Takeaways from the Family Engagement Summit: Part 1

By California State PTA Family Engagement and Communication Commission

What do focusing on equity, motivating and validating others, understanding learning goals, pivoting away from passive information, and bridging the digital divide have in common?  All of them can strengthen family engagement and all were themes of the Family Engagement Summit I attended virtually last week. 

 It was wonderful to join family practitioners from throughout the country at the conference, even though the in-person event was held in the Eastern time zone, which made for some very early mornings!  

There was so much good information that I want to share with all of you that I’m dividing it into two parts.  This first blog post will cover the keynote speakers who were incredibly inspiring! Part two (coming soon) will cover the workshops I attended. Enjoy a little taste of this amazing conference! 

Equity Occupies a Central Place in Family Engagement
The conference kicked off with an impassioned presentation by Principal Baruti Kafele. He is an equity expert, principal, author, and speaker who spoke to us about critical questions for effective family engagement. My favorite nugget from Principal Kafele was his 5 simple things our children of color need: 

  • Believe in me… without judging me or comparing me to my peers
  • Get to know me… beyond who I am in the classroom
  • Prove that you care about me… and therefore are committed to me
  • Challenge me to maximize my potential… while taking the time to learn how I learn
  • Expose me to my history… Because I need to know who I am

He also stressed that all children need to know that they are brilliant in order to help close the attitude gap between those students who have the will to achieve excellence and those who do not. We as PTA leaders need to keep these things in mind as we advocate for all children equity is the job of everyone!

Motivation and Validation Make a Difference
Day two, we heard from Kim Bearden, award-winning teacher and co-founder of the Ron Clark Academy. She spoke about 6 Principles of Communication from her book Talk to Me:  Find the right words to inspire, encourage, and get things done.  

Two of those principles of communication are motivation and validation. We need to always keep our motivation in mind as we do this work. If we are not motivated by what is best for the kids, but we are motivated by our personal interests, we won’t come across the way we are hoping. The principle of validation makes sure that we see all people and not allow anyone to feel invisible. This is so important on school campuses we have many families that don’t feel included or feel like what they say isn’t valued and this must change if we are going to have transformative family engagement. 

Students and Families Need to Understand the “Why” Behind Learning
Christine Darden was our very inspiring opening to day three. She is a mathematician, data analyst, and aeronautical engineer who devoted much of her 40-year career in aerodynamics at NASA to researching supersonic flight and sonic booms. She worked at NASA after the time period covered in the film, Hidden Figures, but shared many of the same experiences and challenges.  

While most of the math she shared with us went right over my head, her work as a math teacher left me with her greatest nugget: our students need to understand the why behind what they are learning. Oftentimes she heard, “I will never use this math, why do I need to learn this?” so she made it a point to give practical examples of how the math she taught can be used. This also applies to families we need to understand the rationale behind what our children are learning so we can reinforce that at home. 

School-to-Family Outreach Should be Active and Forward-Looking
The family engagement expert, Dr. Steve Constantino was a special keynote for virtual attendees. He has been working in the family engagement field for nearly thirty years. He has written several books including his recently updated Engage Every Family: Five Simple Principles which is used as a guide for schools who want to increase their family engagement.  

My biggest takeaway from Constantino is that we need to move from a passive form of family engagement to an active one. In the passive model, we engage families by telling them about things that have already happened: parent teacher conferences, and other things that our children have done.  In the active model, we help families understand what is about to happen in the classroom and how they can support it. This doesn’t have to look vastly different from what is happening now, we just need to pivot a bit. For example, instead of just sending home a folder full of old papers for a parent to sign, place a paper in that folder that states what is coming next (a lesson on weather), ask the parents to ask their child about it (tell me about the different types of weather), then have the parents write the child’s response and sign that. Or at family nights help families see the connections between the math or literacy games they are playing and their child’s curriculum.  

If we can partner with schools to make these changes then we can move towards his idea of family engagement that says, “Every family, every teacher, every child, every day,” which is an amazing goal!

We Must Bridge the Digital Divide
Finally, we heard from Dr. Nicol Turner-Lee, a policy-maker working on the digital divide. She reminded us that prior to the pandemic we had the “digitally invisible” in our country. People from lower socioeconomic neighborhoods, people of color, and the elderly were not the focus of digital equity but now they must be! Besides education, so many services now rely on a device and internet connectivity (social services, shopping, medical appointments, etc.) we must ensure that we leave no family off-line. Being connected is essential to life in our country. 

In her upcoming book Dr. Turner-Lee also states that because education is the trajectory to social mobility, this is an equity issue. In our PTAs we can continue to work to help ensure that every child gets access to the technology and internet access that they need by facilitating partnerships with community groups and advocating in our communities to make this a reality. 

Let’s All Put These Ideas into Action!
While I just scratched the surface of these amazing speakers, I hope you have found a nugget of something to take back to your PTA to begin working on. There is so much to learn in this area and so many great books on the topic. If you would like us to do a book club focusing on family engagement books, please email familyengagement@capta.org and if there is enough interest we will make it happen!

