We’re 6 Years Old!

This past week marked six full years of CYCLE! We’ve come a long way since our founding in November 2017 and over the last six years have worked hard to etch our mark in the education justice space and broader efforts to seek educational equity and improve public education systems. Earlier this month, CYCLE staff members participated in the national Partnership for the Future of Learning Network Assembly meeting in Baltimore. (You can read some reflections from youth leaders who work with us and the Partnership in our latest newsletter.)  

Aside from the important conversations and connections that are a part of any Partnership gathering, the event was also an opportunity to reflect upon the legacy that CYCLE is part of given that the seeds of our work were initially planted at the Annenberg Institute for School Reform. Perhaps not so coincidentally, counting two CYCLE staff, there were a total of nine former Annenbergers in attendance at the Assembly.

Take a quick moment to note what each of them are up to now (listed as pictured from left to right): 

• Richard Gray, Director of Community & School Development, Center for Collaborative Education 

• Catalina Perez, Associate Director for Youth Leadership, CYCLE! 

• Keith Catone, Executive Director, CYCLE! 

• Kesi Foster, Co-Executive Director, Partners for Dignity & Rights 

• Megan Hester, National Campaign Director, NYU Metro Center / H.E.A.L. Together 

• Warren Simmons, Senior Policy Advisor, National Education Policy Center / Board Chair, Nellie Mae Education Foundation / Former Executive Director, Annenberg Institute for School Reform 

• Heather Harding, Executive Director, Campaign for Our Shared Future 

• Marla Ucelli-Kashyap, Senior Director, Educational Issues, American Federation of Teachers 

• Kavitha Mediratta, Strategic Consultant / Founding Director, Atlantic Fellows for Racial Equity 

This is powerful bunch of people doing important work across the field.

At our CYCLE Strategy Retreat in September, CYCLE staff discussed how our work can better contribute to movement building. The Partnership Network Assembly served as a reminder about the movement we are part of. It is one that includes the work of those pictured above, the 100+ others in attendance at the Assembly and the dozens of communities and organizations they represent, and many more. It is a movement that envisions a public education system that is part of a just democratic society. As we look forward to our 7th year, we want to increasingly orient our projects and programs toward building this movement and have exciting opportunities in each of our core areas. 

Youth Leadership 

CYCLE’s Youth Leadership Team celebrating 10 years of YLI in August 2023

Whether it’s supporting youth leaders to increase their roles in national efforts like the Partnership, connecting young people who are organizing for educational and social justice across New England, or providing one-one or small group training and technical assistance to individual youth workers and their organizations, CYCLE’s Youth Leadership Team has established deep roots and relationships with over 25 youth leadership and organizing groups from New England and across the country. Across our efforts in support of youth leadership, our team will be making more intentional moves to develop shared analysis and interrogate how our work is helping build collective power for educational justice in the image of those most impacted: young people. Exciting developments in how we will deliver cohort-based technical assistance and orient the New England Youth Organizing Network (NEYON) and annual Youth Leadership Institute (YLI) toward these aims are giving us life and having us looking forward eagerly to this next year! 

Organizing Strategy & Training 

OSPVD Open Youth Meeting in November 2023

Speaking of cohort-based technical assistance, our Organizing Strategy & Training team has developed two cohort-based strategies to advance education organizing. This marks the second year of the OurSchoolsPVD Alliance (OSPVD) Youth Leaders Cohort (YLC). The YLC is the campaign leadership body for OSPVD. Consisting of youth leader representatives from five youth leadership and organizing groups, in addition to youth leaders who remain involved from the RI Urban Debate League (which sadly closed its doors earlier this year), the YLC is poised to lead a powerful campaign to establish Ethnic Studies classes in Providence Public Schools as a first step toward the realization of our 3 Ds—Democracy, Dollars, and Dignity—Platform for the schools young people and families deserve.  

In an extension of the 3 Ds Platform beyond OSPVD, beginning in 2024, our CYCLE Strategy Insitute (CSI) will take up questions about how dollars are raised and spent for public education. CSI will shift from a short-term training project that runs for a few months out of the year, to a standing community of practice designed to help participants deepen analysis of how our collective organizing goals intersect, especially when it comes to the need to organize to (1) secure equitable funding for public schools in their respective communities, districts, and states, and (2) ensure those funds are allocated or spent in an equitable way so that those most in need receive the most support. 

Research & Learning 

The SCORE Toolkit coverpage

Finally, our Research & Learning Team is jumping feet-tucked, cannonball-style into the full implementation of our Schools & Communities Organizing for Racial Equity (SCORE) project with hopes that it can make a splash for reframing how we think about and hold school systems accountable to educational equity priorities. The SCORE project team has spent the last two years working with intergenerational Community Research Teams of parents and students from Providence, Central Falls, and Newport, RI, to identify community-defined educational equity priorities and indicators by which progress on these priorities might be measured. As these priorities and indicators are developed into publicly available, community-facing SCOREcards, the project team, including community partners Parents Leading for Educational Equity (PLEE) and Sankofa Community Connection, are excited to explore ways to support school and district improvement.  

As we document and evaluate SCORE implementation efforts, we are hopeful that this work can help the broader field: 1) measure what matters to students and families; 2) help school districts understand, be responsive to, and be held accountable to community priorities for educational and racial equity; and 3) share school district progress on community priorities with youth, families, and other community members. If successful, SCORE has the potential to help weave an engaging democratic fabric around public schools such that they can become centers of strength for their communities. 

Thank you! 

From our humble beginnings as 7 team members who believed so deeply in the work we were doing together, that we formed CYCLE in 2017, to the present team of soon-to-be-15 (did you see we’re hiring for a Data Analyst and Program Manager!?), CYCLE’s 7th year is poised to be one of our best yet! Thank you to all our partners for trusting us with your precious time and talents over the years, to our funders for believing that investing in CYCLE and our partners will make a difference, and to anyone who has read this far for your interest and support and the work that YOU do to advance educational justice. As much as we’ve accomplished, we’ve got loads more to do. 

This year, at our year-end celebration lunch, each CYCLE team member received a candle labeled with a simple message. While each of these messages held some individual significance for the recipient, collectively they offer us a set of reminders and invitations for how we can strive to work with each other and our partners. Here they are:  

Dream with us 

At CYCLE we take on ambitious work because we believe in the dreams of our partners and communities. We work to make space in our work to dream big about possibilities and change course when our day dreams take us in new directions in real time. 

Pause with us 

We are trying to get better at pausing to take time for ourselves, for each other, and for our work to remain alive and well, healthy and vibrant. When working with us, we invite you to take a beat as well.

Be your authentic selves with us

We are proud of the work we do; we are proud of our partners. We believe we shine bright together when we get to be our authentic selves in our work for a better world. 

Create with us 

One of the best things about our work with partners is that we seek to challenge each other and challenge the norm. We make waves in order to make magic together! 

Be present with us

At its core, change work is about human connection and relationship. To connect, we must show up and we must be present. We search for joy in our day-to-day and we cannot do this together without centering love, always. 

We are grateful for all the partners we have the privilege of supporting and learning from in our work. Many thanks to everyone we have worked with in 2022, and we cannot wait to keep making good trouble together in 2023! 

*shout out to Noon Design Shop, where you can find these wonderful candles and much more. Shop local!

Five years ago, seven of us committed to continuing the work we had started at the Annenberg Institute for School Reform were in search of a new home for our New England-based community-engaged programs and research. Together we formed the Center for Youth & Community Leadership in Education (CYCLE) and landed at Roger Williams University (RWU). We are proud of what we have accomplished in the past five years and recently asked a few of our partners to reflect on the ways in which CYCLE has impacted them, their work, and the field. Their generous responses (which you can read here) were both humbling and inspiring.

To say that we launched CYCLE with a sense of certainty would be an overstatement. In fact, while we believed deeply in our work with youth, families, and educators, it was not clear that we would be able to sustain ourselves in a new organizational setting. Our first year was purely about maintaining our existing projects and work during our transition to RWU. In year two we were awarded new grants and contracts that helped us gain some footing. Then, just as we were planning to step back and think critically about our future and ways to deepen our strategies for change, the COVID-19 pandemic shifted us back into a new sense of uncertainty. Over the next two years, our energy went to into supporting our partners in the context of the pandemic, rethinking our programs to be responsive to this new context, and ensuring that we were doing what we could to protect our team’s health and safety. And, somehow, CYCLE thrived as an organization. We grew from 8 full-time staff to 12. We restructured to distribute leadership across our program areas. We developed new projects and evolved some of our older ones. We moved into new office spaces (twice!), albeit in the same building. And, in this past year as we foreshadowed in last year’s birthday post, we finally found the space for some strategic planning.

As a result of our strategic planning process, CYCLE has a refreshed mission, vision, and set of values. We have further clarified how our approach to the work we do is grounded in a belief in the theory, practice, and power of community organizing. And, we have set our focus on three key strategic priorities that we believe will support and deepen CYCLE’s role in the broader fight for educational justice. In honor of our 5th birthday, we are excited to share each of these outcomes of our strategic planning process.

Mission

CYCLE partners with youth, families, educators, and other stakeholders to build collective power and fight for educational justice.

Building the schools our communities deserve requires collective power derived from shared leadership and trusting relationships between youth, families, and educators. Educational justice requires the prioritization of the needs, vision, and influence of those most impacted by the lack of democracy, dollars, and dignity in our current public education system—namely, youth and families of color, low-income communities, and oftentimes frontline educators and school staff.

Vision

We envision a future when public schools are centers of strength for the communities they’re in.

