Minnesota Education Equity Partnership CI Report – Interim

What has been most instrumental to your progress?

To complete the Nobles County Equity Action Plan, it was vital to have an on-going Promise to Act advisory meetings with a cross-section of education and community leaders. These advisors provided insights into school and community dynamics and, in turn, MnEEP facilitators and researchers provided case studies and research on strategy to address racial disparities in education. Ultimately, the combination of these meetings with the visioning/listening sessions with families and students in the community provided important information for the Equity Action Plan.

The community visioning sessions for this process gained input from over 130 participants and were held in 5 languages – Karen, Laos, Spanish, East and West African languages were vital to the equity action planning process. Each of the community visioning sessions did an overview of the project and asked key questions related to education equity in the region–in particular, what families and students envisioned for a system focused on education equity, and what current barriers existed in the school community in order to reach that vision. This was a vital component because it provided ideas from the community (especially families) directly for the contents of the Equity Action Plan that now highlights equity strategies for this community.

The Strategies Retreat was an important activity in this equity action planning process. The Retreat was an all-day event whereby 25-30 students, community leaders, educators and political leaders learned and dialogued side-by-side to understand the results of the visioning sessions and to collectively complete a root-cause analysis to understand potential equity strategy along the entire PK to college continuum. This activity assists in community-building and co-owning of education equity recommendations for this community.

Key lessons learned

A key lesson learned is that along with an equity action planning process of learning and building towards a Plan, there are key relationships with school leaders and influencers that should not be underestimated and need to be thoughtfully considered in the process. In our first equity action planning process, there was strong community leadership to keep school leaders and board members in the process and into the implementation phase with board leaders. In this second community, certain dynamics made for limited continual involvement by school leaders – so that pressure for them to stay engaged should have been prevented with more relationship-building and one to one time engaging them on their specific interest and needs from the project.

Another key lesson from this work is that the partner, local organization should have a clearer understanding of the time commitment of their staff and advisors to commit to a year-long planning process.

Reflections on inclusive, collaborative or resourceful problem-solving

All three elements are very important in making progress in the work. For an equity action planning process, the inclusivity of those families and students that have been historically marginalized in education planning is critical. Being collaborative, we are able to communicate those new ideas and analysis to partners that share ownership and leadership over schools, cities, etc..for change. And being resourceful means reflecting what already exists in the community to build upon those assets (respect of cultural diversity, current parent engagement, etc..)

Other key elements of Community Innovation

No, upon reflection these 3 capture the elements that contributed to progress toward innovation.

Understanding the problem

Yes, this work has made it clear that there is a need for greater space and time for dialogue between school leaders and communities of color in the U.S. system and shaping school practice and policy with the input from historically marginalized communities in Minnesota and nationwide. While communities struggle with setting new education reform priorities, this work helped clarify that an Equity Action Plan and process can gauge key input from the very communities and students our educational institutions aim to serve better.

If you could do it all over again…

The biggest piece of advice would have been to spend more time w/co-chairs and school administrators as the process was unfolding – so that they were aware of the kind of information we were gathering and its importance.