Book Club Discussion: “Strangers from a Different Shore” by Ronald Takaki

Members of the California State PTA Board of Managers have been reading books that give us a deeper understanding of the effects of racial prejudice on our minority populations. We have read eight books including The New Jim Crow, The Color of Law, How to Be An Antiracist, and White Fragility, among others. These books all dealt with the experiences of African Americans in the US. We decide to broaden our scope to other minority groups impacted by racism in America. The most recent book we read was titled Strangers from a Different Shore by Ronald Takaki.

Strangers from a Different Shore is the story of Asian immigration to the U.S.

When Chinese began to immigrate to the U.S. it was because we needed them as laborers. They built the Central Pacific Railroad line, worked in mines digging gold and ore out of the ground, and tilled the fields.

But many Americans saw them as competitors for jobs. Thus, they were denigrated and described as heathen, morally inferior, savage, childlike and lustful.

They came to America for a dream – the dream of a better life. What they found was bigotry and racial discrimination. They were seen as different and inferior; they were strangers, strangers from a different shore. They were different from the European immigrants that Americans were used to. They could not blend in like European immigrants could. The shape of their eyes and the complexion of their skin immediately identified them as different. The individual could not remake himself by shedding his past, language, custom and dress.

For survival and protection, they banded together, thus reinforcing claims that they could not be assimilated, and therefore, could not be Americans.

Eventually other Asian groups immigrated to America. They were not all Chinese, even though many accused them of being so. There were Japanese, Koreans, Filipinos, and Asian Indians. All experienced hostility and racial prejudice.

Laws were enacted prohibiting Asians from becoming U.S. Citizens:

  • The 1790 Naturalization Act, which restricted naturalized citizenship to whites.
  • In 1882 Congress enacted the Chinese Exclusion Law.
  • The Immigration Act of 1924 included the Asian Exclusion Act and National Origins Act. It was a law that prevented immigration from Asia.
  • The Gentlemen’s Agreement (1907) was a series of informal arrangements in which Japan agreed not to issue passports to emigrants to the U.S.

From 1790-1952, Asian immigrants have been defined as racially ineligible for citizenship and subject to severe immigration restrictions. Stereotyped as a “yellow peril” invasion consisting of slavish “coolie” labor competition.

After Pearl Harbor, the U.S. and China declared war on Japan and the two countries became allies. President Roosevelt commented, “By the repeal of the Chinese exclusion laws, we can correct a historic mistake and silence the distorted Japanese propaganda.” Japan had been appealing to Asia to unite in a race war against white America – condemning the U.S. for its discriminating laws and the segregation of Chinese into ghettos.

During World War II, America could not oppose the racist ideology of Nazism while practicing racial discrimination at home, and therefore laws began to change. But guarantees of equal protection under the law had little effect on what happened in society. Asians were often persecuted not for their vices, but for their virtues (hard working, devotion to family, stressing the importance of education.)

Asian immigrants endured discrimination that still resounds years later. Many Asian Americans suffer inequality and feel as though their roles in U.S. history have been overlooked.

Our book group readings on current and historical racial discrimination have inspired our legislation advocates to select legislation that seeks to address some of these wrongs. California State PTA has taken support positions on the following bills:

  • SB 693 (Stern) – This bill would establish the Governor’s Council on Genocide and Holocaust Education to establish best practices for education on genocide, including the Holocaust.
  • AB 57 (Gabriel) – This bill would require a basic course for law enforcement on the topic of hate crimes.
  • AB 101 (Medina) – This bill adds a one-semester course in ethnic studies to graduation requirements commencing 2029–30. The bill would also require schools to offer an ethnic studies course commencing with the 2025–26 school year.
  • SB 17 (Pan) – This bill would establish an Office of Racial Equity tasked with coordinating, analyzing, developing, evaluating, and recommending strategies for advancing racial equity across state agencies.

We encourage our PTA members and all parents to educate themselves regarding issues of racial discrimination. We hope that by educating ourselves on these issues we can become more understanding of the issues facing many in our country today.

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Advocacy Agenda for Equity 2021

California State PTA believes that all children deserve a quality education regardless of the community in which they live, the color of their skin, their language, their gender identity, or their immigration status.

But too many California students from underserved communities are deprived of an equal opportunity to learn. This year we created an equity agenda to address the needs of all of our children. The bills the California State PTA supports are listed below by category.

Poverty, Income, and Racial Inequality

PTA seeks legislation to address poverty, and the income and racial inequities that affect millions of California families.