What doe this vision mean? To us, it means that more than just places to learn facts and academic skills, schools are resourced well and equitably to be safe, supportive, open spaces for change, growth, and connection. Youth and families feel a sense of belonging and ownership in and for their schools. Youth have ready, equitable access to the supports they need to succeed in school, with those academic, social-emotional, language, cultural, and other developmental supports and considerations seen as essential, core elements to a responsive education. Community wellbeing and an affirming school culture are recognized as central and prerequisite to student success, and are considered with equal weight to academic pursuits and outcomes. Youth see themselves, their histories, and their lived experiences valued and reflected in the staff, faculty, curriculum, and activities in their schools. Educators and school leaders recognize and embrace the knowledge and assets that youth, families, and their surrounding communities bring to schools. Youth, families, educators, and other community members work in solidarity to make classroom, building, and district level decisions. Public education is respected and upheld as a process and space to provide relevant information, tools, access, resources, support, and relationships to learn about, critique, and work to create just communities.

Values

• Liberation. We believe education should equip communities to recognize and challenge injustice and oppression, and use their collective power and creativity to build a world in which we are all free.  

• Collective Power. We value building power among those historically marginalized and excluded from decision-making to disrupt traditional power structures and effect long-term, systemic change.

• Curiosity & Humility. We value a culture of inquiry, reflection, and risk-taking, and strive to learn in partnership with communities. 

• Agency & Voice. We believe the perspectives and leadership of people most excluded, marginalized, and harmed by an issue must be at the center of finding and implementing solutions.

• Joy & Connection. We cultivate community care and are energized by creating spaces that allow and encourage us to connect as whole humans, develop relationships, and embrace celebration.

• Transparency & Accountability. We are accountable to our employees, partners and community, and strive to move in ways that reflect our values. CYCLE will act with honesty and integrity, and will be transparent about our decision-making, processes, and impacts.

Approach

At its core, CYCLE’s work is aimed at connecting schools and communities so that young people are nurtured to learn and thrive, families are engaged as educational partners, and communities find strength in the schools that serve them. To do this work, we turn to the theories and practices of community organizing to lay the foundation for our approach to any project. For us, that translates to three key principles we strive to keep in mind when developing our work:

• Relationships. We seek to build relationships that are purposeful because we know that we don’t live single issue lives and no single entity can create positive change alone.

• Grassroots leadership. Those who are most impacted by social problems are the ones who should be at the center of determining solutions.

• Shared analysis. To work together to solve the problems our communities face, we must develop a shared understanding of those problems and their root causes.

Whether our work is directly engaging in organizing campaigns, doing community-driven research, or convening partners to learn and build with each other, we seek to develop relationships, grassroots leadership, and shared analysis to build collective power and fight for educational justice.

Strategic Priorities

In pursuit of our mission and vision, and in alignment with our values and approach, we have set three strategic priorities for the upcoming 3-5 years. We will be working with intention in the coming months to position each of our projects and programs within these priorities.

• Building Leadership, Knowledge & Power. CYCLE will support individuals and organizations in enhancing skills and knowledge, accessing tools and resources, and defining community challenges and solutions. We will center those in the margins and serve as a partner, bridge, and process/content expert.

• Influencing Analysis, Policy & Practice. CYCLE will deepen the practice of shared analysis, develop and sustain community connections among field partners, and influence changes in policy and practice for education justice.

• Striving for Operational Excellence. CYCLE will live into its mission and vision, operating consistently with our values internally and externally. We will intentionally develop our work in ways that emphasize transparency, equity, and professional growth.

Thank You!

Strategic planning processes are often difficult. Add the realities of trying to them almost entirely over Zoom while still attending to your otherwise very full-time responsibilities and they become even harder. We could not have done this work and generated the thinking evident in the words we have shared above (plus the more detailed plans we’ve got underneath them) without the steady facilitation and support of our strategic planning consultant Michelle Duso. Additionally, Michelle engaged many of our partners in thoughtful discussions that offered us incredible insight and support when thinking about CYCLE’s future. As we enter our sixth year, we are so very grateful and thankful to everyone who contributed to our process and more broadly to those who consider us a partner and co-conspirator in our collective work. Here’s to the next 5 years!

CYCLE believes that high quality public schools and equitable educational systems are the cornerstone of an authentic democracy and a just society. Building the schools our communities deserve requires collective power derived from shared leadership and trusting relationships between youth, families, and educators. At CYCLE, we contribute to building COLLECTIVE POWER and fighting for educational justice by creating spaces for learning, strategy, and leadership development with and for those most impacted by educational injustices. 

What is SCORE?

One project focused on our value of collective power is Schools and Communities Organizing for Racial Equity (SCORE). SCORE is an ongoing collaborative, action-oriented research project that brings together an intergenerational community research team consisting of youth and parent leaders. With support from partner organizations, CYCLE and The Social Policy Hub for Equity Research in Education (SPHERE), this team is developing a tool or “SCOREcard” that assesses a school district on indicators of equity that the community identifies as important.

SCORE Providence launched in early February, 2021, with a nine-member Community Research Team, made up of four parents and five students attending Providence Public Schools. Community Research Team meetings were conducted in English and Spanish to accommodate the needs of research team members.  The Community Research Team met biweekly (virtually) for activities including relationship building; storytelling, future visioning, and issue identification; understanding equity indicators; understanding quantitative and qualitative research methods; research ethics training; research instrument design; data analysis; and indicator development.  

The Community Research Team’s formal engagement in the project ended in November 2021. Four team members have remained engaged as SCORE Fellows to co-lead an implementation phase, which is focused on SCOREcard development and distribution, as well as outreach, advocacy, and partnership with both the Providence Public School District  and the broader community of students, parents, and educators in Providence. 

One important feature of the SCORE project is that it is an intergenerational parent- and youth-led effort. In this video, three of the SCORE Fellows talk about their experiences with intergenerational work in general and the SCORE project in particular.

About 4-to-5-year-olds, WebMD notes “Your child is growing up. Have you noticed that your 4- to 5-year-old is becoming more independent and self-confident? If not, you will in the coming year.” Well, on November 13, 2021, CYCLE turned 4-years-old and true to developmentally appropriate form, we are excited to explore our organizational maturity and sense of self.

For starters, we have embarked upon CYCLE’s first ever strategic planning process. It is in the 4-to-5-year-old year that young people start practicing their use of the future tense. And, so it seems fitting that at CYCLE we are ready to dream more about our future together. With more than half our team joining CYCLE since its founding, including four new team members within the past year, it is exciting to revisit our organizational roots and rethink, together, who we want to be, what we want to do, and how we want to impact the world. 

Of course, while we are strategically planning, we are actively engaged in work that grounds us in our partnerships and relationships with youth, families, educators, and other community stakeholders to build collective power for educational justice. Here, we share a few highlights of that work:

• Over the past year as offices remained remote and meetings stayed in Zoom rooms, the CYCLE team pivoted to think critically about what work was possible in virtual space. We reshaped our CYCLE Strategy Institute (CSI) training curriculum, which was initially developed for an intensive 3-day in-person training, to facilitate a 3-month virtual training series completed by 15 participants from 6 different organizations spanning the east to west coasts.  Participants met for full and small group sessions to reflect upon and strategize around past, present, and future organizing campaigns. In partnership with the RWU University College Center for Workforce & Professional Development, CSI Certificates were also awarded for completion. We are excited to build upon and expand our CSI offerings to the field in 2022!

• In January 2021, we launched a new program called SCORE - Schools & Communities Organizing for Racial Equity, in partnership with the Social Policy Hub for Equity Research in Education (SPHERE) at RI College and leaders from Parents Leading for Educational Equity (PLEE). Through SCORE, over the past ten months, a community research team of five students and four parents from PPSD developed community-driven and derived educational equity indicators in four areas of particular importance to the community: 1) School culture and restorative practices; 2) Mental health and social-emotional learning; 3) Instructional equity, opportunity, and support (including multilingual learners’ equitable access to college-prep coursework); and 4) Communication with families. In a world where “indicator systems” are usually developed by academics and policy wonks, we are ready to work with the Providence community and PPSD to explore the adoption and utilization of the SCORE indicators that come directly from community-based wisdom and research.

• The OurSchoolsPVD (OSPVD) Alliance has launched a campaign to organize for ethnic studies in the Providence Public School District (PPSD). This campaign is rooted in youth leadership and experiences, and the campaign demands go well beyond a simple call for new curricula.  Instead, this ethnic studies campaign offers insight into the social, cultural, and political shifts required for PPSD to provide educational experiences that truly recognize, celebrate, and lift up young people and their families and communities in Providence.  As one recent ethnic studies workshop participant reflected about what it means to fight for ethnic studies: “It means fighting for the power of communities of color to show up in our schools.” That isn’t just a curriculum. That’s a vision for our future.

• Some of our best work happens when we bring people together. Of course, we haven’t been able to do that in-person since March 2020. But, we are hopeful that 2022 brings us opportunities to convene in-person. We just hosted a small convening of youth leaders and adult allies at a New England Youth Organizing Network (NEYON) Leadership Retreat on our birthday weekend (11/13-11/14)! And, after consecutive virtual gatherings, planning is underway for our Youth Leadership Institute to reconvene in person in August 2022. Whether it’s in the context of our youth leadership work or at a different convening for educational justice, we look forward to seeing more of our partners “in real life” in the coming year. Four-to-five-year-olds enjoy playing with others, after all!

As we embark upon our fifth year as CYCLE, we are growing in our understanding of what it means to become independent and self-confident as an organization. Ironically, we are increasingly aware that our independence takes form when we are actually in-relationship,  in-community, and in-reliance with our partners; in these ways we seek growth and in-dependence. We know that all of the work we do at CYCLE is grounded in our relationships and partnerships with people and organizations in the field. Nothing we do is tucked away in an ivory tower, but instead we strive to ensure that we are grounded and engaged with youth, families, educators, and other community stakeholders in all of our projects. This work takes the time, patience, and care necessary to cultivate relationships and collective power, coupled with a sense of fire, energy, and urgency for the educational justice communities deserve yesterday, now, and into the future. We invite you to be with us in our work. Keep in touch. Donate! And, support youth, families, and educators to build together, all ways.

