November 1, 2025 • 59 mins
Today’s Guest is the author of the book “Navigating School Board Politics” and an associate professor at Arizona State University. Dr. Carrie Sampson’s research focuses on K-12 educational leadership, policymaking and equity, with particular emphasis on school boards, districts, and community advocacy. She serves as a fellow for the National Education Policy Center and the Black Education Research Center.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Broadcasting from the Hip Hop Weekly Studios. I'd like to
welcome you to another episode of Civic Cipher, where our
mission is to foster allyship, empathy and understanding. Big shout
out to my man q Ward, who is away on
family business doing what he needs to do to make
sure that his family stays strong, and we are sending
(00:21):
well wishes his way. But have no fear the show
goes on. We have a special guest in the studio
today and we are going to be having a conversation
that we do have with some frequency around here about
local politics, specifically school boards and really doing a deep
dive into education in this country and how that looks
(00:46):
and how it's continuing to evolve. And our special guest
is the author of the book entitled Navigating school Board Politics.
She's also and associate professor at Arizona State University. She
goes by the name of doctor Carrie Sampson. Welcome to
the show.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
Okay, let me finish reading this because you deserve all
of these flowers. Her research focuses on K through twelve,
educational leadership, policymaking, and equity, with particular emphasis on school boards.
Districts and community advocacy. She serves as a fellow for
the National Education Policy Center and the Black Education Research Center.
(01:30):
And this conversation has been a long time coming. You
and I, we've known each other. We just haven't had
an opportunity to sit down and have a fully fleshed
out conversation as in regards to the particular type of
work that you do and how important that is. So
we gave you a bit of a brief introduction. Obviously
(01:50):
this is just kind of from the internet, but for
folks that may not fully understand the work that you do,
or for people that don't underunderstand what some of these
terms mean, you know, in terms of like, can you
what does it say research? Something like that Black Education
Research Center That wasn't it, but there was something in here.
(02:13):
Talk to us a little bit more about what it
is that you do, what your day to day looks
like or your year to year looks like, and the
changes that you're making in the world with your career.
Speaker 3 (02:24):
Yeah, well, again, thank you for having me. I appreciate
you having this conversation. I think it's a really important
time to talk about public schools and my work largely
I'm interested in how to advance educational equity in K
through twelve schools and education across the pipeline. But I
(02:45):
focus on K through twelve because that's kind of the
beginning of the pipeline when we're talking about public schools,
and so I think about how policies and practices impact
what's happening in classrooms, public funding for schools, policies for
(03:07):
various groups like English learners, Black children, discipline policies, and
a lot of those decisions are made at the school
board level, and so and community advocacy is a huge
part of pushing school boards to think about inequities and
how to remedy these inequities. And so that's where my
(03:30):
focus on both school board members as policymakers, as educational
leaders in the communities that they serve in, community advocates
that push them to do this, to do the work
that they need to do when it comes to equity.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
And so my day to day is, you know, I
have put together several studies.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
I've been doing research for about over ten years on
school boards, but prior to that, I did research on
school desegregation. I teach classes on educational policy on educational research.
I work with several PhD students who are also learning
how to do research, and I work with faculty and
other proof scholars across the country to tackle some of
(04:12):
these issues and think about how what are the questions
that policymakers have, what are the questions that families have,
what are the questions that communities have? And how can
we answer that those questions with research? And how can
we push push the needle on this really complex.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
Puzzle.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
Well, thank you for that, because that's certainly a lot
more thorough than I was able to give our listeners.
But I have a question for you. This is a
little off topic, but you used a word pipeline, you know,
the K through twelve pipeline. And in this work that
(04:57):
I've been doing, where I get a chance to talk
to people who who are bona fide activists out in
the world that are trying to create real changes in
this country that bring about equitable experiences in this great
American experiment for all persons, I've encountered a term known
(05:20):
as school to prison pipeline. Have you heard of this?
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Yes?
Speaker 4 (05:23):
I have.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
Okay, you said, okay, that might have been a silly
question now, but Okay, this, so I think that, and
I'm going to ask you to explain that to our
listeners because you seem to know about it, and probably
the explanation should come from you. But I would imagine
that for folks that don't know, and you can correct
(05:47):
me if I'm wrong, what you do kind of helps
address what has become known to I guess an enlightened
few myself included as the school to prison pipeline. So
do us a favor start with what is the school
to prison pipeline? And then if there are any connections
you can make, connect maybe your work with some of
(06:09):
what it is you're addressing with respect to that school
to prison pipeline.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
Yeah, sure, Well, the school to prison pipeline refers to
the idea and the reality that many children, particularly black
and brown children, enter the school system and experience high
levels of inequities in the form of discipline either that is,
being suspended, expelled, essentially criminalized in the school system, and
(06:39):
you know, end up getting pushed out of the school
system either and put on kind of a path toward
a prison, the prison industrial complex. My colleague Subni Anama,
she does a lot of work on what she refers
it to as the school to prison nexus. And so,
(07:00):
you know, I work with colleagues like her to think
about what are the policies we can put in place
that would disrupt a school to prison nexus school to
prison pipeline. And how in my interests around school boards
and my scholarship around school boards, what are the roles
of school boards in pushing policies to push back against that.
(07:21):
So how do we rethink discipline, you know, at the
at the district level, How can school boards put in
policies that would really help teachers, school leaders to before
they decide to suspend a student really think through what
(07:44):
does that actually mean. So programs like restorative justice programs
have been put in place to you know, or various
different alternatives to discipline measures can be put in place.