  • AB 27 (Rivas, Luz D) Homeless children and youths and unaccompanied youths: reporting.
  • AB 57 (Gabriel D) Law enforcement: hate crimes.
  • AB 367 (Garcia, Cristina D) Menstrual products.
  • AB 408 (Quirk-Silva D) Homeless children and youths: reporting.
  • AB 742 (Calderon D) Personal income taxes: voluntary contributions: School Supplies for Homeless Children Voluntary Tax Contribution Fund.
  • AB 1006 (Rubio, Blanca D) Foster care: social worker turnover workgroup.
  • SB 17 (Pan D) Office of Racial Equity.
  • SB 100 (Hurtado D) Extended foster care program working group.
  • AB 14 (Aguiar-Curry D) Communications: broadband services: California Advanced Services Fund.
  • AB 775 (Berman D) Public postsecondary education: basic needs of students.
  • SB 4 (Gonzalez D) Communications: California Advanced Services Fund: deaf and disabled telecommunications program: surcharges.
  • SB 532 (Caballero D) Pupil instruction: high school coursework and graduation requirements: exemptions.
  • SB 682 (Rubio D) Childhood chronic health conditions: racial disparities.
  • AB 37 (Berman D) Elections: vote by mail ballots.
  • AB 546 (Maienschein D) Dependent children: documents: housing.
  • AB 656 (Carrillo D) Child welfare system: racial disparities.
  • SB 274 (Wieckowski D) Local government meetings: agenda and documents.
  • AB 34 Muratsuchi D Broadband for All Act of 2022.
  • AB 256 Kalra D Criminal procedure: discrimination.
  • SB 79 Bradford D State parks: state beaches: County of Los Angeles: Manhattan State Beach: deed restrictions.

Early Learning

PTA supports quality childcare, pre-school and early learning for all children.

  • AB 22 (McCarty D) Childcare: preschool programs and transitional kindergarten: enrollment: funding.
  • AB 92 (Reyes D) Preschool and childcare and development services: family fees.
  • AB 321 (Valladares R) Childcare services: eligibility.
  • AB 393 (Reyes D) Early Childhood Development Act of 2020.
  • AB 1361 (Rubio, Blanca D) Childcare and developmental services: preschool: expulsion and suspension: mental health services: reimbursement rates.
  • SB 50 (Limón D) Early learning and care.
  • SB 725 (Ochoa Bogh R) Early childhood education: parent participation preschool programs.

Health and Welfare

Physical, social, emotional, and mental health needs must be met before students can thrive.

  • AB 452 (Friedman D) Pupil safety: parental notification: firearm safety laws.
  • SB 260 (Wiener D) Climate Corporate Accountability Act.
  • SB 699 (Eggman D) School climate: statewide school climate indicator: surveys.
  • AB 285 (Holden D) State Department of Education: state school nurse consultant.
  • AB 967 (Frazier D) Special education: COVID-19 Special Education Fund.
  • SB 224 (Portantino D) Pupil instruction: mental health education.
  • SB 237 (Portantino D) Special education: dyslexia risk screening.
  • SB 722 (Melendez R) Interscholastic athletics: adult supervisors: cardiopulmonary resuscitation training.
  • AB 234 (Ramos D) Office of Suicide Prevention.
  • AB 270 (Ramos D) Core Behavioral Health Crisis Services System.
  • AB 309 (Gabriel D) Pupil mental health: model referral protocols.
  • AB 586 (O’Donnell D) Pupil health: health and mental health services: School Health Demonstration Project.
  • AB 988 (Bauer-Kahan D) Mental health: mobile crisis support teams: 988 crisis hotline.
  • AB 1117 (Wicks D) Pupil support services: Healthy Start: Toxic Stress and Trauma Resiliency for Children Program.
  • AB 1165 (Gipson D) Juvenile facilities: storage and use of chemical agents and facility staffing.
  • AB 1197 (Quirk-Silva D) School meals: nutritional requirements.
  • SB 14 (Portantino D) Pupil health: school employee and pupil training: excused absences: youth mental and behavioral health.
  • SB 21 (Glazer D) Specialized license plates: mental health awareness.
  • SB 217 (Dahle R) Comprehensive sexual health education and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) prevention education.
  • SB 364 (Skinner D) Pupil meals: Free School Meals For All Act of 2021.
  • AB 48 (Gonzalez, Lorena D) Law enforcement: kinetic energy projectiles and chemical agents.

Education Funding

California’s school finance system must provide stable, sustainable, equitable, and adequate funding to meet the diverse needs of all our students, including before and after-school programs, summer school, and distance learning.

  • AB 99 (Irwin D) Statewide longitudinal data system: California Cradle-to-Career Data System: governance and support.
  • AB 1112 (Carrillo D) Before and after school programs: maximum grant amounts.
  • SB 737 (Limón D) California Student Opportunity and Access Program.
  • AB 75 (O’Donnell D) Education finance – School facilities: Kindergarten-Community Colleges Public Education Facilities Bond Act of 2022.
  • SB 22 (Glazer D) Education finance- School facilities: Public Preschool, K–12, and College Health and Safety.

