The BSD Equity Collaborative is a rebranding of the Restorative Practices Collaborative (RPC) and is focused on a broader vision of equity and antiracist work. This work centers students and leverages youth-adult partnership models with students from the Summer Racial Justice Academy as permanent members of the team. There are representatives from every school on the collaborative and permanent student members who co-facilitate the work.
The goals of the Equity Collaborative are to:
- Create a thriving community where members are seen as equity champions and beacons of this work
- Identify bright spots across district
- See ways that equity work is infused in schools
- Create a working model of youth-adult partnership
- Work with youth to follow through with Racial Justice Academy recommendations
This page is a place to archive the important work of the Equity Collaborative. Click on the links below to see the specific content.
October Equity Collaborative Youth-Adult Partnership The first meeting of the Equity Collaborative was entirely youth-led and focused on using values to set group agreements and training the adults in the do’s and don’ts of youth-adult partnership.
November Equity Collaborative Racial Justice Academy Recommendations The second meeting focused on orienting the collaborative to the recommendations from the Racial Justice Academy over the past years. We started with looking back at the first three years of the academy and worked in groups to rate the progress of the school district. We noticed that the recommendations generally fell under the broad themes of Staff Accountability, Restorative Practices, Mental Health and Well Being and Systems. Then we started to do a deeper dive into the recommendations from year 4 starting by previewing the student capstone presentations.
December Equity Collaborative – Youth Leadership was student led and featured a deep dive into the recommendation of Youth Leadership. Special guest students Bella Listi and Debba Beynnon presented their Racial Justice Academy capstone presentation which recommended expanding youth leadership clubs in middle schools. This was followed up by some horizontal action planning that split the groups into PreK, elementary, middle, high and district level to consider where youth leadership is celebrated and where it could be expanded.
January Equity Collaborative – Safety focused on Physical and Emotional Safety. Action groups broke into four categories: violence, drug use, mental health and sense of belonging and brainstormed a problem statement and three possible solutions to each problem. Then there was a “dot-mocracy” process by which everyone voted on one solution from each of these areas.
February Equity Collaborative – Staff Accountability was student-led and focused on staff accountability which is a topic that has been revisited all four years of SRJA. Students shared personal stories of how staff were not held accountable for harm caused and their accompanying capstone presentations. It also included a panel of speakers that have a role in the accountability process in schools; the BSD Human Resources Director, BEA Union President, BEA Grievance Chair. Participants filled out a survey to collect data to see if adults in the school district felt the same way as students and were asked to reflect on the question, “What does staff accountability look like in a Restorative School District?”