Since 2013, CYCLE staff have been responsible for the design and facilitation of an annual Youth Leadership Institute (YLI) for Nellie Mae Education Foundation grantees and members of the New England Youth Organizing Network (NEYON). In February 2021, staff from CYCLE’s Youth Leadership Team selected 12 students from NEYON to be part of YPT for this year’s YLI. This team will plan and implement YLI with support from CYCLE staff.

This year the Youth Planning Team (YPT) selected the theme #WhatYouthNeed for the Youth Leadership Institute 2021. The Youth Planning Team wants to emphasize the importance of listening to what young people need, especially when trying to improve educational outcomes amidst a pandemic and uprisings. In addition to making sure that youth are heard, the YPT also wants to emphasize and focus on the importance of Mental Health, the School to Prison Pipeline and BIPOC representation in schools, providing YLI as a safe space for young people to discuss what they need to see changed for their communities to become a more equitable and unified space for their own well-being.

Xio Alvarado of Youth Civic Union, and Nitzalis Cabrera from Young Voices both share their reflections on youth voice and #WhatYouthNeed from their perspective as YPT Members.

Xio Alvarado - Youth Civics Union, Worcester, MA

“Youth are driven, motivated, and ready for action and that is why I believe youth voices and our theme for YLI this year are so important.”

As a student who has been heavily involved in my community I have always been called a leader by many and I strive and take pride by that. From youth activism to facilitating community workshops I have always done my part to positively impact others. As a LGBTQ+ POC I have witnessed first hand struggles and needs of minorities. I believe in unity and change for the better; it’s what keeps me motivated to keep working hard.

Youth are the future leaders of our nation; the ones who will one day take charge. I believe youth are able to give a perspective that others may not see and that perspective is what we need. If we truly want to see change done we need to hear from those who are young. growing, and experiencing what today’s age throws at them. Why? Well because younger generations might have new ideas that we may not have already thought of. Youth are driven, motivated, and ready for action and that is why I believe youth voices and our theme for YLI this year are so important.

Virtual Youth Planning Team Retreat in February, 2021.

Nitzalis Cabrera - Young Voices, Providence RI

Youth voice  and #WhatYouthNeed are so important in our society because youth voices are always suppressed and it is our responsibility to express that our voices do matter and we can step up and make a change. Youth have stood and fought and will still continue to fight for topics that are important in our communities.  When we put our minds together we accomplish great things.  Youth have been a crucial part of incredibly big movements such as March for Our Lives.

The Youth Leadership Institute 2021 takes place virtually, August 2-5, 2021. Check the YLI page for more information.

yli home cycle home

For the past three years, CYCLE has supported cross-site learning among the six districts involved in the Nellie Mae Education Foundation’s Understanding Root Causes of Inequities grant fund – Cambridge and Waltham, MA, Manchester and Danbury, CT, Manchester, NH, and Central Falls, RI. This grant fund is aimed at supporting these districts to:

2020 Understanding Root Causes of Inequities Convening in Norwood, Massachusetts.

• Create deeper understanding of the systemic and school-level barriers that perpetuate gaps based on race, language, special education status, and income;

• Identify interventions that appropriately address the identified barriers;

• Help districts and communities collaborate on and coalesce around plans to reverse historical patterns of inequity.

One of CYCLE’s core values is learning. We aim to create a culture of inquiry where ideas, information, and discoveries are exchanged. To that end, CYCLE hosted three grantee convenings for teams from the Understanding Root Causes of Inequities districts, as well as an ongoing virtual learning community for district project managers. These participatory learning spaces offered opportunities for building relationships, generating knowledge, engaging in collective learning, and sharing victories and challenges. 

In March 2020, as a result of the COVID pandemic, schools in all six districts moved to remote learning. District project managers noted that, while their previous work had helped in building understanding of inequities in their districts, the pandemic, followed quickly by what one project manager called “the racism and civil rights pandemic,” shone an even brighter light on existing inequities. As one project manager said, “This pandemic has just said, hello, the systemic racism is here, we have seen it in every single element of the work that we are doing right now. When we have to ask for certain things that should be part of the regular educational philosophy or approach to learning for our kids, there is something wrong.” Project managers found themselves working to ensure student access to remote learning (tablets, hot spots), helping provide meals to students and their families, and dealing with trauma brought about by both pandemics.

In November 2020, representatives from four of the Understanding Root Causes of Inequities districts served as panelists on a webinar, moderated by Gislaine Ngounou, Vice President of Strategy and Programs at the Nellie Mae Education Foundation, to reflect on ongoing efforts to center educational equity in the context of the coronavirus pandemic and national uprisings and resistance in response to police violence, systemic racism, and anti-blackness. Topics for that conversation were framed by dimensions of The Equity Centered School Reform Continuum, developed by the Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity and the Transformation of Schools at New York University during their documentation of the Understanding Root Causes of Inequities project. The following summary presents themes from that conversation, including lessons learned during this time and thoughts about moving forward post-pandemic.

Lessons Learned

2020 Understanding Root Causes of Inequities Convening in Norwood, Massachusetts.

Attending to the whole child: Balancing wellness, wellbeing, and rigor

District representatives universally commented on how the pandemic forced them to more actively attend to wellness and wellbeing, not just of students but also of families. There was a groundswell of support and effort among district and school staff to understand basic needs first -- food, housing, employment, the trauma caused by racism and racist systems -- while also focusing on learning.

Strengthening family partnerships

While building authentic partnerships with families had been on-going work throughout the Understanding Root Causes of Inequities project, district representatives noted that the pandemic served to highlight and provide even more urgency for districts to strengthen partnerships with parents. One project manager said, “If there is a silver lining in this pandemic, relational trust is at the level we’ve never seen before. So before where we were kind of sharing information, oh, we’ll have a parent night or send a text or we’ll provide you with this resource, it’s really shifted now to where parents and families are our co-pilots. We have to partner with them in this work for the success of their kids. So it’s really shifted to education and building the capacity of the community.”

Cultural relevance

“We can’t do these operational things like put a book in front of a child because it has Black and Brown people in it and say we are being culturally responsive.”

District representatives discussed how remote learning shone a light on the importance of cultural relevance for students’ learning -- and for diversifying the teaching force to more closely match student demographics. As one project manager said, “We can’t do these operational things like put a book in front of a child because it has Black and Brown people in it and say we are being culturally responsive.” In a context in which the scope of inequities could feel overwhelming, one district representative noted the importance of focusing on their “sphere of influence” -- what is happening with educators in classrooms. Multiple promising pathways were mentioned, from “grow your own” teacher programs that create a pipeline for educators with lived experiences similar to those of their students, to providing spaces for educators to be vulnerable and simply say, “I don’t know how to do this, I wasn’t taught this, I wasn’t given the skills,” and providing needed professional development.

Youth voice and leadership

“We often have these adult-driven initiatives and then put young people at the forefront because they are cute or because we want to make it seem like young people are initiating this kind of change, when actually it is an adult initiative that involves youth.”

While most of the districts had placed a strong focus on the importance of youth voice and leadership throughout the project, the pandemics provided more opportunities for youth to have a say in their education -- with support from their districts. In some cases, this meant appointing a staff member to the “revolutionary role” of centering student voices not just in pockets but across the school district. In the past, according to one district representative, “We often have these adult-driven initiatives and then put young people at the forefront because they are cute or because we want to make it seem like young people are initiating this kind of change, when actually it is an adult initiative that involves youth.”  District representatives pointed to changes that are beginning to place students in positions to take power and have a role in hiring staff, making policy, and pushing the school board.

Communication

District representatives stressed the overall importance of frequent communication with students and their families. They said that these communications couldn’t be just about grades, discipline, or attendance but instead about how families were doing and how the district could provide them with needed resources. They emphasized the importance of including common language and messaging around anti-racism and relational culture any time district and school leaders spoke, and in any communications with students, families, and the community.

Moving Forward

As the Understanding Root Causes of Inequities districts continue to face the uncertainty of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, many of them spoke of an unexpected silver lining -- the necessity of deeply rethinking (again) how school and schooling work with an equity lens. Throughout the lessons named above, the central theme of relational trust -- building supportive relationships among different stakeholders in safe spaces -- resonated, and will be a critical factor going forward. District representatives expressed that they were hopeful and encouraged about their interactions and relationship-building with students and families and were optimistic about what comes next.

2020 Understanding Root Causes of Inequities Convening in Norwood, Massachusetts.

They were also cautious about how easy it would be for districts to revert to the old ways of doing things after the end of the pandemic. They stressed the importance of building new structures to support equitable education, rather than clinging to old structures and systems that reinforce historical oppression and injustice. In addition to structural change, they noted that an ongoing focus on educational equity requires a shift in mindsets and beliefs. This entails moving from a school-centric to a student-centric philosophy of education, articulating what it really means to educate for liberation, democracy, and justice, and finding ways to move toward that vision in partnership with students, families, and communities.

This year, February 1-5 marks Black Lives Matter at School’s Week of Action. In cities across the country, local actions are being held to uplift BLM at School’s national demands to: 1) end zero tolerance discipline policies; 2) mandate black history and ethnic studies; 3) hire more black teachers; 4) fund counselors, not cops. CYCLE endorses these demands, and sees each as underscoring CYCLE’s core value of liberation. From a standpoint of liberation, the ultimate purpose of schooling is to give young people the tools needed for freedom and self-determination. Education should thus equip communities to recognize and challenge injustice and oppression, and instill hope and creativity for building the world we want to see. 