Teaching

PTA supports the recruitment and development of an educator workforce that is reflective of the student population, and that all students have qualified and effective teachers delivering a full curriculum.

  • AB 312 (Seyarto R) Teacher credentialing: basic skills proficiency test: exemption.
  • AB 437 (Kalra D) Teacher credentialing: subject matter competence.
  • AB 520 (Gipson D) Teacher retention: California Diversifying the Teacher Workforce Grant Program.
  • SB 237 (Portantino D) Special education: dyslexia risk screening.

Curriculum

Instruction should be personalized, culturally relevant, and responsive.  Coursework must address racism and bias to counteract the institutional and structural biases and related traumas that often drive inequitable outcomes for students.

  • AB 101 (Medina D) Pupil instruction: high school graduation requirements: ethnic studies.
  • AB 104 (Gonzalez, Lorena D) Pupil instruction: retention, grade changes, and exemptions.
  • AB 299 (Villapudua D) Career technical education: California Apprenticeship Grant Program.
  • AB 839 (O’Donnell D) Career technical education: California Career Technical Education Incentive Grant Program.
  • ACR 49 (Choi R) Arts Education Month.
  • SB 545  (Wilk R) Pupil retention: COVID-19 impact.
  • SB 628 (Allen D) California Creative Workforce Act of 2021.
  • SB 723 (Rubio D) Pupil instruction: tutoring program: learning loss mitigation.
  • SB 70 (Rubio D) Elementary education: kindergarten.
  • AB 366 (Rubio, Blanca D) Foster youth.

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Addressing Microaggressions to Make PTAs More Welcoming

We all want all families to feel welcome at our schools.

An active middle school PTSA was committed to including all voices in their PTSA planning. They worked with their school’s Spanish-bilingual and Chinese-bilingual family liaisons to engage the English-language learner communities at their school and to provide interpretation at their meetings. At every meeting, the Spanish-speaking and Cantonese-speaking families had interpretation and a familiar face to welcome them to the meetings. Before the meeting started, they felt included and welcome to their PTSA.

Yet, when it was time to discuss the budget and upcoming events, the PTSA Board described the events that they had planned and didn’t ask for feedback from all members at the meeting. The Spanish-speaking parents were confused. They had come with their ideas for community events and were excited to share their ideas, but, when they suggested new events or programs, the PTSA Officers asserted that they had already decided what the community events would be.

Do you think that the Spanish-speaking families returned to the next meeting?

“Welcoming All Families” is the first standard of Family Engagement in the National Standards for Family-School Partnerships. Our PTAs provide Welcome Back to School events, mentor families and many other terrific programs, strategies, and initiatives that are described in the National Standards Assessment Guide. We can make our schools even more welcoming by watching for micro-aggressions in your PTA meetings and activities.

Microaggressions are indirect, subtle or unintentional instances of discrimination against members of a marginalized group. Although they are thought of as small actions, microaggressions can have a tremendous impact. In a short PTA video, you can learn how to recognize microaggressions, respond to them and repair relationships in situations where we’ve committed them.

Continue your learning and reflection on micro-aggressions with these questions and resources.

For self-reflection:

  • Are you more often an observer, perpetrator or victim of microaggressions? What does it feel like for you in each of these roles?
  • Which of your identities (i.e., race, immigration status, language, religion, gender, sexuality, ability, household status, etc.) tend to have more “power” and could lead you to unintentionally commit a microaggression? What would it look like in those instances?
  • How does intent and impact show up in how you respond to microaggressions?
  • What has worked and has not worked when you have responded to a microaggression?

For your PTA to discuss:

  • Where have you seen microaggressions play out in your PTA? In your school community?
  • Who is affected by these microaggressions? What is the impact for these people?
  • How can you recognize, respond and repair microaggressions when they occur within your PTA?

Come to the Family Engagement Meet-up during Convention 2021 on May 14 at 4:00 p.m. to reflect on how you and your PTA may become more aware of and address microaggressions at your school.

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Book Club Discussion: “White Fragility” by Robin DiAngelo

Our Legislation Team decided that a book club would be a good way to begin discussions around race, equity, inclusion and justice. They created a list of books dealing with these topics and began to read down the list. To read more about this process, please read our previous blog post about the book club.

Today we are going to share the resources and study questions from the book White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo. In this book DiAngelo examines how white fragility develops, how it protects racial inequality, and what we can do to engage more constructively.

The primary goal for white people working to understand racism is not to learn how racism impacts people of color. The primary goal is to recognize how the system of racism shapes our lives, how we uphold that system, and how we might interrupt it.

Definitions:

Prejudice is prejudgment about another person based on the social groups to which that person belongs.

Discrimination is action based on prejudice.

When a racial group’s collective prejudice is backed by the power of legal authority and institutional control, it is transformed into racism, a far-reaching system that functions independently from the intention or self-image of individual actors. Racism is a structure, not an event.

