Wednesday, July 10th, from 8:00am-10:00am.
Thank you for joining us this week at our Education and Equity Summer Visit Day. Collectively, we articulated that we want every single child in our community to have access to the resources, opportunities, and supports necessary to reach their full potential. We know that such a bold vision is both necessary and hindered by the institutional barriers students face. We must envision a world where those systems are changed. We urge you to continue to dream fearlessly about what that world looks like and root your daily actions in that vision.
Notes From Education and Equity Visit Day
Panelist and their visions:
- Dr. Daniel Bullock, Executive Director for Equity Affairs for DPS: vision is equitable outcomes for diverse students served by DPS and all young people. Removing race as a predictor of outcomes is a lofty goal but worth pursuing.
- Javiera Caballero, Durham City Council: vision is a community where they can afford to stay, where their voices and needs matter, and where process includes them.
- Pablo Friedmann, DPS Multilingual Resource Center: vision is allowing students to dream big, discover their best selves, and accomplish their goals. North Star at Student U is college, but in the school systems, goals might include job, military, etc. I want students to be great members of our community.
- Tiwana Adams, Student U Board Member and parent, realtor, ordained minister, and writer: vision for young people is for them to succeed in education and identify vision for life beyond education — who they really are and what they really want to do and the tools they need to get to that vision.
- Jim Key, former DPS teacher, coach, principal and assistant superintendent, Chair of DPS Foundation: vision is to ensure opportunity is there, equitable, and real for all students in Durham Public Schools. My dream is Freddie’s dream — whatever goal or dream that students have, they have the resources, access, and opportunities to achieve that.
Key takeaways:
- Equitable distribution of resources
We don’t want to take away from others, but we need to create a system and process where we can all succeed. We need to think seriously about redistricting because our kids need to go to school with each other. REDISTRICTING REPORT ISSUE 1 - Listen to our students and families
We need to share with parents that getting involved matters and support them doing that. Invest in Participatory Budgeting to allow residents to directly decide how to spend part of the public budget. There is a petition coming for a student to sit on the school board. - Collaborate to create strong systems of support
We need to have real hard conversations about how the system is creating these results and how we can collaborate with different committees and organizations in our city to change the system. We need to work together to wrap our arms around each student and engage that student and their family. Bring different stakeholders to the table on equity policy and training.