Also on the other end, is this idea of the
opportunity gap. For a long time, a lot of people
will refer to we have this achievement gap, you know,
(08:04):
and this is usually measured by test scores, and you know,
where black and brown children are not achieving at the
same level as their white counterparts. But that has gotten
flipped over the last couple of decades to really think
about it instead in terms of the opportunity gap, and
so that the idea is that not all children have
(08:27):
the same opportunity, And so how do we not only
rethink maybe discipline, but what are the opportunities that we're
providing all children, particularly our most vulnerable and marginalized children,
and are they do they have all the same opportunities.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
So while we're here, I want to to share something
that I think might be pertinent to listeners. That we
have a lot of folks who listen to this show
to try to pick out holes in our logic in
the argument things like this. I want to dress something
(09:03):
and kind of shore up some of what I feel
those people might the issues that those people might take
with what you're saying here in terms of like rethinking
discipline and disciplinary action and correct me if I'm wrong. You're,
of course the expert. But my understanding is that that
(09:24):
doesn't mean softer punishments for children who disrupt, but rather
understanding that children do things that children do. Their brains
aren't fully formed, right, and it's white children that have
a lot more freedom and flexibility to make mistakes and
(09:47):
come back from those mistakes and be quote unquote rehabilitated,
whereas when it comes to black and brown children, most
often they're criminalized early and severely, and that creates as
an identity crisis perhaps, and it creates rather than rehabilitating,
(10:11):
it causes a person to reframe who they are relative
to the world. And so it's like we've heard it
said a lot, and we've said it a couple of
times too. Black children have to grow up a lot faster.
In other words, you are held to an adult standard,
(10:33):
whereas a white child your same age would not be.
And we've seen this with you know, well connected individuals
children across the country. We've seen it with white children
across the country, and we've seen the opposite or the
inverse of it when it comes to black and brown children,
where if you're fourteen, you're tried as an adult. But
if you're a white child and you're sixteen and you
get the same DUI charge or the same whatever, you know,
(10:56):
you're given a lot of grace. And so I wanted
to make sure that I that I said that because
a lot of people will think that folks with a
more progressive or liberal philosophy are soft on crime. And
what I think is important to say, and then I'd
love your response here, but I think it's important to
(11:17):
say that people aren't really soft on crime. I think
that the tendency is that people are more interested in
rehabilitating delinquency because that's a possibility as opposed to just
shipping people to prisons and then having taxpayers pay for
(11:40):
that cost. So any reflections before we move on.
Speaker 3 (11:44):
Yeah, I mean, so when I was in grad school,
I read this book called Bad Boys, and it was
a researcher who went into a couple of schools for
a few years. It was like an ethnography, and she
was interested in how black boys and partuit were being
kind of treated and she just observed and she realized
(12:05):
and I found that black boys were criminalized at a
young age by the time they were like eleven by
And the reality is eighty percent of our teaching staff
for white women. And so, you know, I read that.
I was shocked, and then I saw it. I went
into my daughter's classroom when she was in first grade,
(12:27):
and I just went to observe because I wanted to
see what she was learning. And I sat in the
back and I saw this white female teacher treat a
white female student I mean they were seven years old
and a black male student. Completely different. They were both
(12:48):
kind of disruptive in the class. She sat there with
the white female student and got down on her level
and said, okay, I think you just need a time out.
Why don't you go over there in the corner. And
she was just so kind in gentle with her and
the wise she didn't you know this little girl, which fairly,
I mean it was I thought the way she handled
it was really wonderful with this student. About ten minutes later,
(13:12):
a little black boy disrupts the lesson and she right
away points to him and says, get out, get out
of the classroom. And I was shocked. And then he
didn't want to leave. He started crying. He's like, I
don't want to leave. She's like, no, get out.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
Go to the office.
Speaker 3 (13:30):
And I was like, I am seeing what I just
read about it live, you know, And of course I
mean as a mother, as a researcher, like knowing what
this means. I went to the principal and had a
whole conversation with her, and it was I was. Another
shocking thing was that she didn't know what the prison
school to prison pipeline was she had never thought about
disproportionate discipline and how.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
This plays out.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
But yeah, these are the things that Okay, can we
you know, when when they're made, when folks are made
aware of this, can they revisit these conversations and think about,
you know, looking at the data, who's coming to the office,
who's being sent to the office more frequently and why?
And these are the policies that you know, school boards
can kind of put in place, school leaders that kind
(14:17):
of thing to address.
Speaker 1 (14:20):
I this brings me the thought, it's really a sad thought.
But we covered an experiment that took place. This was
years before our show started, but it was documented and
the visuals were documented. The experiment had to do with
sort of implicit bias in teachers, and you know, just
(14:44):
in the interest of making sure that all the details
that I recaller laid bare for our listeners here, they
ran this study on white teachers and black teachers. And
the the experiment was essentially four children playing with toys
(15:05):
at a table and the teacher was the observer. So
the teacher would observe on the screen all four of
these children and they were asked. The teacher was asked,
do us a favor identify the disruptive behavior on the screen.
(15:25):
And these were preschool aged children and they weren't being
charged with actually identifying disruptive behavior, but they were really
studying where their eyes went because they had to wear
special glasses in order to see the scene, and the
glasses tracked their movements of their eyes. And the white
teachers and the black teachers like, spent most of their
(15:46):
time observing the little black boy as he played with
toys with the rest of the children. So the deduction
there was that there is a bias against black males
because there was a black female child there as well,
But there's a bias against black males that is present
(16:07):
in the minds of teachers. But I think a larger
conclusion would be that that exists in society at large,
because these children aren't old enough to have offended anyone.