Questions for Discussion:

1. “We are taught to think about racism only as discrete acts committed by individual people, rather than as a complex, interconnected system.”
“Only bad people who intended to hurt others because of race could ever do so….any suggestion that we are complicit in racism is a kind of unwelcome and insulting shock to the system.”

“Our simplistic definition of racism – as intentional acts of racial discrimination committed by immoral individuals – engenders a confidence that we are not part of the problem and that our learning is thus complete.”

“Racism goes beyond individual intentions to collective group patterns.”

“If I understand racism as a system into which I was socialized, I can receive feedback on my problematic racial patterns as a helpful way to support my learning and growth.”

How can we use this definition of racism as a systemic structure, and not acts of individuals to create awareness and acknowledgement that racism exists and how we might work to interrupt it?

2. DiAngelo suggests that one of the most effective barriers to talking about racism with white people is the good/bad binary. How have you seen this binary underlying common white responses to charges of racism? How might you respond when the binary surfaces in discussions about racism?

3. “Most of us can acknowledge that we do feel some unease around certain groups of people, if only a heightened sense of self-consciousness. But this feeling doesn’t come naturally. Our unease comes from living separate from a group of people while simultaneously absorbing incomplete or erroneous information about them.”

What can be done to change this?

4. “While implicit bias is always at play because all humans have bias, inequity can occur simply through homogeneity; if I am not aware of the barriers you face, then I won’t see them, much less be motivated to remove them. Nor will I be motivated to remove the barriers if they provide an advantage to which I feel entitled.”

“To understand race relations today, we must push against our conditioning and grapple with how and why racial group membership matters.”

How do you see these statements applying to PTA?

5. If we accept that racism is always operating, the question becomes not “Is racism taking place?” but rather “How is racism taking place in this specific context?” How does awareness of that change how we think about our lives and our actions?”

6. “Individualism claims that there are no intrinsic barriers to individual success and that failure is not a consequence of social structures but comes from individual character.”

Does this perception play into societies misunderstandings about affirmative action and why affirmative action programs haven’t changed our racial outcomes? How can we work as individuals or as PTA to change this world view?

7. “The metaphor of the United States as the great melting pot, in which immigrants from around the world came together and melt into one unified society through the process of assimilation, is a cherished idea. Once new immigrants learn English and adapt to American culture and customs, they become Americans. In reality, only European immigrants were allowed to melt. regardless of their ethnic identities, these immigrants were perceived to be white and thus could belong.”

Why is the idea that the U.S. is a “melting pot” problematic?

8. Anti-blackness – the ultimate racial “other”!

  • Kidnapping & 300 years of enslavement
  • Torture rape and brutality
  • Medical Experimentation
  • Share cropping
  • Bans against testifying against whites
  • Mandatory segregation
  • Bans on black jury service & voting
  • Lynching and mob violence
  • Imprisoning people for unpaid work
  • Bans on interracial marriage
  • Redlining
  • Employment discrimination
  • Educational discrimination
  • Biased laws and policing practices
  • White Flight
  • Subprime mortgages
  • Mass incarceration
  • School to prison pipeline
  • Disproportionate special ed referrals and punishments
  • Testing, tracking, school funding
  • Biased media representation

It’s a system, not an event

The concept of anti-Blackness pushes back against the idea that all ethnic minorities have the same lived experiences and can be shoved under a singular umbrella” Simply put: All People of Color (POC) do not face the same gravity of harm. The sooner we recognize the extreme barriers facing Black POC, the sooner we can address the anti-Black narrative and policies that are disproportionately killing them.

Thoughts on this? Were times tough for your immigrant ancestors? If so, in what ways does DiAngelo say this is still not the same as being Black in the U.S.?

9. As I move through my daily life, my race is unremarkable. My presence is not questioned. I belong. Try to identify at least 3 ways white racial belonging has been conveyed to you in the last week.

Once we have been made conscious of what has always been all around us – the consistent reinforcement of white superiority/privilege – what are the options you can generate in your life to challenge and dismantle this historical and dominant view system?

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Leg Con 2021 Wrap-Up: Bringing Equity to California Public Schools

This article was written by Kitty Cahalan, President of Blair School PTSA in Pasadena (First District)

“A Path to Equity” was the focus of this year’s Legislation Conference, which I attended as a local PTA leader and advocate, but also as the parent of two public high school students. Bringing equity to California public schools has long challenged our educational leaders, and the pandemic has highlighted vast inequities in the system and left millions of California students more disadvantaged than ever. From access to mental health care and meals to the widening of a vast digital divide, the conference underscored that the prospect of getting students back on track is daunting. Far from being pessimistic, however, the conference presented information and opportunities that we as parents and PTA advocates can use to disrupt ineffective old practices and bring public education into a new era in which all are included and empowered, and in which the needs of all are seen and addressed.

