a basic understanding of what the framework is, which would further require some way to access this information: in other words, the framework needs to be distilled and, essentially, translated so that any Unit 4 fifth grader can understand it.

As much as I agree with the intent and general direction of these plans, I am concerned about how much of this work is placed solely on the shoulders of Unit 4 faculty and staff; what about involving the community more? The one non-negotiable goal to “eliminate opportunity gaps for children of color” is a tall order – can a school district even achieve this goal acting as a single agent? Would not we have to involve various social, neighborhood and city services?

Meghan Neary invited me to ask if I have any more questions. *grin* I plan to take advantage of that invitation. If you also have questions, feel free to leave them in the comments. You can also send them to u4boe@u4sd.org.