And so to see how that develops, you mentioned, you know,
sixth grade being kind of the starting point. But you know,
(16:28):
that study, at least I've seen where it gets really
deep and it does cross racial lines to where kind
of the whole world looks at black men like black
men are problematic, and you know, around here we deal
with data, and so we recognize that indeed, a lot
(16:51):
of the data reflects what we've come to consider criminal
behavior with respect to black men, but a lot of
the data is a result of at least the type
of crimes that are being tracked. A lot of it
has to do with crimes that poor people commit, not
crimes that bad people commit. So if you look at
crimes that bad people commit, and I'm not excusing poor
(17:14):
people crimes like theft and you know, gang activities and
drug sales and all that sort of stuff, But when
you think of like bad people crimes of things like
sex crimes, things like that, black men are not overrepresented
in those types of categories, white collar crimes that affect
you know, huge swaths of the population that sort of thing,
(17:37):
not crimes greed in those sorts of things. And so indeed,
it's a very singular type of person that is really
responsible for those crimes that around here we would consider
those bad people crimes, not poor people crimes. And so
just my thoughts, I wanted to add that, anything to
add before we move on, because I do have a
lot more questions. So let me say this. The reason
(18:00):
why I was important to have this conversation. I think
because I came across a piece of information. This might
have been I'm not sure how long it was, but
recent enough in my life, but before you and I
started talking about getting you up here. And it's like
(18:23):
a little data pointed, and it is that fifty four
percent of Americans or one hundred and thirty million people
read at or below the sixth grade level. Right. And
when I came across that, it was at a time
(18:47):
when we were I think we're all a lot of
people are going to question the results of a lot
of things. I don't want to, you know, I know
that you being here as a I know that there's
a lot of weight that comes with someone of your
caliber taking time to talk with this. So I don't
want things to get too far left or right. But
(19:09):
the fact is, I do believe that a lot of
people are deeply concerned with how people can be convinced
of something that may not be true and then defend
it while it's actively being not true and actively going
against the logic that they used to indeed make the
initial decision. So I have to use language like that
so that I don't, you know, in any event, one
(19:33):
of the things that has happened more recently, and I
certainly say in the last ten years at least in
this country, is that people would say, hey, you need
to do your own research, Hey you need to fact check,
Hey you need to consider the source of where you're
getting this information. And when I came across that statistic
that said that more than half of the population can't
read it a sixth grade level, which is I'm sure
(19:56):
enough to get by, but it's not enough to understand
intention behind an article. It's not understand to distinguish between
propaganda and credible journalism, and on and on. You recognize
how vulnerable the population is, and when you think of
(20:17):
sixth grade level, you think of okay, so where did
this education system break down for the population at large?
And around here? We paid particular attention to black men.
We really didn't have to pay particular attention to black
women because as always, they did their job in our opinion,
(20:37):
mine and cues. And we paid attention to Latino populations,
which indeed are very diverse populations, from Cubans to Mexicans
to you know, New York, New Orrigans and and adjacent
I guess communities and whatnot. But we paid particular attention
(20:58):
to the outcomes and the unusual voting patterns that we
ultimately ended up seeing there that we wouldn't have expected.
So not unusual, but unexpected, you know, voting patterns that
(21:20):
we saw from the exemples. And so we started to
think like, well, how is it that people are making
these decisions when it comes to their vote? And then
it's like, well, you know, more than half the population
can't read above a sixth grade level. Meanwhile, a person
like me, who's I mean, I'm not trying to flex,
you know, doctor Samson, but you know, I went to
(21:41):
school a bunch of times, you know, and I got
enough degrees to think that I don't read at an
experience level with this right. But a lot of people
that just wasn't their path, right, And so I wanted
to make sure that I stated that because it's important
to understand the why in terms of you being here.
Do you want to add anything before we get to
(22:02):
some real questions.
Speaker 2 (22:03):
Or yeah, yeah, that's.
Speaker 3 (22:08):
Some there's some large connections. I mean, my thoughts on
that are a few things. One, you know, the way
we measure reading in this country is interesting. I'm not
(22:30):
a huge advocate of high stakes accountability testing and the
way that it's used in schools. I think that it
has pressured a lot of schools to do a lot
more focus on test prep, which means oftentimes not engaging
sometimes and like you know, encouraging students to read full
(22:50):
books and like really understanding stories and like critical thinking skills.
You instead become focused on, let's prep kids to pass
the test or try to, you know. So there's that one.
There's this idea of yes, critical thinking, are we teaching
that in schools? And you know media literacy, you know,
(23:13):
are so are our youth And I mean a large
most of our population is so engaged in social media
and just get you know, bits and pieces of stories,
and so are they really understanding the full context of
what's happening or what these stories are? And so are
we teaching kids to really engage critically in media social media?
(23:41):
And then I mean there's just the the old ideas
around power and systematic power, and so I think that
is what play has played out in some of the
voting patterns when it comes to what happened. And so
I don't know if I would make the connection necessarily
all the way just to literacy, right, Oh yeah, yeah,
(24:04):
but yeah, I can see what you're saying, and you know, like, yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
Loose connection. I know that. Yeah, just because people read
at a sixth grade level doesn't mean that they don't
know who they're voting for what they're voting for. Absolutely,
But a lot of what we found that people believed
was not supported by evidence that probably would not be
on the radar of a person who could not interpret
(24:30):
that evidence because it's written in a scholarly type of
language that again doesn't really so it's a loose connection
and it's not really all the way there. But around
here we were easily able to make that connect because
again we consume scholarly journalistic sources and data driven you know,
documents and so forth like that, and so my thoughts.
(24:51):
But okay, let's get to really a big question that
I've wanted to ask a person who functions in your
capacity for some time, and this is for the benefit
of our listeners. Okay, I'm going to put you on
the spot forgive me, but I think that you might
(25:12):
handle this well for a lot of people that maybe
they don't read at a sixth grade level, maybe this
is just their reality and it doesn't matter. As long
as they can read a receipt, they're okay. As long
as they can read to receipt and feed their kids
and do their job, they're fine, okay. But they may
not know the reason that they have come to hate
(25:33):
certain things because the narrative, the definition has been rewritten
and whitewashed and taken away from those that actually were
using it to do something good. I would like to
ask you for those people who do not know what
is critical race theory?
Speaker 2 (25:55):
What is critical race?
Speaker 1 (25:55):
They yeah, in your own words as simple terms as possible.
Speaker 3 (25:58):
Sure, Well, critical race theory has a connection or has
kind of evolved from theories and critical legal studies. Actually,
it is a theoretical framework that is often taught at
the graduate level, graduate school level. So I teach sometimes
(26:19):
critical race theory to my PhD students that I have
courses with, and there's usually generally, I mean, there's different
types of critical race theory, five to seven tenants of it.
And the idea is that according to this framework, and
(26:39):
it's really just to help us understand how systems and
policies and laws perpetuate racism. And so there are these
kind of assumptions underlying assumptions when you use this framework
to think about and develop research questions or develop studies
from a scholarly lens, and that's really what what critical
(27:01):
race theory is used for, either through education scholars use it,
legal scholars use it, public health scholars, et cetera, a
lot of social science scholars. So it helps us to
kind of come with these assumptions. Yes, racism exists in
this society, and it's kind of embedded in many of
our systems. And so if we come with that assumption,
(27:24):
then as we were thinking about studies, for instance, on education,
I can really understand better the school to prison pipeline
and how that impacts and how racism is a big
part of that pipeline. And so if I'm going to.
