Rather than covering the broad topic of “educational equity”, CSI's primary focus going forward will be on building a movement for equitable funding—securing the dollars our schools deserve and ensuring those funds are allocated where they are needed the most. We know that equitable school funding is almost always a component of our work, whether we're waging campaigns explicitly about dollars or not. Our interviews with past CSI participants reinforced our belief that this should be the central focus of CSI.

We will meet as a group at least once a month over the long term—years, not months—to build lasting relationships among participants and CYCLE staff. This is a significant shift from past CSIs, which ran for shorter periods of time and had fewer opportunities for participants to engage with each other.

Participants will collaborate with CYCLE staff to co-create each session’s agenda and training focus, ensuring that they meet the evolving needs and preferences of each organization. We have a variety of training modules to bring to the table, and can tailor our tools to your existing work to enhance your campaigns around equitable finance, or help you bring that focus into your work in a more intentional and explicit way.

CYCLE staff’s experiences spans more than 30 years and includes:

• Organizing with organizations and networks in California, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island

• Anchoring the OurSchoolsPVD alliance

• Engaging community members through our Schools & Communities Organizing for Racial Equity (SCORE) program

• Convening the New England Youth Organizing Network

• Participating in FCYO’s Organizing to Win Lab, and more!

This resource is out-of-print but siting can be found here.

This includes the Equity Research Institute at the University of Southern California, The Forge Organizing, Convergence Magazine, and the Grassroots Power Project.

The participation of CSI members during sessions and after, through evaluations and interviews.

We have utilized a variety of specific tools, but past participants consistently name several favorites: the Strategic Power Analysis, for landscape mapping and campaign planning; the Triangle Analysis, for troubleshooting outreach efforts; and the Science of Numbers, for turnout predictions and outreach troubleshooting. For a longer list of topics and tools, please visit our Topics page.