We are privileged to work with and support youth and parent organizing groups throughout New England who are leading campaigns that connect to BLM at School’s demands. In Providence, the Providence Alliance for Student Safety (PASS) is leading the charge with a “Counselors, Not Cops” campaign that demands that the City of Providence: 1) remove all School Resource Officers from Providence schools; 2) hire health and safety staff focused on alternative measures for conflict resolution; and 3) increase the number of support staff (such as mental health providers, nurses, and guidance counselors) in Providence schools. The overarching mission of PASS is to fight for safe and healthy schools that treat youth with dignity and respect, and the youth-serving organizations comprising the alliance include the Providence Student Union (PSU), the Alliance of Rhode Island Southeast Asians for Education (ARISE), Providence Youth Student Movement (PrYSM), Youth in Action, Young Voices, and the Rhode Island Urban Debate League.

On January 13, CYCLE and the Social Policy Hub for Equity Research in Education (SPHERE) at Rhode Island college co-hosted a webinar on Student Safety & Support in Providence Public Schools, which presented findings from recent reports from each organization and featured a panel discussion with community stakeholders including PASS youth leaders. Presentation and discussion highlights are featured below.

“Safe and supportive schools have an environment that creates a sense of belonging for students, school buildings with adequate social and emotional support, and educators who are supported and in turn better support students.”

CYCLE’s recent report on School Discipline and Student Safety in the Providence Public School District was conducted in partnership with PASS. The report examined student arrest data from Providence Public Schools, and included findings from stakeholder focus groups and a student survey that investigated perceptions about School Resource Officers, existing and needed supports in the Providence Public School District, and participant visions for safe and supportive schools. The report highlights the fact that Black students (and particularly Black males) are disproportionately represented in student arrests, and that students as young as 11 years old have been arrested over the past three years. Interview and survey data also surfaced perceptions that disciplinary structures and SRO roles vary across schools, that the presence of SROs may make some students – particularly students of color who are more likely to be subjected to over-policing – feel unsafe, and that more and better mental health supports are needed to meet the needs of PPSD students. The report also highlighted how interview participants defined “safe and supportive schools.” That vision included an environment that creates a sense of belonging for students, school buildings with adequate social and emotional support, and educators who are supported and in turn better support students.

SPHERE’s School-Based Mental Health Support for Rhode Island Youth report presents a clear case for increasing support for mental health professionals who are trauma-informed, culturally responsive, and representative of PPSD students and families. The report contextualizes how childhood exposure to stress and adversity contribute to mental health and behavioral challenges that are too often addressed punitively in school settings. Systemic and historical oppression and inequity increase risk factors for adversity among ethnically and racially minoritized youth, and thus adverse experiences are disproportionately more likely to impact racially and ethnically minoritized students. Potentially traumatic experiences include those related to racism and discrimination, disproportionate policing and police violence, and anti-immigrant policies. The report found that 79% of PPSD students reported experiencing some form of trauma, and that students who had been suspended or expelled in the past year were significantly more likely to have experienced adversity and traumatic events that likely contributed to emotional problems and disruptive behaviors. National research has highlighted that investing in school-based mental health supports leads to improved outcomes not only for individual students but for overall school climate and safety. As the report notes, the presence of school-based supports is critical. Studies show that nationally, up to 70% of youth who need mental health services don’t receive them. Among those who do, approximately 80% receive it in schools.

“While SROs might metaphorically represent the leaves or trunk of a tree, to eradicate a culture of policing you must ‘remove the roots.’”

The webinar panel discussion included Dana Benton-Johnson, the Director of Student Supports and Services at PPSD; Grace Doyle and Michy Brand, who are youth leaders with the Providence Student Union/Providence Alliance for Student Safety; Sarah Dinklage, the Executive Director of Rhode Island Student Assistance Services; Salomé Moreno, student leader and Christopher “Domi” Lora, alumni leader from Pa’lante Restorative Justice in Holyoke, MA. The panel outlined alternatives to school policing and exclusionary discipline, including School Safety Teams at Rhode Island’s Met High School and Pa’lante’s restorative justice program in Holyoke High School, and emphasized the importance in these models of connecting and building relationships with students and understanding students’ lives “outside the four walls” of school. This connects to another recurring theme of the discussion – creating school environments in which students feel a sense of belonging and can be safe, supported, and happy. Youth leaders emphasized that students can be intimidated by “a badge or a gun,” and that SROs not only lead to a high-pressure environment but can create a divide between students of color and white students. However, as one youth leader noted, SROs are not the only adults in a school building who may police students and contribute to the school-to-prison pipeline. While SROs might metaphorically represent the leaves or trunk of a tree, to eradicate a culture of policing you must “remove the roots.”

Panelists discussing Student Safety & Support in Providence Public Schools (January 13, 2021)

The adult professionals on the panel outlined investments, improvements, and partnerships that PPSD has made to make mental health counseling more available to students, and noted the importance of trauma-informed approaches. They also emphasized the need for sustained funding for student supports and resources, so that additional capacity is not lost when funding expires. Adults in school buildings must, they noted, have continued education and support around social emotional health, learning, and well-being as well as de-escalation so that these elements become not just a one-time training, but a critical part of educator practice. Additionally, they discussed the need for more student support professionals of color, and pointed to Rhode Island College’s masters level social work program that focuses on recruiting and training students of color.

Finally, in a charge to the audience, youth panelists not only emphasized the need to hold adults to account on this issue, but to trust in youth and allow them the opportunity to exercise the leadership of which they are capable. In the words of one student panelist, “Youth can do anything…Instead of asking how can youth do this and that, ask how we can give youth the space to do it.” You can watch the full webinar at this link.

“Youth can do anything…Instead of asking how can youth do this and that, ask how we can give youth the space to do it.”

The Providence Alliance for Student Safety is continuing to demand police free schools and increased supports for students. If you are interested in supporting PASS’s Counselors Not Cops campaign, you can read and sign their petition and send an email to public officials in support of their demands. Additionally, please follow PASS and its member organizations on social media or sign up for their newsletters (click their org website links in the second paragraph above!) to keep updated on the campaign and additional efforts to ensure that Black Lives Matter at school and in our communities at large!

The Center for Youth & Community Leadership in Education (CYCLE) at Roger Williams University and the Social Policy Hub for Equity Research in Education (SPHERE) at Rhode Island College are proud to announce the publication of two independent, but related, research reports examining the educational experiences of young people in the Providence Public Schools. 

Respectively, these recent studies highlight the importance of 1) removing police from schools, and 2) increasing funding for school-based mental health supports. Together, this research, done in partnership with the Providence Alliance for Student Safety (PASS), provides evidence and support for the growing community demands for both police-free schools and additional investment in student supports and services in Providence focused on mental health, social and emotional support, and restorative justice. 

Some of the highlighted findings in these reports include:

From School Discipline and Student Safety in the Providence Public School District:

• Black students are disproportionately represented in student arrests, making up 16% of overall PPSD enrollment and 30% of all student arrests. Black male students in particular are disproportionately represented. Black (non-Latinx/Hispanic) male students make up 8% of overall PPSD enrollment, and 19% of all student arrests. Hispanic/Latinx male and Black female students are also disproportionately represented in arrests.

• Simply having uniformed, armed officers in schools makes some students – particularly students of color – feel unsafe. 72% of student survey respondents indicated that they were not comfortable with School Resource Officers having guns in their school.

• While just under half of student survey respondents agreed or strongly agreed that their school had enough guidance counselors, those numbers decreased significantly when asked about other types of support workers. Only 16% agreed or strongly agreed that their school had enough social workers; 14% agreed or strongly agreed that their school had enough nurses; and 6% agreed that their school had enough mental health workers. No respondents strongly agreed that their school had enough mental health workers

From School-Based Mental Health Support for Rhode Island Youth: Policy Recommendations to Address Students’ Exposure to Adverse Childhood Experiences:

• Within PPSD, 79% of students reported trauma in the form of high degrees of community disorganization and violence in their home neighborhoods. Nearly half (45%) reported feeling sad or depressed most days, and two in ten students thought about suicide within the last year. Historical and ongoing inequality and oppression leads to exposure to trauma and adverse events being higher for ethnically and racially minoritized youth.

• There are not enough mental health professionals in RI schools: the overall student-school counselor ratio in RI was 392:1, and the ratio recommended by the American School Counselor Association is 250:1. The overall student-social worker ratio in RI was 686:1, and the ratio recommended by the School Social Work Association of America is 250:1.

• Schools that employ more school-based mental health providers see improved attendance, lower rates of suspension and other disciplinary referrals, improved academic outcomes and better graduation rates.

Join us for a webinar on January 13th from 5:30-7pm to learn more about the results from these studies. First, CYCLE will present their research findings on the impacts of Student Resource Officers (SROs) on PPSD's youth and school climate.  Second, SPHERE will present research on the high incidence of trauma and mental health symptoms among PPSD students, as well as data on how increasing school-based mental health supports leads to improved student outcomes and school climate. Following these brief presentations, a panel of community stakeholders will engage in a facilitated discussion about how to move forward to PPSD support students and promote a positive school climate. Audience members will be able to submit questions during a Q&A period. 

Friday the 13th evokes ominous undertones in our broader culture, but for CYCLE, this past Friday, November 13, 2020 marked the 3rd anniversary of our launch at Roger Williams University. It also marked 8 months of our team working remotely in the midst of the COVID-19 global pandemic, 10 looong days of aftermath for the US presidential election, and one more day, like this one, when our CYCLE team was hard at work in support of youth and community leadership in education to advance racial and social justice in our public schools. 

In past years, our anniversary post has provided opportunity for reflection, almost a year-in-review. And, while CYCLE has accomplished a good deal over the past 12 months, it seems that our time and mental energy these days could benefit from looking forward. In multiple conversations with staff and partners last week, we noted that CYCLE is turning a proverbial corner, perhaps starting a new chapter, or even expanding our horizon. Whichever metaphor is at play, we are full of excitement and anticipation as we look forward into our fourth year of existence!

