Center for Youth & Community Leadership in Education
Center for Youth & Community Leadership in Education
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Democracy, Dollars, and Dignity

Democracy, Dollars, & Dignity

HISTORY

The Democracy, Dollars, and Dignity framework emerged in the early days of OurSchoolsPVD, an organizing effort begun in response to the Providence Public School District (PPSD) being placed into receivership by the Rhode Island Department of Education (RIDE) in the summer of 2019. Frustrated by RIDE’s use of a report they commissioned by Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy to justify the takeover of PPSD—an action taken without consulting those who would be most impacted: students, parents/caregivers, educators, and the local Providence community—OurSchoolsPVD youth members and organizational staff drew upon years of community-driven reports and efforts that highlighted problems facing PPSD, and promoted student-centered solutions to those problems, to develop the ingredients for an updated platform in response to the Johns Hopkins report and subsequent takeover. CYCLE staff synthesized what emerged from those platform conversations into the Democracy, Dollars, & Dignity (3 Ds) framework.

Our schools need DEMOCRACY, DOLLARS, & DIGNITy—what does that mean?

CYCLE believes that the 3 Ds are mutually reinforcing and, when realized, will provide the foundation for educational justice wherein public schools are centers of strength for the communities they are part of:

  • Democracy: The creation of democratic, transparent, proportionally-representative, and publicly accountable decision-making processes and bodies to ensure that the people with the greatest stake in public schools—youth, parents, and educators—have the power to determine the future of our schools

  • Dollars: The equitable generation and allocation of resources to ensure our students and schools receive a high quality, relevant, culturally responsive, asset-based education in a physically and emotionally safe and nurturing environment

  • Dignity: The transformation of racist, classist, and otherwise oppressive school cultures and climates by prioritizing equity and justice; adopting anti-oppressive classroom teaching practices, curriculum, and school/district policies; updating hiring and retention practices to support adults who support youth; emphasizing collaboration and collective problem solving over competition, and human need over commodification

Democracy, Dollars, & Dignity at Work in CYCLE’s Programs

Each of the following programs and projects at CYCLE represents our effort to help bring about the 3 Ds within and for our public schools: