Reflecting on our Anti-Racism Commitments: First Steps and What Comes Next

Since day one of founding The Primary School, our mission has been to build a new school model that leads to more equitable outcomes for children and families who have been most impacted by systemic poverty and racism. This year, the continued, unrelenting violence against Black Americans and a pandemic that has disproportionately affected communities of color led us to reflect on, renew, and expand our organization’s role in fighting racism.

In June, we aligned around four Anti-Racism Commitments and identified concrete actions to more deeply instill anti-racism and anti-discriminatory practices across our programs, team culture, and advocacy work. December marks six months since we embarked on this path. As part of our commitment to hold ourselves accountable to this work, we wanted to share some of the first steps we’ve taken.

We recognize that we still have a long way to go. This is not a journey with simple solutions or check boxes. We are committed to keep improving our programs and practices and fighting for equity in our communities in the days, months, and years to come

Delivering Equitable Learning Opportunities DURING COVID-19

COVID-19 has underscored the vast socioeconomic and racist divisions that pervade our school systems: students who have better access to reliable WiFi and home computers, can afford “learning pods” when school isn’t in session, and live in communities with fewer essential workers (and thus lower transmission rates) that tend to be affluent and white. Those without access to these resources tend to be low-income and students of color.

All of this was top of mind when we began school in the fall. Our first priority was to keep our school community safe and healthy, while also making sure students could access the best learning environment possible. We were able to offer in-person learning for our youngest, and therefore, most vulnerable learners and pilot a bubble classroom of mixed age students who needed extra support. Focusing on evidence-based and strong prevention and mitigation strategies, our health and operations teams were able to provide the support needed to safely be the first elementary school in East Palo Alto to open in-person classroom learning environments. Overall, we welcomed nearly one-third of our students back to campus this fall. All other students participated in a revamped remote learning program, one that focused on 1:1 time with teachers, social-emotional skill building, literacy growth, and parent partnership.

Supporting Parent Wellness and Wellbeing

Throughout the summer and fall, our parent wellness coaches worked closely with parents to make sure they had access to essential resources like WiFi, food, and housing. They also set up regular touch points with parents to discuss stress management strategies and develop self-driven action plans to deal with the high stress caused by the pandemic.

Early on in the school year, we gathered as a full team to recommit to our approach to working with parents, practicing conversations that come from a place of humility and partnership and breaking habits that unintentionally serve to reproduce social inequality. This helped set the stage for having more effective touch points with parents as they took on the new role of at-home co-teachers.

Exploring and Celebrating Student Identities

Another core part of our anti-racism commitments this year was to begin helping students of all ages explore their own identities and learn about and celebrate others’ identities and cultures. This fall, teachers began exploring the topic of identity with students, reading books about people with different identities and inviting students to share their family history, cultural heritage, and what makes them unique. This work will continue to be woven into lesson plans when we return to school after Winter Break.

“With so much negativity out there about people that look like them, we can provide space to reflect on who THEY are as individuals.”

— Teacher

NEXT STEPS AND AREAS OF IMPROVEMENT

One of the actions that we haven’t pursued yet is providing space and resources for families to talk about race and racism at home and in our parent groups. With so much happening this year, our time with parents was devoted primarily to discussing remote learning and health and safety during COVID. Facilitating effective conversations about race and racism requires ample trust, time, and mental capacity; dealing with the high stress of a pandemic didn’t feel like the right time to begin these conversations.

We are also acutely aware of the fact that despite our efforts, COVID-19 is still having a negative impact on students' academic, health, and soul outcomes, and we have no doubt that it will continue to do so. We have already had to close classrooms for the second half of December due to a COVID-19 case at school and rising cases in the surrounding community; we anticipate that we will need to deal with unexpected closures in the second half of the year, too. It is imperative that we keep developing creative solutions to new issues that arise and quickly act on what’s working and what needs to improve across our programs, while also recognizing that we will need to address this gap in student outcomes when the pandemic is over.

Weaving more intentional diversity, equity, and inclusion practices into our team culture has been an area that we’ve made some strides in; however, we also recognize that this is an area in which we need to continue investing more time and resources.

This fall, we began to carve out explicit, recurring spaces to talk as a team about race and racism. Consultants are currently facilitating a year-long training to help our full team explore our racial identities; understand the impact of racist systems and white supremacy culture; engage in healthy, courageous conversations about race; and co-create healing spaces of justice and liberation. We also launched Diversity Teams: small, cross-team groups that meet at least once a month to discuss articles, videos, and books related to social and racial justice issues. And our entire leadership team attended an all-day retreat to increase the team’s self-awareness of identity and begin to build a shared language and dialogue skills around issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion.

We are also laying the foundation to make our internal talent advancement and recruitment practices more equitable. The first steps include launching a manager training pilot in March with an explicit focus on supporting and advancing staff through equitable and inclusive management practices; rethinking our performance management processes to ensure they offer more equitable career advancement pathways; and holding ourselves accountable to more explicit community recruitment and hiring targets.

We recognize that these steps are the first of many that we need to take to build a team culture that truly embodies anti-racist and anti-discriminatory practices, and that this is still an area of growth for us. As a next step, we plan to gather feedback from the full team to understand what’s working and what can improve about our racial identity development and professional development time.

To uphold our commitment to anti-racism, we need to fight against racist systems and policies affecting children and families within and beyond our communities.

As a first step, we formed an on-staff Advocacy Committee to create a more structured way of responding to advocacy issues related to our work. The Committee collaborates with other organizational teams to vet and take action on any potential external advocacy work that directly relates to elements of our model, impacts families in East Palo Alto or Hayward, or relates to our anti-racism commitments.

The Committee has taken some preliminary actions this year, including speaking out about local eviction moratoriums and the federal government’s asylum regulations; hosting voter registration at a drive-through community event; and publishing voter registration and census information on our website and family newsletter.

Due to so many competing priorities, it has been an unexpected challenge to develop inclusive structures for staff who are not part of the committee to raise advocacy issues. In the coming months, we hope to provide more clarity on the pathways staff can take to make their voices heard, including opening some committee meetings to all staff so more people are able to raise issues and help us use our organization’s voice appropriately and powerfully.

In order to keep anti-racism a priority across the organization, we doubled down on strengthening internal accountability structures made up of parents, staff, and community members to ensure we are making real, visible progress.

Currently, our Board of Directors does not deeply reflect the community. We recognize that this can lead to blind spots when it comes to community-driven decision-making. As a first step, we welcomed a new Board member, who grew up in East Palo Alto and has engaged actively in community partnerships and efforts. We also set community and parent representation goals as we look toward growing our Board of Directors over the next few years.

In August, we officially launched our internal DEI Taskforce, which is made up of staff from many different program areas and levels of leadership. The Taskforce will be lifting up findings from an internal equity audit, which is being conducted by consultants, to identify our strengths and areas of improvement as an organization, and, from there, will develop a three-year Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Plan later this year. Our stated goal was to release this plan in December. We now recognize that was an unrealistic timeline. This is just one reminder of the small ways we must balance urgency and action with pushing back against white supremacy culture by building in more time for collaboration, dialogue, and trust-building instead of pushing toward unrealistic deadlines.

We also relaunched Families United (our version of a PTA), which meets every month to engage in volunteering, decision-making, and other parent engagement opportunities. This group is still getting started, and we know there is more to do to elevate parent voice and engagement opportunities.