Lead with Organizing

As core to our mission, CYCLE supports youth, families, and educators to organize, fight for, and win policies and practices that create equitable opportunities and just outcomes for every student. For us, the change we want to see in the world comes about when communities organize and build power for social justice. The lens of community organizing focuses our work by centering and prioritizing the experiences and expertise of people most negatively impacted by racial, cultural, and class-based oppression. 

When working with youth, parents, and community members, our focus on organizing can be seen through our anchoring of the OurSchoolsPVD alliance on the local level, to support the coordination of community-based youth-driven powerbuilding in the context of the RI state takeover the Providence Public School District (PPSD). OurSchoolsPVD is poised to deepen its work in this coming year by forging greater ties with youth, parents, educators, decision-makers and the community at large. 

We also believe that effective organizing is grounded in deep analysis. Thus, we are excited to launch our CYCLE Strategy Institute (CSI) in January, which will be accepting applications soon! This year, CSI will develop a collective online learning environment that blends skills training, knowledge sharing, and coaching to support grassroots, progressive organizations that are fighting for educational equity to become more effective at planning campaigns and building long-term, sustainable power. The goal of CSI is to help participants to develop organizing and issue campaigns for addressing and solving root causes of problems facing low-income communities of color in the public education system by concentrating on three fundamental campaign planning areas that are key to building sustainable, grassroots-driven power to win: 1) Analyze; 2) Strategize; and 3) Implement. If you know a team that wants to think intentionally about how to generate new analysis and power building strategy for their next, or current campaign, then let them know about CSI!

What’s the SCORE!?

Last month, CYCLE hosted our Organizing Dispositions for Educational Leadership Conference to advance the idea that educational leaders need to learn from, and think and act more like, community organizers if we are to realize the promise of education as a means to collective liberation. The lessons learned from our conference experience will not only be shared on our website in the coming weeks, but will also inform our approach to working with education systems leaders going forward. It is in this light we are thrilled to announce the Schools & Communities Organizing for Racial Equity (SCORE) project, in partnership with the Social Policy Hub for Equity Research in Education (SPHERE) at Rhode Island College and Parents Leading for Educational Equity (PLEE). 

SCORE is a collaborative, action-oriented research project that will bring together an intergenerational community design team consisting of youth currently attending PPSD and parent leaders from PLEE. With support from CYCLE and SPHERE, this team will develop a tool, or “SCOREcard,” that will assess PPSD on equity indicators that the community identifies as important. Too often, accountability for school improvement and success relies on oversimplified measures, such as standardized tests, that leave out the important perspectives and expertise of youth, parents, and community members. In alignment with developing organizing dispositions for educational leadership, SCORE seeks to shift the lines of accountability for school improvement so that they are community-driven, collaborative, and equity-oriented, and so that leaders and educators in PPSD can understand and be responsive to the educational priorities that are important to youth and families.

What Youth Need

The lifeblood of CYCLE has always been our work with youth organizing groups from across New England. Our many partners, who we connect with and convene via the New England Youth Organizing Network (NEYON), teach us so much about what it means to prioritize the leadership of young people. Amidst the national and local conversations about reopening public schools in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, an observation we heard over and over again as we connected with youth leaders throughout the region was that school reopening conversations rarely included the perspectives of youth. Instead, these conversations revolved around adult needs and broader community economic concerns. Without taking away from the importance of these frames, our youth partners pointed out that it is not only during times of crisis (like a pandemic) when the voices, perspectives, and leadership of youth are not heeded, it is in all times. 

What would it look like if we authentically considered what youth need, as defined by youth themselves, when making decisions not only about school reopening, but about schooling in general? We are fortunate to work with partners grounded in youth leadership who can provide ready-made answers to this question. For example, Hearing Youth Voices from New London, CT, developed the comprehensive framework, Schools That Work for Us, by centering the experiences and wisdom of young people. Along with Students for Educational Justice, HYV is also one of the youth organizations anchoring the Anti-Racist Teaching and Learning Collective in CT, that includes youth organizing groups and educators who are organizing for statewide adoption of anti-racist teaching and learning practices. Because of our unique privilege and position of being connected to efforts like these across New England, through NEYON, we will be promoting a #WhatYouthNeed social media campaign that can help rewrite the narratives around how decisions about public education are made and what happens day-to-day in our public schools.

Teamwork Makes the Dream Work

Finally, we could not do the work we do without an amazing CYCLE team! Five of the seven founding staff at CYCLE remain and we have welcomed three new staff members over the past three years. In addition, we anticipate adding at least three new team members in the coming months. Our team is made up of wonderfully dynamic individuals, who we hope that you will get to know as our work continues to grow and expand. Over the course of this coming year, be on lookout for periodic profiles of CYCLE team members as we celebrate our growth! In the meantime, please never hesitate to reach out to let us know what you’re up to and explore ways we might be able to, in the words of Mariame Kaba, “imagine while we build,” together. 

CYCLE’s Executive Director, Keith Catone, is featured in the July 20 interview on Organizing Engagement. Organizing Engagement is an online publication dedicated to advancing knowledge, understanding, and practice at the intersection of education organizing, engagement, and equity. The website collects principles, models, and policies, and then shares them in the form of introductions, interviews, profiles, and other content. Organizing Engagement recognizes leaders, thinkers, organizers, and practitioners who are making invaluable contributions in their fields by providing a forum that allows them to speak about their work and what they’ve learned over the years. The interviews feature a diversity of voices on education organizing, engagement, and equity sharing their journeys, insights, and wisdom in their own words.

Keith spoke with editor Stephen Abbot about teacher leadership, community organizing, and prioritizing CYCLE’s idea of an “organizing disposition” in the field of education leadership. While supporting and following the leadership of those who are most impacted by challenges and issues facing our communities is always important, the imperative to do so now is even more clear in the context of the global COVID-19 pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement for racial justice. Below is an excerpt from the interview about the importance of teachers and principals sharing power with students, families, and communities.

Q4: You just spoke about this briefly, but you and your team at CYCLE have identified the inability to share power as one of the principal challenges that needs to be addressed in student, family, and community engagement. Let’s unpack this concept a little more. How would you define power sharing and how does it typically work in practice?

I wonder if it’s not so much about anyone’s “inability” to share power as much as it is about people being unwilling to share power. American individualism and our capitalist culture do not encourage power sharing. In fact, there is a mainstream belief in getting your own piece of the proverbial pie. In other words, we’re taught from an early age that resources are scarce, there are winners and losers, and that our success is predicated upon our individual abilities to win. When we win, others lose, but we’re taught this is okay because we deserve to win when we work hard and that, conversely, those that lose must not be good enough or work hard enough—that they are undeserving. At CYCLE, we believe that power is not a finite human resource, and that leaders do not lose power when they share power. In fact, when people work collectively and in partnership, then power can be generated. You can actually end up with more power than before, as the product of collective thinking and action.

Organizers use a definition of power that’s instructive: power is the ability to influence decision-making toward a desired outcome. Having first heard this from long-time community organizer, Ernesto Cortes, I often refer to the Spanish translation for power to illustrate the concept: power has meaning as both a noun (power) and verb (to be able to). Our power is therefore represented by our ability to do things and accomplish things. In the context of schools and educational justice, it’s really about our ability to realize the conditions that will result in equitable outcomes. As long as one group of people or individuals maintains its unilateral power at the expense of others—if it’s framed as a zero-sum game—we will not achieve educational equity or justice. Yet if we start to focus on relational power, we will begin to realize that we are actually capable of doing much, much more together than we could ever do on our own. In other words, relational power is generative.

Read the rest of the interview at Organizing Engagement!

On Friday, June 5, youth in Providence organized a historic protest in defense of Black lives, condemning police violence against Black people, and demanding safety and dignity for our communities. Over 10,000 Rhode Islanders took to the streets in what many are calling the largest demonstration in our state’s history, led by a small group of youth organizers & their allies. Many of us were struck by the heavy military presence that Friday - we witnessed soldiers with assault weapons protecting Providence Place Mall and police in riot gear threatening to tear gas the crowd gathered on the steps of our State House. To be clear: militarized police do not belong on our streets, in our communities, or in our schools. 

The demonstrations on Friday, June 5, Sunday, June 14, and Friday, June 19 (Juneteenth) were beautiful displays of community power, thanks to the leadership of our youth.The youth of Providence are powerful & visionary. 

OurSchoolsPVD stands in solidarity with students & youth of this city and with our Black community at large. 

We mourn the loss of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, Ahmaud Arbery, Rayshard Brooks, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Sandra Bland, Kendra James, Philando Castile, Eric Garner, Stephon Clark, Aiyana Jones, Trayvon Martin, and the countless others who have been murdered by a centuries-old system which classifies Black lives as disposable.

OurSchoolsPVD formed to ensure that state control of the Providence Public School District (PPSD) results in a racially just and equitable public education system for Providence youth and families.

We need anti-racist schools now!

To start, we need to divest from the police and reinvest in our communities: 

• We demand that PPSD sever contractual ties with the Providence Police Department, including the removal of all School Resource Officers (SROs) out of our schools, and the reallocation of resources towards systems that support student mental health and an anti-racist, non- punitive approach to school discipline. Echoing the demands of the Providence Alliance for Student Safety (PASS), we need Police-Free Schools and Counselors Not Cops.

We have seen COVID-19 disproportionately impact RI’s Black and Latino/x communities, in addition to increased racism and harassment of Asian Americans. We will not accept the continued reinforcement of existing racist structures in our schools and communities:

• We demand transparent, student and community led decision making processes for the issues that impact our lives. It is unacceptable to close an entire school without any community input, as is being done with Evolutions High School.

• We need educators who affirm our Black students and communities. We need investment in teachers of color and teachers who are culturally and social-emotionally fluent and supported by community-led professional development. And, we need structures to hold teachers and administrators accountable for racist acts.