State Superintendent Tony Thurmond opened the conference and focused on restorative justice and increased digital access and literacy as examples of measures needed at the state level to increase inclusiveness and access for all students. President Celia Jaffe shared CAPTA’s ten recommendations for the timely and safe reopening of schools. Director of Legislation Shereen Walter shared CAPTA’s legislative agenda and the critical need for “our collective voices to influence legislation and the state budget to improve equity, access, and opportunity for all of California’s children.” Then, National PTA President-Elect Anna King shared her personal stories of witnessing how racial and economic inequities affected her own children, injustices which led directly to her involvement in PTA and her work to bring a collective voice on behalf of all children to our nation’s leaders and educational decision-makers. This was a powerful start to the conference.

Equity best practices were discussed in sessions about equity in the arts, community schools, and schools as incubators for democracy.

  • Tom DeCaigny, California Alliance for Arts Education, stated that even though the arts are shown to be effective for development of motor skills, a powerful educational tool for students with disabilities, and are mandated by the state, arts education implementation continues to fall short in districts throughout the state. DeCaigny identified PTA as a key messenger and urged coordinated messaging for the arts, especially during remote learning.
  • Michael Essien, a middle school principal, shared how adherence to the school’s North Stars – whole child, student voice, belonging and rigorous education – combined with ongoing staff training in implicit bias, as well as community partners to bring tiered interventions to students, helped the school meet students and their families where they are. When students feel healthy, safe, and included, he said, they will be ready to learn.
  • John Rogers, UCLA’s Institute for Democracy, Education, and Access (IDEA) examined mission statements and LCAPs from districts across the state, looking for indicators that districts consider themselves responsible for the civic education of their students, and found very few districts include keywords such as “democracy” and “civic participation.” Rogers encouraged participants to consider their school districts’ role in furthering democracy and to encourage students to learn how to participate in their communities’ civic lives.

Each of these speakers gave clear, actionable information for the advocates in attendance to use to further the call for equity.

The news on the budget front was encouraging, as California has an unexpected budget surplus. Budget experts discussed the state government’s priorities: addressing the digital divide, helping students who have been the most affected by the pandemic catch up, and providing for an increase in mental health services. Many of these allocations will come in the form of one-time funds and will challenge districts to rapidly deploy services to our most at-risk students. Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, pushing for the additional revenue to go to education, especially early childhood education. He said that PTA is best positioned among all advocacy groups to disrupt the layers of abstraction between what is decided in Sacramento and what is happening on school campuses. He challenged us to communicate specifically what is needed in schools. Brooks Allen, Education Policy Advisor to the Governor, made clear the breadth of the challenge – nearly two-thirds of the state’s students, about 3.7 million children, come from economically disadvantaged homes – and the state must focus on these students or the additional funds will not have the impact we wish to see.

The theme of equity echoed throughout the conference: access, inclusive approaches, and listening to all the voices in our communities. Our path toward equity requires that our local and state leaders share a coherent, unified message that puts the needs of the most vulnerable first. Not only was this message shared in multiple legislative meetings, but PTA participants left the conference with the tools to continue to forge this path forward for our students.

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Book Club Discussion: “The Color of Law” by Richard Rothstein

Our Legislation Team decided that a book club would be a good way to begin discussions around race, equity, inclusion and justice. They created a list of books dealing with these topics and began to read down the list. To read more about this process, please read our previous blog post about the book club. 

Today we are going to share the resources and study questions from the book The Color of Law, by historian Richard Rothstein. In The Color of Law, Rothstein lays out the history of de jure segregation. Laws and policies were enacted and enforced at the local, state and federal level that promoted discriminatory housing practices. The result of these laws and policies not only created the segregated communities we now have, they are a primary cause of the wealth gap we see today between whites and African Americans in the United States as whites were able to take advantage of wealth building in homes whose value has soared over the decades. Rothstein argues that racial segregation is the deliberate product of “systemic and forceful” government action, and so the government has a “constitutional as well as a moral obligation” to remedy it.

