A NEW ERA OF EQUITY

Richardson ISD trustees adopted an equity policy last spring. What does it mean for neighborhood schools?

Story by KERI MITCHELL

“WHAT DO YOU WANT PEOPLE TO KNOW ABOUT YOU?”

The question was asked to a room full of 200-plus Richardson ISD high school students. Every ninththrough 12th-grader present had opted to participate in this equity summit. It was a big event for Angie Lee, who had only recently been named the school district’s director of equity, diversity and inclusion.

A white teenage boy stood to answer the question.

“I want people to know that I go home and deal with a dysfunctional family every day. I come to school just as burdened as other kids. Don’t look at me and make the assumption that I have it all together because I don’t.”

Next, a black girl rose to her feet.

“People look at me and assume I’m poor,” she said. “My parents make six figures. I travel. I’ve been excluded from a conversation about trips to Paris, and I want to say, ‘I went to Spain this summer.’”

These kinds of exchanges — raw, uncomfortable, difficult — are music to Lee’s ears.

“Those kids blew us away that day,” she reflects months later, sitting at her desk.

The department of equity, diversity and inclusion that Lee oversees is new to RISD. Such a focus is becoming more common in school districts and cities across America — the result of centuries of racism, gender discrimination and religious persecution in this country that have yet to be reconciled and unraveled.

And as in so many other school districts, RISD’s initiative sprung out of a pivotal event.

Doctored images with racist innuendo began circulating on social media in late September 2017, leading up to a football game between RISD rivals J.J. Pearce and Richardson.

In one, the Pearce logo obstructed the face of a slave driver beating a slave, whose face bore an RHS logo. In another were side by side photos of the late Michael Brown, shot and killed by former Ferguson, Missouri, police officer Darren Wilson, their foreheads stamped with RHS (Brown) and Pearce (Wilson). Perhaps the most incendiary was an image of Ku Klux Klan members standing before a burning cross — the RHS logo engulfed in flames, and the J.J. Pearce logo flanking the men in white hoods.

It didn’t take long for every local television station and news outlet to broadcast the viral images. USA Today even picked up the story.

“This was quite a big deal, obviously,” Superintendent Jeannie Stone told the seven-member board of trustees at a meeting three weeks later. She counted 11 meetings since the images emerged, and “the topic of racism did surface in every single one of the conversations.”

Board members listened to Pearce principal Mike Evans tell them about conversations with his students in AVID, a program intended for those who might be the first in their families to attend college or need extra support to be college-ready. Though smart and motivated, these students, many of whom are minorities, told Evans they “just didn’t feel included” at Pearce. They were different and stood out, or were conversely “invisible” in Advanced Placement classes. At pep rallies, the pinnacle of school spirit, “that doesn’t look like me on the floor,” one student shared.

Pep rallies were a focus for then-Lake Highlands principal Joshua Delich, too, who had added more groups to the line-up as an “opportunity to showcase the diversity we have,” he told the board. Lake Highlands High School

HOW TO VOTE: BOARD ELECTION DETAILS

• Richardson ISD voters who live in newly created Districts 2, 4 and 5 c an cast a single ballot in the Nov. 5 school board election.

• In District 5, located mostly in Lake Highlands, incumbent Karen Clardy will run unoppos ed. Clardy’s two grown children are graduates of LHHS, and she’s a retired executive assistant after serving 25 years at LHHS.

• Vo ters will be able to cast ballots at new Dallas County-wide Vote Centers using new voting machines. Visit web.risd.org/govote to learn more. Early voting begins Oct. 21 and continues until Nov. 1.

is roughly one-third white, one-third Hispanic and one-third black, but that doesn’t mean classrooms are integrated.

“Why do we have one set of kids sitting here and one set of kids sitting here — and you have this beautiful room of diversity?” Delich would ask teachers.

Stone conveyed her plan to pursue an equity policy to create “a safe inclusive culture where racism would not be in any way, shape or form ignored, and certainly not accepted.” A new department of equity, diversity and inclusion would spearhead the effort, and a new position would be created to oversee it.

“There’s no blueprint” for the job that Lee stepped into roughly six months after that board conversation, she says. A 20-year RISD veteran, Lee spent two stints at Forest Meadow Junior High in Lake Highlands, one as an English teacher and one as a master teacher.

Race is not explicitly named in her or her department’s titles, and that’s because “we’re not just talking black, white, Hispanic,” Lee says. “We’re also talking about gender, religion.”