Speaker 2 (27:37):
Disrupt that with policies practices like.
Speaker 3 (27:42):
You know, and I'm going to understand that deeply, then
I need to have that kind of framing so that
I can see that and how that plays out to
get us to a place where the school to prison
pipeline even exists. You know, there are other assumptions, right.
Intersectionality is a tenet of critical race theory. It's the
(28:04):
idea that gender for instance, that we all come with
a different different sets of demographics that impact our experiences.
So as a black Latina woman, middle class, but I
grew up working poor, working class, like I have a
different perspective and experience in different levels of oppression and
(28:28):
privileges that come with my life. And so this idea
that you know nothing, no one has like a singular
kind of experience. There's different levels of oppression. And there
are a few other pieces, right that interest convergence is
another piece, I mean gets really complicated, but the idea
(28:49):
that yeah, policies will pass when their interests our interests
across divisions or divides converge, and that plays out out
a lot.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
And so it just helps us to think about the world.
Speaker 3 (29:06):
And then if we can think about it within this lens,
and we don't not everything kind of applies to this lens,
but as researchers, if we can think about it through
this lens, it helps us to helps us to kind
of come up, like I said, with questions or collect
certain types of data that will help us to disrupt
issues of racism or other areas of oppression.
Speaker 1 (29:28):
If I may yes, just a yes or no. Critical
race theory does not exist in the public school system
K through twelve.
Speaker 3 (29:38):
If you're asking, do we teach critical race theory? And
I mean no, Most teachers and school leaders don't know
about critical orace theory. Some do and maybe they you know,
but yeah, this is not something that is being taught necessarily.
Speaker 1 (29:54):
Still broadcasting from the civic Cipher studios. Welcome back to
the QR code where we share perspective, seek under standing,
and shape outcomes. Big shout out to mamanqu Ward who
is away on family business. But he shall return soon
and we will get right back to what you know
in love. But in the meantime, in between time, we
are sitting here with today's guest, who is the author
(30:15):
of the book Navigating school Board Politics as well as
an associate professor at the Arizona State University. She goes
by the name of doctor Kerry Sampson. Her research focuses
on K through twelve educational leadership, policymaking, and equity, with
particular emphasis on school boards, districts, and community advocacy. She
serves as a fellow the National Education Policy Center and
(30:37):
the Black Education Research Center. That still sounds super fancy.
Fellow that's just that's like an old timey word to me,
but I'm sure it means something really cool, and judging
by the first part of our conversation, I'm sure that
it is, and indeed it was well earned. So thank
you again for being here with us, because getting a
(30:58):
chance to talk to someone like you who knows more
than we do about these things is really important. And
for many years, certainly throughout like kind of the beginnings
of the Trump presidency, the first Trump presidency on into COVID,
(31:23):
we were able to see because COVID was when there
was a lot of you know, it was a Black
Lives Matter protest, things like this, and uh, you know,
the there was a conservative backlash to that moment in
this country's history, and terms like critical race theory took
center stage where people were very critical about critical race theory.
(31:48):
That sounds funny, but that was kind of the truth
and people could not define it. And so again, the
conversation like this was a long time coming because the
argument you made in the first half of the show
seemed like to a reasonable person who has a modicum
of empathy and indeed, once a better country for all
(32:09):
people would look at that and think, well, this is
a field of study that could be important, maybe it
could solve problems. But I think a lot of the
conservative pushback on their version of critical because they redefine
critical race theory so that they could attack it. They
redefined it as American history, and they use that. I
(32:30):
believe my belief not yours. This is not a shared belief,
but or it may not be a shared belief. I'll
say it that way. But my belief is that they
use the it's like a straw man. They use the
the their version of it to attack it. And now
indeed they've been kind of stripping away a black history
(32:53):
and sanitizing American history to make something that's a little
bit more comfortable for them, with the intention being protecting children.
And the truth is, in my estimation, children are a
lot more resilient than conservative adults, and so shots fired.
I don't care. That's what I do. All right, Let's
move on. Let's talk about school boards, because you know,
(33:17):
obviously your book Navigating school board politics is something that
you know well. And recently in this country we've seen
school boards become a target for right wing and far
(33:44):
right activist groups, perhaps because the straw man argument of
critical race theory fever pitch. So two our listeners who
maybe they don't have children, or maybe they have children,
but they're like, look, I'm just trying to feed these kids.
They go to school, they do the school thing. I'm
(34:05):
just trying to keep the house running.
Speaker 4 (34:07):
Yeah, talk to us about what a school board is
and why school boards are maybe important and maybe even
if it occurs to you, why they came under attacked
by these right wing groups.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
Sure.
Speaker 3 (34:24):
I mean, we have about thirteen thousand school districts in
the United States. In that about almost ninety thousand locally
mostly elected school board members who oversee and govern these
school districts.
Speaker 2 (34:39):
School Boards you.
Speaker 3 (34:40):
Generally have between five to sometimes seven nine in some places.
It's Chicago right now they have a hybrid school board
that's about I think it's over twenty school board members.
But they represent their local community and you know, oversight.
One of their biggest jobs is to hire a superintendent
(35:00):
kind of who's the head leader of a school district,
manage that superintendent, evaluate that superintendent, and fire the superintendent.
Speaker 1 (35:09):
If I may school board hires a superintendent. They don't vote.
A school superintendent is not.
Speaker 3 (35:15):
Voted in Well, there yes, so they vote in they're hiring,
they need to have a majority vote. Is how they
hire that superintendent?
Speaker 1 (35:24):
Also, they're elected from within the school board. Is that
how that works?
Speaker 2 (35:27):
Or does the superintendent?
Speaker 1 (35:28):
Does the community elect this superintendent or the community elects
the school board and the school.
Speaker 3 (35:32):
Board community elects the school board school board ALECTI suit.
Generally some places school boards are appointed, and that's another controversy.
I'm a big fan of elected school boards. I think
that that offers a lot more democratic engagement in our
public schools. And so, but yes, the community elects the
(35:53):
school board. The school board then decides and votes on
the superintendents that run the school district, and they oversee
the budget. They vote on the budget or against the budget.
They in many places vote for against different curricular changes,
different policies for a range of things, anything anywhere from
(36:18):
English learner policy related policy to books and book bands
to you know, uh, decisions around athletics and K through
twelve schools. So and right now, school boards have had
to make some really tough decisions about voting around whether
they're going to close schools or not. Across the country,
(36:41):
we're seeing large efforts and having decisions around school closures
because of various reasons. I won't get into that right now,
but those are really tough decisions. But school boards make
those decisions, transportation, those kind of things, So they make
a lot of important decisions.
Speaker 2 (37:01):
For a district.
Speaker 1 (37:02):
So why why did school boards become I know the well,
I think I know the answer, but I'd love to
hear in your opinion and share with with our listeners.
Why did school boards become targets for these are well,
I don't even know that they were far right. The
right has moved so far that just kind of center
(37:23):
right is like far right, you know now, But why
did they become targets for these right wing groups? If
you know, our bus routes that important to them, are
you know, meal the school meals that important to them?
Speaker 4 (37:38):
Like?
Speaker 2 (37:39):
Yeah, yeah, no, I mean.
Speaker 3 (37:41):
Sorry, I missed that second part of your question, So
glad you're circling back to that. You know, I think
it was a combination of things. It was almost like
a perfect storm that happened during that the time around
COVID Black Lives Matter. A lot of communities during that
protest after George Florida was murdered, communities started you know,
(38:04):
at the school district level, they went to school districts
and said, we want police out of our schools. There's
a big push in big cities mostly, and so that became,
you know, a centerpiece.
Speaker 2 (38:16):
For a lot of school boards where they.
Speaker 3 (38:18):
Were making decisions to remove police from schools, some keeping
police in schools, but they were making decisions around budgets.
La LA made a huge decision to remove their police
and use the budget to like come back to the community,
you know, do social workers, like hire more social workers,
et cetera. And then at the same time, we had COVID,
(38:44):
and those decisions to close or reopen schools happened at
the school board level. Whether you would mandate masks or not.
The mask debates were huge, and that usually was divided
across political lines.
Speaker 2 (39:03):
We saw a lot of.
Speaker 3 (39:06):
Lower income like black and brown communities were in favor
of more COVID safety precautions, likely because they disproportionately dealt,
you know, with more deaths in COVID, more you know,
COVID consequences of COVID, and so that became. And then
at the same time was the rise of the anti
(39:27):
CRT kind of sentiments and anti LGBTQ sentiments, and.
Speaker 2 (39:31):
That was very calculated.
Speaker 3 (39:33):
Christopher Rufos is a man who came out of a
political think tank, and I think he was a journalist,
but he was very calculated in identifying critical race theory
as kind of an enemy. And the narrative he created
is that K through Total schools supported critical race theory.
(39:54):
We need to get that out of our schools. And
so again, like you mentioned, not most people don't even
know critical race theory is. But I think the convergence
of those events created, like I said, a perfect storm
where all of a sudden, school boards became the center
of attention and groups like Moms for Liberty were formed
(40:15):
during this time. Parents Defending Education was formed during this
time with their right ring conservative groups that with the
sole purpose of huge well, one of their major purposes
was to flip school boards toward more conservative majorities so
that they could get folks on the school board that
(40:37):
would vote against certain things that were related to culturally
relevant curriculum or socio emotional development. Which again that all
became convoluted with this idea of critical theory, which was
not really happening in K through Toll schools, but nonetheless,
(40:59):
that was that.
Speaker 2 (41:00):
Was a huge mission.
Speaker 3 (41:01):
People came to board meetings, even the Proud Boys after
January sixth decided, you know, and there's there's evidence where
they were talking about we're going to think local, act local.
And they started going to school board meetings armed and
you know, outside of school board meetings armed and then
in school board meetings and not armed, but just in
(41:23):
to threaten school boards to vote in certain directions or
to show kind of muscle.
Speaker 1 (41:30):
And so to school Yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:32):
Yeah, so I said, outside.
Speaker 3 (41:33):
Of yeah, and they would come into the school board
meetings very kind of with a physical kind of threat.
Speaker 2 (41:44):
And so yeah, the.
Speaker 3 (41:45):
School boards became a huge piece, a centerpiece. And you know,
I had been studying school boards before that, like I said,
about a decade, and they were not on the radar
like they were during that time. And so I think
a lot of people realized how import in school boards were.
I mean, these groups certain linked and in pushing back
(42:06):
and pushing for policies that they wanted. And so this
is part of, I mean the interesting piece about school democracy. Right,
we all have to be involved, and so I think
it's been a huge wake up call for all local
communities because folks would come to board meetings that weren't
even residents of that community, and they would speak up,
(42:26):
and they would speak out as if they were residents
or you know, and pushing and trying to persuade the
school board, and the school board didn't know who was
who at that point. And so I think, like I said,
in those instances, it showed that folks who showed up
at these board meetings it was really important to show up.
(42:47):
It was really important to vote a lot of people.
School boards have one of the lowest voter turnouts in
local elections, and so, you know, it became very important
to understand who was running. And school boards are nonpartisans,
so it's not always clear what kind of politics folks have,
you know, and so you really have to do your
(43:08):
research as a voter to know who you're putting in
these seats. And so yeah, I think I think folks
across the political aisles, you know, have come to the
realization that these are important entities.
Speaker 1 (43:29):
All right, When did you write this book?
Speaker 4 (43:31):
Now?
Speaker 1 (43:31):
I'm gonna plug it as often as I can, because
I'm sure some people are going to want to pick
it up. Navigating school board politics. When did you write
that book.
Speaker 2 (43:38):
I wrote it.
Speaker 3 (43:40):
I think I started writing in twenty twenty three. Well
it came out in twenty twenty four, so yeah, twenty
twenty two, twenty twenty three, okay.
Speaker 1 (43:48):
So this was post covid Ish era.
Speaker 3 (43:52):
Yeah, right after Yeah, as schools started reopening, I started
working on this book.
Speaker 1 (43:59):
Did you write that book to address those issues? Because
it says navigating school board politics? Is that really kind
of Are those particular politics represented well in the book?
Speaker 3 (44:13):
I think so? I mean the second part of it
is a framework for advancing equity. So I wrote it
with an audience of My target audience was school board members.
So I recognized, after doing this work for a long
time that a lot, I mean a lot of school
board members might not know they get into this position
(44:34):
and might not know how to navigate it. They might
not have the history of education policy in a way
that can help them contextualize what they're dealing with, and
you know, some of the skills and kind of framing
to navigate all that. And so I and then my
(44:55):
second audience was community members, because I think, you know,
how do we you think about Like, I think it's
important that communities know how to also navigate school boards.
Speaker 1 (45:05):
That's actually why I wanted to go in this direction
because another reason why you know, Q and I wanted
to have you on the show is because, again for
such a long time, we have pushed for our listeners
to not simply just listen to this program where we've
(45:26):
done this research and have these this framing of an
argument that you can then take into your community and
share with your boss or your racist uncle, lic thanksgiving
or your whatever. But indeed that you can be fortified
in your allyship if that's part of your ministry, or
(45:50):
to have maybe a little bit more perspective that we
hope would flower into empathy, understanding and perhaps even supporting
people who have a different walk from you. Right. So,
for some people, and we've advocated for this for some time,
for some people that looks like, hey, you know, get
(46:13):
out there with a bullhorn and write assign But for
other people it means run for local elected office, right,
And so we've pushed this for a long time. But
one of the things that I've known is that one
of the easier elected positions to access is that of
(46:38):
a school board official, right, And it's also less consuming
than perhaps other positions. Elected positions might be. And so
for a lot more people this might be a viable
way to change their material reality and be part of
the ripple that turns into the wave for those of
(46:58):
us that believe that this country can create equitable experiences
for all of her citizens. And so I say all
this to say that we have wanted to have this
conversation because you, more than most people, know how a
person goes from citizen who's interested in shaping his or
(47:23):
her community. Two you know this, we'll call it a
first step on what for some people be a career
as long you know, career in politics, or a career
long endeavor in politics, I should say, And for other
people might just be like, hey, look this is what
I do in this local community. But for a person
(47:45):
who's listening to us, have this conversation right now that says,
you know what, maybe I can do something, maybe I
can offer something, but I don't have kids, or I
don't know what the job entails. Or maybe I do
have kids, but I have too many kids. Is it
too much work for a person with too many kids?
Or what are like talk to if you will please
talk to the every person listening and let and explain
(48:09):
what it takes to go from listening to your voice
right now to becoming a person that's shaping outcomes for
large groups of people in a school board. So how
does that look?
Speaker 3 (48:20):
Yeah, Well, one of the beautiful things I think about
school boards, and you know, the accessibility of it, is
that almost anyone you know can get elected. I mean,
you have to be eighteen, you don't, there's not a
lot of qualifications.
Speaker 2 (48:35):
Need it right.
Speaker 3 (48:36):
It's also one of the challenges and again why I
wrote this book, But I think.
Speaker 2 (48:43):
What is.
Speaker 3 (48:45):
One of the reasons I went into this field and
started doing research on this is because I was interested
in what it means to have like a diverse representation
on a school board and does that can that shift
policy equity for a long time, and when I started
doing I started doing research on school desegregation in Las Vegas,
(49:09):
a big history project with my advisor, Sonia Douglas. And
one of the things I noticed is that the school
board made some really important, critical decisions for the community
and that impacted particularly black students and their families for
twenty years, negatively impacted it. And you look at that
(49:31):
school board, it was all white, seven white school board
members interestingly, six white men, one white woman, And I
kept thinking if there had been just one black school
board member on this board, would that decision have been different,
even just one, you know? And so now we have seen,
you know, a lot more diversity on boards, but still
(49:54):
not nearly representative of our student population. So there's a
pipeline issue still, even though this is a pretty accessible position,
but it's also a challenging position because you don't get paid. Generally,
some boards you can get small stipends, but it's generally
an unpaid position. Depending on the district, it can be
(50:16):
a lot of time. There's sometimes support, sometimes not, so
it really varies. So I would say, and there's a
lot of programs now out there and organizations who recognize
the need to get people any seats. There was a
survey that suggested about forty percent of school board seats
(50:36):
in the country go uncontested. That's a lot, you know,
And if you're running against no one, I mean, like,
what are we doing.
Speaker 1 (50:46):
To stay in that position? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (50:48):
Yeah, And so you know, there is a recognition that
these seats matter, that we need to prepare people to
be in these seats. So local would I would say, look,
ran into your local community and see who is doing
that work. There's in Ohio there's a group called school
Board school That's all they do is get citizens ready
(51:10):
for school board, like running for school board. It's like
a whole year long program. In Chicago, there's a program
called All Chicago. Arizona has a couple of different pipeline organizations,
Save our Schools, which I'm on the board for Save
our Schools Network. Emerge is a huge organization nationally that
just helps women mostly and non binary folks to run
(51:34):
for a local and state office. But school board is
one of the big ones. So there's organizations across the country.
I would say get connected to that, find out the
politics in that community, and start preparing for an understanding,
and show up at school board meetings. Find out what
you mean being at a school board meeting, watching your
(51:56):
school board meeting, and do that for several months before
you decide to because you really need to understand what's
happening in that school board dynamic within your local community.
But there's certainly a need for diverse voices on the
school board. I mean, what's on One of the great
things is you can have an educator and a retired
educator on the school board and a mom, and you
(52:18):
know a dad, and you know someone who works in
business and a lawyer. I mean, having these various perspectives
on a school board matters. It matters and helping people
form the right questions to ask the right you know,
superintendent to hire for that district. And you know, it
also matters of you know, in terms of how connected
(52:40):
they are to the actual community. Are they listening to
the community. I say that school boards are kind of
the major link between the district and the community, and
it is a sign of a healthy community. I often
talk about schools not just as good schools, you know,
but healthy schools. We want healthy schools, We want healthy
communities and democracy, and school boards are I think a
(53:04):
cornerstone to like a healthy local community, a healthy neighborhood.