Discussion Questions:*

    1. What surprised you as you read The Color of Law? Was this history known to you?  
    2. What do you know about your own community and your local zoning policies during the 20th century? How segregated or integrated is your community? What would it look like if your community were required to have its “fair share” of middle-class, minority and low- and moderate-income housing?
    3. Textbooks typically used in middle and high schools don’t describe government’s role in creating residential racial segregation.  Rothstein writes, “If young people are not taught an accurate account of how we came to be segregated, their generation will have little chance of doing a better job of desegregating than the previous ones.”  What can each of us do in our own communities to change how this history is taught in our schools?
    4. Chapter 8 example: How did you feel about the several cases where people tried to do the right thing and failed because of the way the system of laws and policies and pressure worked to keep racial segregation? How did reading about this history of racial segregation make you feel?
    5. The impact of government-sponsored segregation has had tragic consequences and impacted generation wealth for African Americans.  Some think that the government should concentrate on improving conditions in low-income communities, not try to help their residents move to middle-class areas. They say that easing the movement of minority and low-income families to predominantly white neighborhoods will meet much resistance. Yet others say that low-income communities have too little political influence to ensure follow-through in attempts to improve conditions in segregated minority neighborhoods. What are your thoughts? Can we fulfill our ideals as a democratic society if it is only more equal but not integrated?
    6. Difficulty of Undoing Residential Segregation
      – The multigenerational nature of economic mobility
      – The substantial appreciation of homes created a large racial wealth gap
      – The substantial appreciation of homes means homes are now unaffordable to many African-Americans
      – The mortgage interest deduction increased subsidies to higher-income suburban owners
      Should we and how can we remedy residential segregation?  What are your ideas for making change?
    7. We typically expect to understand two sides of a story.  Is there anything missing from The Color of Law that might modify its argument?
    8. After reading The Color of Law, a young African-American high school graduate sent an e-mail to the author:
      “As I was growing up, I looked at the racial segregation and accepted it as how it has always been and will be; I equated white neighborhoods with affluence and black neighborhoods with poverty. I didn’t think about the major role the government had in hindering the equity accumulation of African-Americans. I think I ingrained this inferiority complex and that is why I did not excel in school as much as I could have.”
      What is your reaction?

* In our one hour and forty-five minute session we were not able to get through all eight questions.  

Helpful Links and Resources:

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Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Book Club Suggested Reading List

Book clubs can provide PTA leaders and families in your community a chance to have discussions on important issues. The California State PTA Legislation Team wanted to further their understanding around the issues of diversity, equity, inclusion and justice so they began a monthly book club. In the new year we will be sharing with you their discussion questions and resources for each book here on the blog. We hope this will inspire you to make 2021 a year of learning, collaboration and growth in the areas of diversity, equity, inclusion and justice.

The team’s first task was to create a list of books, then they set to work reading them. Every month they come together to discuss one of these selections:

  • How To Be an Anti-Racist, Ibram Kendi
  • The Color of Law, Richard Rothstein
  • The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander
  • White Fragility, Robin DiAngelo
  • Ghosts in the Schoolyard, Eve Ewing
  • So You Want to Talk About Race, Ijeoma Oluo
  • White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide, Carol Anderson
  • My Grandmother’s Hands, Resmaa Menakem
  • We Gon Be Alright, Jeff Chang
  • A More Beautiful and Terrible History, Jeanne Theoharis
  • We Want to Do More than Survive, Bettina Love
  • Dying of Whiteness, Jonathan Metzl
  • Stamped from the Beginning, Ibram X. Kendi
  • Caste, Isabel Wilkerson

Some general notes about the book club:

  • We meet once a month via Zoom to discuss the books.
  • The book club is optional for our team, but we found that most wanted to participate.
  • After two books we realized that this discussion should be larger, so we invited the entire California State PTA Board of Managers to join us.
  • Our format for the hour-and-a-half* book study is:
    • Welcome and short book summary: 5 minutes
    • Housekeeping: 5 minutes
    • Questions and thoughts: 75 minutes
    • Wrap up and introduction of the next book: 5 minutes
  • We have found many resources online, including videos from the authors that help to ground our discussions
  • As part of our housekeeping conversation we discuss the technical aspects of holding a discussion on Zoom, but we also share how these conversations may be challenging and while we might not agree, but we need to remain respectful.
  • We do not record these sessions — attendees need to be present to participate.

* Our discussions have been so good that we have gone over time, but we make sure that the bulk of the discussion is done in the time allotted.

Sample of our housekeeping language:

Raise your hand (either using the Zoom “hand” icon or your actual hand) if you want to speak and watch the chat box for the order of speakers whose hands I have seen raised. If I miss you, keep your hand up. I encourage everyone to get a chance to speak, so it is possible that if you have spoken a few times, I may skip over you to give others a chance to say something!

Before we begin the book discussion, I want to say that this topic and many of the topics that the Leg Team is reading about in our book club are hard, difficult and emotionally charged issues. We are discussing issues that we may not all feel the same way about. California State PTA has more liberal leaning members and more conservative leaning members….and that is the beauty of our organization. So many people from different perspectives and beliefs, coming together for the good of children and families. So, I want us to be cognizant of that in our conversation today. Please let’s make sure that we respect, listen and value each other’s thoughts and feelings on this topic and keep the conversation thoughtful, honest and civil. While the nation may be struggling to communicate on troubling issues, I truly believe that PTA can rise above that and we will be able to have a meaningful conversation. So let’s get started.

What’s next?

Stay tuned for The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein. In January we will be sharing with you our resources and discussion questions for this book.

Book Review: “The New Jim Crow,” by Michelle Alexander

The CAPTA Legislation team is in the process of reading and discussing one book a month on the topic of the African American experience in the U.S. We decided to do this to educate ourselves about this pertinent and important issue. Our first two books were How To Be an Antiracist by Ibram Kendi and The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein. Our third book is The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander.

