Board Work Session on Participatory Budgeting and Equity Tiers, Part Two

 To summarize from Part One, this Work Session was about new recommendations from a consultant hired by the district with recommendations on how Participatory Budgeting might work in SPS and "equity tiers" to determine allocate of funds. From my first post:

The Work Session had two parts - Participatory Budgeting and the WSS Committee Recommendations - Equity Tiers. The former was led by a consultant who seems to be a new favorite at SPS, Zithri Saleem from Zithri Information Associates. The latter was led by SPS data czar, Dr. Eric Anderson. The two presentations play into each other with Dr. Anderson's "tiers" determining what schools would be part of the reallocating of discretionary funds to needy schools.

I do want to reiterate my grave misgivings for the district to make demands of individual PTAs and try to take money from their fundraising. PTA is a private entity and, while the district can limit how money is spent within schools, they can't tell private groups that the district will be taking some percentage of fundraising dollars for district projects.

 I was madly taking notes during the discussion so some statements may seem random. I have put in bold some issues I think you will hear about again.

• Page 12 of the documentation says: "To achieve equity in experience and opportunities, school funding structures must disrupt longstanding asymmetries in communities' access to capital (e.g. informational, financial, social) that are rooted in practices such as discrimination and relining."

School districts can only do so much and it's fine to lead by example. But no school or district alone is going to be able to overcome all the systemic racism that has been baked into our systems. I feel that statement means a much bigger lift than a district can do by itself. 

• Dr. Anderson's portion of the discussion include a green box labelled, "Method uses data for 6 student groups: Black/African American Male Students (including multiracial), Students of Color Furthest from Educational Justice (Black/African-American, Native American, Pacific Islander, Hispanic/Latinx or Southeast Asian, including multiracial students from these groups),  Low income students, ELL, Students born outside the US and homeless students. 

Do note that change from "Asian" to "SE Asian" which appears new to me.

One issue that arose in this discussion also highlights a problem around new director Michelle Sarju. Director Lisa Rivera Smith asked Anderson if the "Black/African American Male students" category included black boys who immigrated from an African country. I could see Dr. Anderson getting ready to answer the question when Director Sarju jumped in. 

Sarju said no, those boys were NOT African American and went on about it being a clear distinction. 

It would have been nice for Director Liza Rankin who was chairing this Work Session to ask Sarju to allow Anderson to actually answer the question first before giving her remarks. Sarju did this twice in this session. 

After hearing from people like President Obama, the late Colin Powell, etc. speaking of how they got treated as African American males, we can believe it is a sad common experience. So Sarju is, of course, correct in saying that a Black male born here has had the American experience of blackness while a Black boy born in an African nation, coming here later, would not have the same experience to that point. But I'd bet that immigrant Black boys learn pretty fast what it means to be a Black male in America. 

And, I see from the green box that one category near the bottom is "students born outside the U.S." Interestingly, that would include some white children as SPS has a fair number of Russian/Ukraine immigrant children. It could also include Black immigrant males but then that would mean that only American-born Black boys would be in the top tier. I find it all confusing so I have a query into Dr. Anderson for the answer because he never got to do so during the Work Session.

• Sarju also stopped the discussion at one point to ask, "What is WSS?" That's a fairly basic term for the work at SPS  but JoLynn Berge, head of Budgeting, quickly explained it. Sarju said other people listening in might not have known either. That's true but if at every meeting Sarju is going to ask for basic terms to be defined, they are going to have to plan for longer meetings. 

• As many people know, when you are using Zoom, the person speaking has their name highlighted to let you know who that person is. However, Sarju seemed to not understand this and referred to two people as "the white man" and "the white lady." I can only say that if someone referred to any person of color in that meeting in that manner, they would have had their head taken off for doing so.  The "white lady" was JoLynn Berge who is a member of the senior cabinet for Superintendent Brent Jone and so a key person to know.

• One trend in speaking at SPS is use of the word "weaponized." The consultant who spoke about Participatory Budgeting used it several times. 

• Dr. Anderson said that there had been two new hires to his team to do equity work around the data with the team from the Department of African American Males. 

• Director Vivian Song Maritz asked for the thinking about the context of this work to academic goals, matching goals with the equity tiers. She said she didn't need an answer right then.

• Director Leslie Harris asked about data on South Shore K-8 which has been receiving $1M a year  for ten years plus. There was dead silence which is never a good sign. Berge said she could talk about "off-line." Wait, what? There's a southend school that has been operating with $1M a year more than any other school for years and SPS doesn't have data to talk about? Hmm.

• Re: the new Equity Tiers and the WSS, two things were recommended. 1) Removing student achievement scores (from the SBA) as a component measure in the annual Equity Tier calculations. 2) Expanded the definition of students counted as African American males. 

• Director Rankin also said this work shows "the values of community - we invest in things we think important." This is a KEY issue that someday SPS will have to be honest about - when they say "community" who are they talking about? Because you can tell the Board definitely has ideas about what it means and, if that is true, then they need to define it. Personally, I believe ALL of the district is a community group - I mean, the district certainly wants that to be true for levy voting coming up. 

          But I think for race and equity issues, there is some other group that the Board and the             district call "the community."

• Sarju also stated that she has had a relationship with the consultant, Zithri Saleem, for 17 years.

• Remember when I mentioned Director Harris asking about South Shore K-8? Director Harris is always very respectful when asking for information from senior leadership. Almost the only time Director Chandra Hampson spoke during this Work Session? She said, "My demand for next time is...." It would appear she has learned nothing from that HIB investigation into her behavior with senior staff.