She gives the example of paired elective courses, in which students sign up to take two “complementary” courses in consecutive semesters, such as a culinary class in the fall and fashion design in the spring.

“You might have boys who would like to take culinary but may not be interested in fashion design,” Lee says.

Another example is animation one semester paired with manufacturing and construction the next, “but why is that?” Lee asks. “We have girls who are interested in animation but they may not be interested in manufacturing.

“Why are we still sending these messages about gender roles? It’s not intentional, always,” she says, but as unintended consequences emerge, it’s now her job to address those inequities.

“You start with teachers,” Lee says of equity work, because they interact with students every day. As soon as she was named to the position, administrators and teachers started reaching out.

“It’s almost like they’ve been waiting for someone to talk to about things they have seen,” she says.

Lee says she’s encouraged by the ones who tell her, “I don’t get it. I don’t understand.”

“I’ve had people who come and sit and say, ‘Here’s my block: I’m white. I grew up poor and often hungry, so why does the world feel like I have white privilege?’ I don’t see that as combative and anti-equity,” she says.

Lee told that teacher what she tells so many: “It’s not that we’re saying what you believe is wrong, but how does what you believe impact the job you’ve been called to do? We know you’re here because you love kids, so is this value or this belief blocking you in some way?”

One of her first major successes is that the equity policy, which the board unanimously approved this past May, requires a portion of all teachers’ annual professional development to focus on equity training. The policy reflects a year of work by Lee and the newly formed equity council, composed of staff, students and community members.

The policy will “chip away at issues in the community to make it better,” says Vicki Taylor, a longtime Lake Highlands parent who serves on the council.

A new black history course is being taught at Berkner High School this year, thanks to students at the equity summit a year and a half ago asking: “Why haven’t we learned this in school?”

One girl told Lee, “I actually took world history thinking that I would get black history or African history at some point, and it turned out to be two days, and I was so disappointed. I asked my teacher, ‘Why did we just spend two days? Why are we moving on?’”

The new course is so popular that two sections filled up last spring. Richardson ISD plans to launch a Mexican American history course in 2021.

Meet The Candidates

This November, Richardson ISD voters will elect the second African American trustee to the board, representing District 4, and may elect a Hispanic woman to the board, representing District 2.

Several Lake Highlands principals have reached out to Lee saying there is so much student interest in magnet schools, yet many families don’t have access to transportation to attend events like the magnet showcase.

“They feel it’s not a level playing field. They didn’t get the information firsthand,” Lee says. “If we really spend some time working through it, these are things we can figure out. These are things that do not have to block access.”

Expanded curriculum and increased transportation are just two examples of how the new equity policy will “drive a rewriting of some of the processes RISD has in place,” Lee says.

“We’re always going back to the question: Is this inequity negatively impacting student achievement? Otherwise we’re going to find inequities everywhere, and we know that we can’t tackle everything,” Lee told the board before they greenlit her policy. “It really is as simple as one bite of the elephant at a time to address that question.”

For more information and to read about how equity is defined, go to lakehighlands. advocatemag.com.

In District 2, located around Berkner High School, incumbent Eron Linn will face challenger Vanessa Pacheco in the race. Linn, a federal relations manager for DART, was elec ted in 2015. He has three young children who attend Yale Elementary. Pacheco, vice president of a private investment company, has two children enrolled at Berkner.

District 4 is the new “opportunity zone” created to encourage minority participation on the board. Four African American women who live in Hamilton Park have filed in the race.

Taler Jefferson grew up in Hamilton Park and now teaches at Dallas ISD’s Hillcrest High School. She is founder and executive director of the Salome Foundation. Regina Harris is a webcast production manager active in RISD’s Council of PTAs. Her son attends Richardson High School. Patricia Price Hicks led the 2017 effort to have Hamilton Park officially declared a historic community with a marker installed by the Texas Historical Commission. She retired from teaching at Cedar Hill and Dallas ISDs. Sakennia Reed teaches at DISD’s Barack Obama Male Leadership Academy.

Patterson resigned from the board in August, citing her family’s move outside of RISD boundaries, which makes her ineligible to serve. Her last event as a trustee was the Hamilton Park Schoolwide Reunion, where she took a photo with three of the District 4 candidates.

“As I leave the RISD board of trustees, I’m excited for the future,” Patterson noted in the photo’s caption. “These three amazing ladies are all running for my place.” — CAROL TOLER and KERI MITCHELL

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