School staff attends symposium

School trustees and administrators from throughout Sonoma County recently attended a symposium at the Sonoma County Office of Education where we learned race matters when it comes to closing the educational achievement gap.|

School trustees and administrators from throughout Sonoma County recently attended a symposium at the Sonoma County Office of Education where we learned race matters when it comes to closing the educational achievement gap.

We heard this message from the keynote speaker, Glenn E. Singleton, principal of the Pacific Educational Group, and author of “Courageous Conversations About Race: A Field Guide for Achieving Equity in Schools.” His presentation’s title was “Ushering In Courageous Conversations About Race, Equity and Access to Knowledge.”

Singleton works with school districts to facilitate dialogue about race among staff, administrators and trustees. His premise, supported by data, is that race, more than income, determines student achievement. For example, when you look at SAT scores, whites and Asians out perform blacks and Latinos in every income group. As Singleton said at the symposium: “Poverty doesn’t produce racial disparity. Racial disparity produces poverty.”

My county board of education colleagues and I initially heard Singleton speak last December at a California County Boards of Education meeting. Inspired by his presentation, we wanted to bring him to Sonoma County. A few months later, the Sonoma County Health Services Department published “A Portrait of Sonoma County,” a report looking at how our county’s residents are faring in the areas of health, access to knowledge and living standards. Because of this information, we decided “equity” would be an appropriate theme for this year’s North Bay School Trustees Symposium. The symposium is an annual event the Sonoma County Superintendent of Schools and the Sonoma County Board of Education host to provide professional development for school district trustees. The goal is to assist them with the issues and challenges they face in their work to provide quality education for all students.

The symposium included a presentation by Brian Vaughn of the County Health Services Department about the findings in “A Portrait of Sonoma County.” Singleton had read the Portrait and frequently referred to it during his presentation. He said, “When you read the report, race matters. It’s all over the report.”

Singleton’s method of courageous conversations uses what he calls a “systemic racial equity transformational framework.” He said we must be willing to learn to talk about race and have the will to institute systemic change in order to make transformation happen. “You need to go after the problem systemically, not programmatically,” he said. “You can’t manufacture racial equity. It’s not a doing, it’s a believing.”

“Courageous conversations,” Singleton explained, “engage, sustain and deepen intra-racial and inter-racial dialogue about race, racial identity and institutional racism, and are an essential foundation for examining schooling and improving student achievement.”

He said courageous conversations about race involve the following conditions:

• Engage through your own personal racial experiences, beliefs and perspectives while demonstrating respectful understanding of specific historical as well as contemporary, local and immediate racial contexts.

• Sustain yourself and others in the conversation through mindful inquiry into those multiple perspectives, beliefs and experiences that are different than your own.

• Deepen your understanding of whiteness and interrogate your beliefs about your own association with and relationship to racial privilege and power.

Singleton received a standing ovation at the end of his presentation. Attendees were interested in doing the work he described. I believe the County Board of Education will have future discussions about how we can continue to provide leadership, and assist our school districts, with this important issue.

A final note: Attending the symposium from the Sonoma Valley Unified School District were: Superintendent Louann Carlomagno, Trustees Dan Gustafson and Gary DeSmet, Adele Harrison Principal Mary Ann Spitzer, Common Core Math lead teacher Krista McAtee and Adele Harrison student teacher Elizabeth Schleth.

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Gina Cuclis is the Area One Trustee for the Sonoma County Board of Education.

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