The book asserts that the War on Drugs and resulting mass incarceration of African Americans is The New Jim Crow.

Author Michelle Alexander contends that there is no truth to the notion that the war on drugs was launched in response to the crack cocaine epidemic. The war on drugs was announced in 1982, before cocaine use became an issue. At the time, less than 2% of the public viewed drugs as an important issue. The Reagan administration hired staff to publicize the emergence of crack cocaine in 1985 as a strategy to build public and legislative support for the war on drugs. Eventually there was a surge of public concern, but it did not correspond to a dramatic shift in illegal drug activity but instead was the product of a carefully orchestrated political campaign.

In less than 30 years, the U.S. penal population exploded from around 300,000 to more than 2 million, with drug convictions accounting for the majority of the increase. Our incarceration rate is 6 to 10 times greater than other industrialized nations. There are more people in the U.S. in jail today for drug offenses than were incarcerated for all reasons in 1980. The vast majority of those arrested are African Americans charged with relatively minor crimes. Arrests for marijuana account for 80%. People convicted of drug offenses now constitute the single largest category of people in prison.

Why? What happened?

According to the author, few legal rules constrain police in the war on drugs.

The Supreme Court has eviscerated the 4th Amendment (protection against unreasonable searches and seizures). The Court has upheld the constitutionality of unwarranted search and seizures for suspected drug offenses. In addition, laws were passed that gave law enforcement agencies the ability to keep cash and assets seized during a drug arrest. Huge federal grants were given to law enforcement agencies willing to make drug law enforcement a top priority. Millions of dollars in federal aid was offered to state and local law enforcement  agencies to wage the war.  So long as the number of drug arrests increased, federal dollars continued to flow.

And who was targeted for this profitable war? The Black population.

It is estimated that 3 out of 4 young Black men can expect to serve time in prison for a drug offense. Despite the fact that studies show that people of all colors use and sell illegal drugs at remarkable similar rates, in some states Black men have been admitted to prison on drug charges at rates 20 to 50 times greater than white men.

What has been the actual effect of the war on drugs?

Although it is common to think of poverty and joblessness as leading to a life of crime, the research cited in this book suggests that the war on drugs is a major cause of poverty, chronic unemployment, broken families, and crime in the African American community.

Being in prison is not the only problem. Today a person released from prison has scarcely more rights and arguably less respect than a freed slave. There is no public assistance, the job market is bleak for convicted felons, and they are barred from serving on a jury. They are shunned by all. Shame and stigma follow jail time. Severe isolation, distrust and alienation are created by incarceration.

Prison sentences and the resulting felon label pose a much greater threat to urban families than actual crime itself. As a crime reduction strategy, mass incarceration is an abysmal failure. It is largely ineffective and extraordinarily expensive. Prison creates criminals; it doesn’t help anyone or change them or give them a chance to redeem and recover.

The point of this book is to stimulate a much-needed conversation about the role of the criminal justice system in creating and perpetuating racial hierarchy through mass incarceration.

By reading and discussing the books on our list, the members of our Legislation Team are learning and understanding many of the factors that are impacting families of color and look for ways that we can advocate for change in the best interest of all children and families.

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Global Diversity Awareness Month: Parent Stories, Part 2

First, listen…

Unit PTA leader: We decided to move to an area where my Black son would see peers and school adults who looked like him. As a PTA leader, I know the power of advocacy and partnership with school staff. I advocated with his teachers about implicit bias and how harmful it was to send my son to sit at the desk for the same behavior his white friends engaged in but instead received a warning and allowed to sit on the carpet. We advocated with the school to address the bullying and use of unacceptable language around race. We advocated with the PTA and parents that even if we didn’t have a large African American population, an African American Living Museum should be a school event. There was some success but it was exhausting. After a few years, as a family, we decided that living in and being educated in a community that is integrated and more diverse was the right choice for us. We had read about how students of color are disciplined more, tracked for AP classes less, and the list went on. We wanted to minimize the impact of the embedded systemic bias.

Then, learn…

Even though #GlobalDiversityAwareness Month is over, we want diversity, equity and inclusion to be a focus all year round. California State PTA and National PTA have position statements and resolutions that give us authority to act on behalf of all families:

Then, Take Action…

We recognize that each PTA and school community will have different solutions, but these are great places to start: 

  • Look at the demographics of families on your campus– Are they represented on your PTA board?  Are there activities that highlight and celebrate these families and make them feel like they are an integral part of your campus?  Does your library showcase authors and books with characters that represent these families?  Are your assemblies diverse enough that all children see themselves in the presentations?
  • Educate yourself, your board, and your school community about the challenges these families face by holding a book club or hosting listening sessions. 
  • Participate in the upcoming Listening Sessions that California State PTA will hold in January. 

Click here to read part 1 of this series.

Click here to read part 2 of this series.

Click here to read part 3 of this series.

Click here to read part 4 of this series.

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