• We need curriculum and learning opportunities that embrace our cultures and histories. We demand education as a constitutional right, mandatory ethnic studies for all students, and anti-racist curriculum. We need individualized learning plans and student-centered, project-based instruction for each student that prioritize growth over grades or test scores.

• We need a school reopening plan that centers the needs of our most vulnerable families. At the very least, we demand language and food access for families, PPE, social distancing, clean lead-free drinking water, working bathrooms, and safe and comfortable schools buildings that are well-ventilated and sanitized daily.

As we move forward with our vision for justice in Providence Public Schools, OurSchoolsPVD is committed to amplifying and prioritizing youth power and youth voices. We continue to center Black students and youth of color, who are impacted most directly by systemic racism and anti-Blackness within our education system. We believe in community power and we know that our schools are not separate from our communities. For us to achieve racial justice in our schools and our society, we need parents, educators, and the wider community to stand with youth. While we look to and invest in the leadership of our youth, this work cannot and should not fall solely on our young people.

Join us in fighting for:

DEMOCRACY

A say, voice, and decision making power

DOLLARS

 Adequate and equitable resources

DIGNITY 

Cultures, climates, classrooms, and curricula of respect

- OurSchoolsPVD -

Alliance of Rhode Island Southeast Asians for Education (ARISE)

Center for Youth and Community Leadership in Education (CYCLE)

Providence Youth Student Movement (PrYSM)

Providence Student Union (PSU)

RI Center for Justice (RI CFJ)

RI Urban Debate League (RIUDL)

Youth In Action (YIA)

Black Lives Matter.

Dear CYCLE family and friends, 

In the midst of the current resistance and uprisings against racism and white supremacy, so many of us are collectively searching for ways forward. The day-to-day threats to the health and safety of Black people and other communities of color in the United States have been laid bare over the past three months, especially in this past week. And, the intersectional analysis and action that is necessary from ALL of us to ensure that we are not complicit in the continued oppression of Black liberation, indigenous sovereignty, women’s rights, gender inclusivity, the dignity of people of color, economic justice, and the sustainability of our planet, have never been more imperative.  

Today, as we remember and say the names of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, Ahmaud Arbery, and David McAtee, we do so in the face of a system that will continue to add names to the list of Black people whose lives it has failed to protect unless we fight back. While the demand to “Stop killing us!” should be enough, we know that it is not. We must organize to build the relationships, leadership, and power necessary to fight back and grow the just and loving communities, institutions, and systems we know we deserve. 

Black lives matter. This truth, which should be self-evident, is a driving force behind the work we will continue to do in solidarity with our partners in Providence and in communities throughout New England and nationally. Please join us. 

In solidarity,

The CYCLE Team

Since 2013, CYCLE staff have been responsible for the design and facilitation of an annual Youth Leadership Institute (YLI) for Nellie Mae Education Foundation grantees. One of the values CYCLE holds dear is “Partnership” -- we partner with communities and school districts looking to build collective power through grassroots leadership, organizing, advocacy, and relationship building. We support youth, families, and educators -- focusing on those most impacted by injustice -- to fight for and win policies and practices that create equitable opportunities and outcomes for all students. A new book, At Our Best: Building Youth-Adult Partnerships in Out-of-School Time Settings, features empirical research, conceptual essays, poetry, artwork, and engaged dialogue about the complexities of youth-adult partnerships in practice. In “Why Couldn’t That Have Been Me?,” Kristy Luk, Noah Schuettge, Keith Catone, and Catalina Perez use the team’s experiences planning and facilitating YLIs to explore how to build spaces for authentic youth leadership without reinforcing adultist structures and practices. The team talks about “Levels of Youth Participation/Power” and how that has guided their support for the  Youth Planning Team (YPT) that makes important decisions to plan, design, and facilitate YLI. 

In February 2020, CYCLE staff selected 12 students from all over New England to be part of YPT for YLI 2020.  This team will plan and implement YLI with CYCLE staff.

Erick Tamay and Amber Mora, two returning Youth Planning Team members were asked questions about their hopes for the Youth Leadership Institute and this is what they had to say:

Amber Mora

Why were you interested in being part of the Youth Planning Team this year? 

Amber: Every year I attend YLI I am never disappointed. Last year I was on the planning team and it was so fun getting to be “behind the scenes” for YLI and I just wanted to be able to enjoy it again. Also it’s my last year of high school and I wanted to be able to enjoy the opportunity of being on the planning team my last year of YLI. 

Erick: I am interested because of the community that we create through the planning process and for how empowering the experience is when learning and making new friendships at the same time.

What is your biggest hope for the Youth Leadership Institute this year? 

Amber: My biggest hope for YLI is for it to be another fun learning experience as it always is. 

Erick: During the planning process and after all the hard work made, my biggest hope is to make YLI even more successful than the last, strengthening our relationships and creative power within our communities.

Erick Tamay

What are you excited about for the Youth Planning Team/YLI this year? 

Amber: I am excited to get closer to the other youth I get to work with to plan this amazing event.

Erick: I am excited to bond and create strong new friendships. Each YPT member is a new color to my life and having them in the team makes the experience more rewarding. 

YLI 2020 Update: CYCLE continues to prioritize the health and emotional needs of our YLI community. After gathering information from the news of COVID-19, feedback from youth, and the feedback of the Youth Planning Team, we’d like to introduce to you “YLI 2020 ‘The Remix’”.  The Remix is a series of virtual workshops focusing on similar organizing and leadership content as before, centralizing community building. We will be hosting this virtually on the same days that YLI was previously scheduled -- August 3rd to 5th, 2020 -- and will be following up with more information in the upcoming weeks.

CYCLE’s Executive Director, Keith Catone, participated in a discussion on Educational Equity and Policy in the Midst of a Global Pandemic for the National Education Policy Center’s April Education Interview of the Month.

NEPC Researcher Christopher Saldaña interviewed a group of five educators and activists about their experience serving children, schools, and communities during the COVID-19 pandemic. The group discussed the unique ways that the pandemic has interrupted the normal interactions between students and teachers, administrators and personnel, and schools and communities and provided recommendations for how schools and communities can cope with the crisis and move forward. Keith explained that this moment can teach us about the value of public schools in times of crisis and contended that, in order for our recovery from the crisis to be strong, we must prioritize public schools and acknowledge their value as centers of democracy and community.  

CYCLE’s core value of “equity” is predicated on the belief that fairness is achieved when systemic disparities in opportunities and outcomes are recognized and eliminated. In education, the greatest disparities are race- and class-based, and the COVID-19 pandemic has made those disparities more apparent. Now more than ever, a focus on equity requires an explicitly anti-racist and anti-classist approach, which means distributing disproportionaly more resources to those with the greatest needs in communities of color and communities experiencing poverty facing massive job loss, increasing health risks, and exacerbated systems-driven vulnerabilities.

You can listen to the Educational Equity and Policy in the Midst of a Global Pandemic podcast here.

CYCLE partners with communities and school districts looking to build collective power through grassroots leadership, organizing, advocacy, and relationship building. It is important to our team to center and prioritize the experiences and expertise of people most negatively impacted by racial, cultural, and class-based hierarchies. To that end, we work in solidarity with dozens of community and school partners. One of those partners, Hearing Youth Voices, a youth-led social justice organization in New London, Connecticut, last summer invented the "Schools that Work for Us" framework for thinking comprehensively about school transformation and what needs to be taken down and what needs to be (re)built in order for schools to be sites of true growth, development, and freedom for Black and Brown young people.. For this month’s CYCLE blog post, we are pleased to feature a guest commentary on the framework from the Hearing Youth Voices team.

Hearing Youth Voices Performing at CYCLE’s 2019 Youth Leadership Institute

What is Schools that Work for Us?

It is a framework for thinking comprehensively about school transformation and what needs to be taken down and what needs to be (re)built in order for schools to be sites of true growth, development, and freedom for Black and Brown young people. These themes were developed in 2018 when young people compiled six years of Hearing Youth Voices research and data that had been collected via surveys, interviews, and hundreds of youth meetings since 2012. We then organized the issue areas into categories and came up with eight themes ­-- the struggle; resources; mental health; freedom to be and to move; full safety; teaching and learning; relationships; and collective power.

From there, we launched a community series in which we shared the Schools that Work for Us framework with more than 150 people to get feedback and more ideas – check out a short video of a performance that youth did in June to present the framework to the world! We also talked to young people across the state to “test” the framework and see if it reflected their experiences. We found that it overwhelmingly did; although the framework was originally developed in New London, its relevancy extends across the state.

Uploaded by Reele Media on 2019-08-23.

The framework is important to us because it provides a road map to our work as we move forward. Some people have asked, “What next?” Schools that Work for Us is, at its core, a long-term policy agenda that we intend to chip away at for as long as it takes. We will continue to run youth-led campaigns on each of the issues named in the report until we achieve them all.

The inventors of the Schools that Work for Us framework and the authors of the report are: Andhrose Bazil, Taylin Santiago, Aaliyah Figueroa, Twok Burrel, Eliza Brown, Zeraiah Ramos, Shane Brooks Fletcher, Shawn Brooks Fletcher, Azzure Brown, Tareonna Alger Rodriguez, Mariana Fermin, Shaneva Edwards, Shykarah Fareus & Adult staff Yanitza Cubilette, Maya Sheppard, chelsea cleveland, & Laura Burfoot.

Interested in the Schools that Work for Us framework? Want us to come and present at your school or organization? Contact us!

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Do you have exciting news or work to share? Please don’t hesitate to reach out to us at cycle@rwu.edu if you would like to discuss a feature blogpost to highlight your work!