Speaker 1 (53:12):
I know we're kind of running law in time here,
but I want to ask a question that I think
is and take your time with the question, but I
think it's you're a person that's qualified to give an
opinion that's based in something that won't likely have more
(53:35):
realistic positive outcomes. I recognize that the world is a
different place than it was five years ago. Ten years ago.
But if you had a magic wand and you could change,
(53:56):
let's say, three things about the education system in this country,
I'm going to ask what changes would you make. The
reason I'm asking this question, though, is so that our
listeners can get a sense of what you would prioritize
or what you think has fallen below what you would
(54:22):
have expected in terms of your expectations at this point
with respect to the world at large. I won't point
any fingers any direction, But if you could change three
things with your magic wand about the education system, what
would they be?
Speaker 3 (54:35):
Yeah, One, fully and adequately and equitably fund schools. I
think most of our states are not doing that, most
of our localities are not doing that. And if and
hopefully one day when schools are fully, inadequately and equitably funded,
(55:00):
paying teachers a not just a livable wage, but you
know professional salary wage benefit, like professionalize the teacher workforce, so.
Speaker 1 (55:10):
That professionalized I'm not sure I know what that means.
Speaker 3 (55:13):
Yeah, really give status to teachers, teachers in school leaders.
I mean they teachers are one of the most important
factors of a child's education. Yeah, I know, and oftentimes
we don't pay them what they deserve.
Speaker 2 (55:30):
We don't bring.
Speaker 3 (55:31):
This this this position to the level of status that
it needs to be, so that actually we can also
attract teachers to higher quality, you know, the highest quality.
I mean, we need some of the best people what
you say in are and a very diverse representation of
people in our schools, and we don't have that in
(55:52):
part because we have not professionalized and put them at
a status that it deserves they should be, like you know, lawyer.
Speaker 4 (56:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (56:02):
And the third piece would be to infuse culturally relevant
curriculum throughout pre K through K through twelve, I mean
throughout the pipeline, so that that curriculum and that pedagogy
really I think can help and and it kind of
(56:23):
comes to the heart of your show, is that those
pieces being able to learn culturally relevant history and culturally
relevant understandings, you know, read a book where it might
as a person of color, I can see myself, but
also I can see others in these in these sects. Yeah,
(56:46):
and and really double down on that so that our
kids are comfortable and under and having these conversations across
difference from the from the get go.
Speaker 1 (56:56):
So safe to say that you're opposed to book bands yes,
just all right, well listen, uh, it's it's been a
joy to have you on. I would love to have
you back on the show. I know that your work
is continuing to evolve and you're navigating, always navigating new
(57:20):
challenges uh in in your world. And so consider me
and Q your brothers uh as you need to, you know,
share your research and the findings of your research and
conclusions with the world. You know, count this as one
of the platforms that you can come to and you know,
(57:41):
for what it's worth.
Speaker 3 (57:42):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (57:43):
You know, there are some people that appreciate the work
that you're doing, uh and appreciate conversations like this. They
do matter. Trust me. I was giving away Cardi B
tickets once upon a time, and then I started doing
this and this is like the most meaningful work of
my life. People love Cardi B.
Speaker 2 (57:59):
But you know it's great.
Speaker 1 (58:01):
Yeah, you can recognize how important. So with that in mind,
thank you.
Speaker 2 (58:06):
Thank you for the work you do, of course absolutely.
Speaker 1 (58:08):
And yeah, with that in mind, we're gonna leave it
right here. So thank you again. Uh, and if you like,
be sure to check me out on a social media
at rams this job. You can follow Q at I
am Q word on all platforms and be sure to
follow the show at Civic Cipher And until next time, y'all.
Speaker 5 (58:33):
Yeah, like yo, we had to leave. These presidents are fabulous,
lady showing you more. Bomb traveled this well. Speak to
you from sunlight to busting on stage like fight, move
my back, You're like that. Journals, we can strike borders
with waters from headquarters. It's behind and the blid step
(58:54):
in the border with press pat We bring it to
you as it happens.
Speaker 1 (58:57):
The streets love music.
Broadcasting from the Hip Hop Weekly Studios. I'd like to
welcome you to another episode of Civic Cipher, where our
mission is to foster allyship, empathy and understanding. Big shout
out to my man q Ward, who is away on
family business doing what he needs to do to make
sure that his family stays strong, and we are sending
(00:21):
well wishes his way. But have no fear the show
goes on. We have a special guest in the studio
today and we are going to be having a conversation
that we do have with some frequency around here about
local politics, specifically school boards and really doing a deep
dive into education in this country and how that looks
(00:46):
and how it's continuing to evolve. And our special guest
is the author of the book entitled Navigating school Board Politics.
She's also and associate professor at Arizona State University. She
goes by the name of doctor Carrie Sampson. Welcome to
the show.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
Okay, let me finish reading this because you deserve all
of these flowers. Her research focuses on K through twelve,
educational leadership, policymaking, and equity, with particular emphasis on school boards.
Districts and community advocacy. She serves as a fellow for
the National Education Policy Center and the Black Education Research Center.
(01:30):
And this conversation has been a long time coming. You
and I, we've known each other. We just haven't had
an opportunity to sit down and have a fully fleshed
out conversation as in regards to the particular type of
work that you do and how important that is. So
we gave you a bit of a brief introduction. Obviously
(01:50):
this is just kind of from the internet, but for
folks that may not fully understand the work that you do,
or for people that don't underunderstand what some of these
terms mean, you know, in terms of like, can you
what does it say research? Something like that Black Education
Research Center That wasn't it, but there was something in here.
(02:13):
Talk to us a little bit more about what it
is that you do, what your day to day looks
like or your year to year looks like, and the
changes that you're making in the world with your career.
