CYCLE Turns 6!
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.