“Systemic Root Rot” (Image reinterpreted from: M. Warren, K. Mapp, & the Community Organizing and School Reform Project. (2011). A Match on Dry Grass: Community Organizing as a Catalyst for School Reform. New York: Oxford University Press.)

HEALING SYSTEMIC ROOT ROT

On November 6, 2019, just one week shy of CYCLE’s second anniversary, I delivered a keynote address at the Voices for Vermont’s Children annual conference. The conference planners asked me to consider the working title “Reform is Not Enough: Organizing for Transformation.” It was a direct ask that cut right to the chase and, of course, I was intrigued. Speaking to an audience filled with advocates and social sector workers from across the state of Vermont, all centrally concerned with how we can reorient our systems to support young people to grow and thrive, I was forced to consider how and why reform is not enough when considering the challenges we face across the social sectors of education, health, housing, employment, civic participation, reproductive rights, and more. And, so, I developed an idea that I thought would broadly apply called, “systemic root rot.”

Root rot is what often ails our common houseplants. You know, the ones that end up dying no matter how much you try to water and encourage them back to life. It is a frustrating experience when you seem to water an unhealthy plant only to watch it continue to wither. This happens largely because when plant root systems get waterlogged, they cannot grow in soil that isn’t draining properly or that has become contaminated. They develop a plant disease called root rot, which water cannot heal. Similarly, for those of us who have been working for equitable systems change for the past 10, 20, and 30 years (or more!), it can be discouraging when we see reform after reform achieve only incremental change at best, or fail at worst. What if inequitable systems are like our dying houseplants? Their roots are rotten and their healing is prevented by contaminated soil. No matter how many reforms we try, they cannot seem to heal our systemic root rot. Difficulty nursing ailing houseplants back to life and bringing about equitable systems change are common experience among many of us. The upshot, though, is that there is a cure for root rot. It is a meticulous and involved process of cleaning, trimming, decontaminating, and rerooting, but it is possible. It just takes a lot more than water. Thus, to cure systemic root rot our work must move beyond reform.  

“Healing Systems” (Image reinterpreted from: M. Warren, K. Mapp, & the Community Organizing and School Reform Project. (2011). A Match on Dry Grass: Community Organizing as a Catalyst for School Reform. New York: Oxford University Press.)

At CYCLE, we ground our work in the theory and practices of community organizing and we believe that organizing provides pathways to heal our systems from root rot. Ultimately, organizing is about individual, community, and institutional transformation (Warren & Mapp, 2011)—the outgrowths of equitable systems change. In our short two years, the CYCLE team has been hard at work in support of communities and schools to understand and utilize community organizing as a tool for systemic change. Our projects and partnerships consistently seek to center the voices, perspectives, and wisdom of those who have been historically marginalized from decision-making and the dominant culture of our school systems, namely youth and parents who are Black, Indigenous, and people of color, low-income communities, and oftentimes frontline educators and school staff. We believe in an approach to community organizing that disrupt the dominant frames of society that grow commodification, individualism, and competition. These destructive frames are rooted in the contaminated soils of historical “isms” and white supremacy culture, and produce structural oppression, fractured communities, and systemic inequities.

Community organizing works to heal our systemic roots so that they might instead support the growth of grassroots leadership, relationships, and collective power. When our systems focus on these things while being rerooted in soils rich with our cultural traditions and communal histories and identities, we can continuously feed them with community organizing to produce thriving people, cohesive communities, and equitable and just systems.

Below, I highlight a few of our projects from the past two years, and then, I preview the promise of some of our emerging work for the future.

LOOKING BACK

Some of the 2019 YPT smiling with CYCLE staff after a successful YLI!

Grassroots Leadership: Centering Youth Leadership and Voice

Each year, CYCLE recruits a 12-person Youth Planning Team (YPT) for our annual Youth Leadership Institute (YLI). YLI is a youth-led convening that offers opportunities for learning, relationship building, and strategy development to 150 youth leaders and nearly 50 adult allies from across New England. The YPT has traditionally been responsible for planning the agenda and curating the content for YLI sessions. However, in response to critical feedback from the 2018 YPT, this past YLI featured YPT members as co-facilitators, with adult facilitator fellows, of YLI teambuilding and learning activities. CYCLE is proud of this advancement of grassroots leadership and excited that a book chapter is currently “in press” that describes the process and evolution of this unique work of youth-adult partnership.

Building Relationships: Facilitating NEYON Learning Communities

CYCLE facilitates and convenes the New England Youth Organizing Network (NEYON). This past year, NEYON launched two learning communities focused on student rights and ethnic studies. These learning communities have engaged more than ten organizations that have learned about each other’s work and strategized together about how to advance the objectives of protecting and promoting student rights and increasing the teaching of ethnic studies. Organizations engaged in these efforts have increased awareness of student rights and responsibilities, provided accessible ways for students to identify and report when their rights have been violated, advanced ethnic studies in high schools around New England, and, in Connecticut, passed statewide legislation mandating Black and Latinx studies in public schools. NEYON learning communities provide avenues for youth leaders and organizations to learn from each other and begin to see how our work is all connected to our larger, shared struggle for educational equity and justice.

Collective Power: Our First CYCLE Strategy Institute (CSI)

In 2019, we designed and facilitated our first CSI—a multi-month long, strategic power-building and campaign planning process that supports grassroots organizations to (1) build long-term, sustainable power, and (2) have more effective campaigns for bringing about educational equity and justice. CSI engages community organizing efforts in a facilitated planning phase that leads to a 3-day convening and follows up with campaign implementation and CYCLE technical assistance. We’re excited to continue developing this model of organizing capacity building support that is expressly aimed at building campaigns for collective power. This first year’s participants—Hartford Parent University (CT), Meriden Children First (CT), Parents & Youth for Change (Burlington & Winooski, VT), Pittsfield Listens (NH), Portland Empowered (ME), and Women Encouraging Empowerment (Revere, MA)—organize in communities across New England.

LOOKING FORWARD

PASS Coalition members

Rerooting Our Systems: Research for a Youth-Centered, Youth-Driven Intergenerational Movement for Racially Just & Equitable Education Systems

Looking forward, CYCLE is poised to increase our research capacity to facilitate learning with community organizing partners. Traditional research is grounded in the dominant frames of our current systems, which makes it difficult to use in pursuit of healing systemic root rot. Research and learning that is in support of community organizing must be grounded in community histories and identities, serving to strengthen the roots of a youth-centered, youth-driven, and intergenerational movement for racially just and equitable education systems. In 2020, we will be completing research in solidarity with the Providence Alliance for Safe Schools (PASS) Coalition’s “Counselors Not Cops” campaign, and we are in pursuit of additional research projects designed to advance community wisdom and grassroots organizing.

Cohesive School Communities: An Organizing Disposition for Educational Leadership

Similar to traditional research, schools are also organized according to dominant beliefs and attitudes designed to uphold current power structures and systemic inequities. The beliefs upholding systemic root rot, like commodification, individualism, and competition, play out in schools that reify historical –isms and white supremacy culture through false meritocracy, overemphasis on test scores, and market/incentive-oriented education policies and programs. Among other things, these beliefs and approaches undervalue and ignore the potential for grassroots leadership and collective power building for systems change, and result in fractured school communities, structural oppression, and inequity. Instead, CYCLE believes that if we are going to transform our education systems, leaders within that system need to develop an “organizing disposition” for educational leadership. This means thinking and acting like an organizer, and prioritizing the values of grassroots leadership development, relationship building, and collective power, resulting in thriving youth, families, and educators, cohesive school communities, and equitable and just schools. CYCLE has received a Spencer Foundation Conference Grant to host a conference in 2020 that will seek to further develop a leadership framework for the “organizing disposition.” Be on the lookout for more information in the coming months!

Equitable & Just Systems: OurSchoolsPVD’s Vision for Transforming Providence Public Schools

The city of Providence and state of Rhode Island face a unique opportunity in the context of the recent state takeover of the Providence Public School District (PPSD). CYCLE is proud of its trusting relationships with youth and parent-led community organizations in Providence, and we are honored to be the convener of the OurSchoolsPVD alliance in partnership with key youth leadership and organizing groups—the Alliance of Rhode Island Southeast Asians for Education (ARISE), Rhode Island Urban Debate League, Providence Student Union (PSU), Providence Youth Student Movement (PrYSM), and Youth In Action (YIA). As we seek to build capacity and power for the alliance, we are hopeful that we can collaborate with state and city leaders, educators, and public officials to ensure that the changes and interventions for PPSD do more than reform, but instead seek to heal systemic root rot by grounding change in the rich histories, identities, and cultural traditions of the youth and communities in Providence.

STAY IN TOUCH!

CYCLE is excited to enter year three of our existence as we lay the groundwork for many more years to come. As you read about this work, we hope you see connections and feel resonance with how you are moving in the world. Please reach out so that we can move together!

A state takeover of Providence public schools is on the horizon, and students, parents, and community members from over 15 organizations support their peers’ filing of a Motion to Intervene so they can be included in the process. How will the Rhode Island Department of Education respond?

Our partner, ARISE, has published this infographic to help people understand how youth have been organizing for the past four months in response to the impending state takeover.

Providence Public Schools are facing a takeover from the Rhode Island Department of Education, an unsettling prospect given that state takeovers have ended in crisis in several states in recent years. It is especially clear that state takeovers are much more likely to fail and cause harm to students when they decline to include students, parents, and other concerned constituents as a meaningful part of the decision making and accountability process.

No one has a greater stake in demanding improvements in the schools than parents and students. Our best hope for a successful turnaround starts with a clear plan that includes us from planning to implementation and beyond. 

That’s why we, as parents, youth, caregivers, community members, and advocates from over 15 organizations, support our peers who have worked with the Rhode Island Center for Justice to file a legal Motion to Intervene, asking the Rhode Island Commissioner of Education to ensure that there is a formal role for parents and students in the plan for improving Providence's schools, the leaders who will implement it, and the goals, progress, and criteria for success for the plan. This is not a call to stop intervention, but merely a request to be part of it.

As this next chapter in the work to transform our Providence public schools begins, we seek the following commitments from the Rhode Island Department of Education to ensure the effort is successful:

• Establish clear authority for youth, families and community members in selecting and evaluating any state- or district-appointed leadership for Providence public schools.

• Establish significant, ongoing, formal roles for families, students and the community in the development and implementation of plans for intervention.

Read more about the level of communication and inclusion we expect and deserve as part of our community statement. 

“There is nothing more important to me than ensuring that my daughter gets the education she needs and deserves,” said Koren Carbuccia, the mother of a second-grader. “I’m joining the hearing because I need to know that parents and students are going to be consulted about what will work best for our children’s future.” 

“Providence students have been fighting for more effective, culturally responsive education for years. Now there is going to be a state intervention and we have a right to be a formal part of that,” said Paola Mejia, a senior at the Juanita Sanchez Educational Complex. “We live the Providence Public Schools experience every day. We know what we need and we’ve been telling local and state leaders that for a long time. It’s not optional to include us: We have a right to be heard.”

Both the hearing on the motion to intervene and the "show cause” hearing about the Commissioner's proposed order of takeover are scheduled on September 13th, beginning at 9am at the Brown School of Professional Studies (new location), 225 Dyer Street, 5th Floor in Providence.

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Alliance of RI Southeast Asians for Education (ARISE)

Center for Youth & Community Leadership in Education (CYCLE)

Coalition for a Multilingual RI

Equity Institute

Girls Rock RI!

Latino Policy Institute

Parents Leading for Educational Equity (PLEE)

Providence Promise

Providence Public School Advocates

Providence Student Union

Providence Youth Student Movement (PrYSM)

RI Center for Justice

RI Urban Debate League

Young Voices

Youth Pride, Inc.

Youth In Action

One of CYCLE’s core values is learning, specifically to create a culture of inquiry where ideas, information, and discoveries are exchanged. Over the summer, CYCLE staff have had opportunities to facilitate and attend a number of learning events. During the last few weeks of summer, we will be publishing a series of blog posts on lessons, reflections, and takeaways from those learning opportunities. Next up, Keith Catone, Kristy Luk, and Catalina Perez reflect on the Free Minds Free People Conference.

Free Minds Free People Conference, Minneapolis, MN

Catalina Perez, Keith Catone, and Kristy Luk recently returned from a whirlwind long weekend in the Twin Cities for the bi-annual Free Minds Free People (FMFP) conference. FMFP builds a movement to develop and promote education as a tool for liberation. 

FROM KRISTY:

Coming to FMFP always feels like a family reunion, particularly because we get to be in community with young people, educators, and activists who are passionate about education justice. It was so special to share this space with ten organizations from the New England Youth Organizing Network (NEYON), several of whom presented their work for a national audience! The theme for FMFP this year was “Getting Free, Imagining Freedom,” and we witnessed NEYON groups’ work to educate and fight for student rights in schools, create alternatives to punitive discipline in schools, and fight for undocumented students’ access to education. All of these groups with which we have the privilege of working represent young people’s leadership in not only imagining a freer world, but also enacting these dreams of freedom in the present. 

One of the ideas resonating most deeply for me from one of the plenary sessions is that imagining freedom does not only mean we are imagining a future state--we should also search our past for the deep ancestral knowledge from our pre-colonial communities. I would add, though, that watching these young people who shared their own activist journeys as part of their workshops reinforces the idea that even as we are fighting to get free and imagining freedom, young people historically and presently are at the helm of radically imagining these freer worlds in the here and now. They are not the future leaders of tomorrow. They are at the forefront of our freedom movements now. 

NEYON groups came back together for the New England Youth Leadership Institute, from August 5th-7th. Be on the lookout for amazing youth-led work coming out of New England in the upcoming year!

Youth leaders from the 10 NEYON member organizations in attendance at FMFP 2019: Providence Student Union, Pa’Lante Restorative Justice Program, Youth on Board, Young Voices, Portland Empowered, Maine Youth Action Network, Connecticut 4 a Dream, Youth Civics Union, Alliance of RI Southeast Asian for Education, and Pittsfield Youth Voice in it Together.

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FROM KEITH:

During the Friday morning plenary session that kicked off FMFP, Dr. Bettina Love shared that “you can’t do justice work if you don’t know who you are.”

Moments after the plenary session ended, as I was weaving through the crowded walkways to find the workshop session I planned to attend, I ran into a close friend and colleague of CYCLE’s, Delia Arellano-Weddleton, who is our program officer at the Nellie Mae Education Foundation. NMEF is also a longtime supporter of FMFP, and Delia has seen me at multiple conferences, as well as even more gatherings and convenings of NMEF grantees that CYCLE plans and coordinates. Delia smiled at me and remarked, “It’s always so good to see you at home, in your element.” 

Now, I love my work at CYCLE, and the gatherings and convenings we pull together are meaningful and engaging. However, FMFP is something different. There is an element of feeling at home that it instills, similar to Kristy’s description of the conference as a family reunion. I believe a big part of this feeling is due to the ways in which FMFP supports people to find and be themselves, fully. Delia’s comment struck me in that FMFP is a place where I not only think I am supported to know myself better, but also where others can get to know me more fully. This point was driven home even more deeply when a friend of mine, who wasn’t able to attend, said that she’d been following pictures of FMFP on social media. She told me that my smiles in the pictures seemed so real and full of life. I reflected on these smiles and believe that they were there because it feels good when you are in a space where can be confident in who you are and really get to know yourself and others. FMFP cultivates community so that people who do justice work can get to know who they are together. For that, I am grateful for all my FMFP family.

Education for Liberation Network board members and executive director smiling for the camera on the final day of FMFP (Farima Pour-Khorshid, Keith Catone, Twan Jordan, Brian Lozenski, Thomas Nikundiwe, Biba Fullon, Shoneice Reynolds).

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FROM CATALINA:

I first had the opportunity to attend the Free Minds Free People conference in 2017. I didn’t really know what to expect but knew from my colleagues that I would be entering a space that was completely different from any other. I was blown away to learn about the stories of resistance across the country and to have the opportunity to connect with folks doing amazing, challenging, and necessary work for liberation. FMFP 2017 came at the perfect time for me and served as a healing space to really begin understanding who I was as a person and who I wanted to be within our fight for justice.

FMFP 2019 came with much excitement and eagerness. I wanted to connect with people that I had the opportunity to develop relationships with through my work at CYCLE. As Keith mentioned, walking through the crowd brought this sense of family and a sense of comfort. I was ready to jump in and take in as much as I could. I was excited to see familiar faces of youth I have known and could not wait to hear about their experience at Free Minds Free People. At the same time I also had this extreme pride for being around people from my home state in another community. My goal for FMFP this year was to learn as much as possible about the work in Minneapolis and across the country and take a little piece of it back to my home state.   My love for Rhode Island has grown immensely since I’ve gotten older, and anything that can make my community a more welcoming place is at the top of my priorities. While listening to Bettina Love speak during one of the plenaries, she mentioned that her community loved her and took care of her as a young person and that we needed to start there to be able to take care of each other. I know it’s such a simple concept, but, since hearing her words, I’ve made a conscious effort to talk to more people in my community, especially youth. We live in a world that constantly throws negativity at youth, and a simple hello or conversation can show that we care and value them. This isn’t by any means a new learning from me but more so a reminder to take care of my community even when I feel I am overwhelmed and busy with other parts of life. Thank you FMFP and Bettina Love for that reminder. 

CYCLE’s Kristy Luk, Catalina Perez, and Keith Catone at the FMFP opening evening event.

One of CYCLE’s core values is learning, specifically to create a culture of inquiry where ideas, information, and discoveries are exchanged. Over the summer, CYCLE staff have had opportunities to facilitate and attend a number of learning events. During the last few weeks of summer, we will be publishing a series of blog posts on lessons, reflections, and takeaways from those learning opportunities. Next up, Jonathan Martinez, Senior Program Manager at CYCLE, reflects on the Family and Community Engagement Conference.

Family and Community Engagement Conference, Reno, NV

Every year, the Institute for Educational Leadership (IEL) brings together families, educators, and organizers to share strategies and stories for building ties between education systems and the communities they serve in order to improve educational equity.

This year’s Family & Community Engagement conference took place in Reno, Nevada, from July 9-12. Following suit with the gambling theme of the conference, “Engaging Families: A Sure Bet,” several lunch plenary speakers went all in with a critique of how districts engage families, and how engagement-only strategies for creating change are limited. Natasha Capers, Parent Organizer & Coordinator with the NYC Coalition for Educational Justice, spoke of the need to move beyond “involvement” and toward “engagement”, comparing the same words as they might be used to show how a romantic relationship could progress from two people being “involved” to being “engaged.” Mark Warren, Professor of Public Policy & Public Affairs at UMass Boston, said: “If we’re really serious about equity, we have to build power among those most affected by the problems in the system. We need more than engagement: we need organizing and alliances.” Mark’s most recent book, Lift Us Up, Don’t Push Us Out, features chapters written by parent and youth leaders and organizers, like Natasha, on the front lines of the educational justice movement.

Both speakers suggested views similar to CYCLE’s position on the need to prioritize organizing and alliance building to create lasting social change, as well as the need to bring together parents, youth, and educators (the folks most affected by the problems we’re trying to solve) to make it happen. As part of our contribution toward building a stronger movement for educational justice, we have launched the CYCLE Strategy Institute (CSI) to support some of our key parent organizing partners throughout New England. We have been working with them over the summer to prepare for our CSI Convening taking place this fall in Providence. Our hope is to offer CSI more broadly to the field in the future to support and link education organizing efforts locally, regionally, and nationally.