Speaker 3 (02:24):
Yeah, well, again, thank you for having me. I appreciate
you having this conversation. I think it's a really important
time to talk about public schools and my work largely
I'm interested in how to advance educational equity in K
through twelve schools and education across the pipeline. But I
(02:45):
focus on K through twelve because that's kind of the
beginning of the pipeline when we're talking about public schools,
and so I think about how policies and practices impact
what's happening in classrooms, public funding for schools, policies for
(03:07):
various groups like English learners, Black children, discipline policies, and
a lot of those decisions are made at the school
board level, and so and community advocacy is a huge
part of pushing school boards to think about inequities and
how to remedy these inequities. And so that's where my
(03:30):
focus on both school board members as policymakers, as educational
leaders in the communities that they serve in, community advocates
that push them to do this, to do the work
that they need to do when it comes to equity.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
And so my day to day is, you know, I
have put together several studies.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
I've been doing research for about over ten years on
school boards, but prior to that, I did research on
school desegregation. I teach classes on educational policy on educational research.
I work with several PhD students who are also learning
how to do research, and I work with faculty and
other proof scholars across the country to tackle some of
(04:12):
these issues and think about how what are the questions
that policymakers have, what are the questions that families have,
what are the questions that communities have? And how can
we answer that those questions with research? And how can
we push push the needle on this really complex.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
Puzzle.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
Well, thank you for that, because that's certainly a lot
more thorough than I was able to give our listeners.
But I have a question for you. This is a
little off topic, but you used a word pipeline, you know,
the K through twelve pipeline. And in this work that
(04:57):
I've been doing, where I get a chance to talk
to people who who are bona fide activists out in
the world that are trying to create real changes in
this country that bring about equitable experiences in this great
American experiment for all persons, I've encountered a term known
(05:20):
as school to prison pipeline. Have you heard of this?
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Yes?
Speaker 4 (05:23):
I have.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
Okay, you said, okay, that might have been a silly
question now, but Okay, this, so I think that, and
I'm going to ask you to explain that to our
listeners because you seem to know about it, and probably
the explanation should come from you. But I would imagine
that for folks that don't know, and you can correct
(05:47):
me if I'm wrong, what you do kind of helps
address what has become known to I guess an enlightened
few myself included as the school to prison pipeline. So
do us a favor start with what is the school
to prison pipeline? And then if there are any connections
you can make, connect maybe your work with some of
(06:09):
what it is you're addressing with respect to that school
to prison pipeline.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
Yeah, sure, Well, the school to prison pipeline refers to
the idea and the reality that many children, particularly black
and brown children, enter the school system and experience high
levels of inequities in the form of discipline either that is,
being suspended, expelled, essentially criminalized in the school system, and
(06:39):
you know, end up getting pushed out of the school
system either and put on kind of a path toward
a prison, the prison industrial complex. My colleague Subni Anama,
she does a lot of work on what she refers
it to as the school to prison nexus. And so,
(07:00):
you know, I work with colleagues like her to think
about what are the policies we can put in place
that would disrupt a school to prison nexus school to
prison pipeline. And how in my interests around school boards
and my scholarship around school boards, what are the roles
of school boards in pushing policies to push back against that.
(07:21):
So how do we rethink discipline, you know, at the
at the district level, How can school boards put in
policies that would really help teachers, school leaders to before
they decide to suspend a student really think through what
(07:44):
does that actually mean. So programs like restorative justice programs
have been put in place to you know, or various
different alternatives to discipline measures can be put in place.
Also on the other end, is this idea of the
opportunity gap. For a long time, a lot of people
will refer to we have this achievement gap, you know,
(08:04):
and this is usually measured by test scores, and you know,
where black and brown children are not achieving at the
same level as their white counterparts. But that has gotten
flipped over the last couple of decades to really think
about it instead in terms of the opportunity gap, and
so that the idea is that not all children have
(08:27):
the same opportunity, And so how do we not only
rethink maybe discipline, but what are the opportunities that we're
providing all children, particularly our most vulnerable and marginalized children,
and are they do they have all the same opportunities.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
So while we're here, I want to to share something
that I think might be pertinent to listeners. That we
have a lot of folks who listen to this show
to try to pick out holes in our logic in
the argument things like this. I want to dress something
(09:03):
and kind of shore up some of what I feel
those people might the issues that those people might take
with what you're saying here in terms of like rethinking
discipline and disciplinary action and correct me if I'm wrong. You're,
of course the expert. But my understanding is that that
(09:24):
doesn't mean softer punishments for children who disrupt, but rather
understanding that children do things that children do. Their brains
aren't fully formed, right, and it's white children that have
a lot more freedom and flexibility to make mistakes and
(09:47):
come back from those mistakes and be quote unquote rehabilitated,
whereas when it comes to black and brown children, most
often they're criminalized early and severely, and that creates as
an identity crisis perhaps, and it creates rather than rehabilitating,
(10:11):
it causes a person to reframe who they are relative
to the world. And so it's like we've heard it
said a lot, and we've said it a couple of
times too. Black children have to grow up a lot faster.
In other words, you are held to an adult standard,
(10:33):
whereas a white child your same age would not be.
And we've seen this with you know, well connected individuals
children across the country. We've seen it with white children
across the country, and we've seen the opposite or the
inverse of it when it comes to black and brown children,
where if you're fourteen, you're tried as an adult. But
if you're a white child and you're sixteen and you
get the same DUI charge or the same whatever, you know,
(10:56):
you're given a lot of grace. And so I wanted
to make sure that I that I said that because
a lot of people will think that folks with a
more progressive or liberal philosophy are soft on crime. And
what I think is important to say, and then I'd
love your response here, but I think it's important to
(11:17):
say that people aren't really soft on crime. I think
that the tendency is that people are more interested in
rehabilitating delinquency because that's a possibility as opposed to just
shipping people to prisons and then having taxpayers pay for
(11:40):
that cost. So any reflections before we move on.
Speaker 3 (11:44):
Yeah, I mean, so when I was in grad school,
I read this book called Bad Boys, and it was
a researcher who went into a couple of schools for
a few years. It was like an ethnography, and she
was interested in how black boys and partuit were being
kind of treated and she just observed and she realized
(12:05):
and I found that black boys were criminalized at a
young age by the time they were like eleven by
And the reality is eighty percent of our teaching staff
for white women. And so, you know, I read that.
I was shocked, and then I saw it. I went
into my daughter's classroom when she was in first grade,
(12:27):
and I just went to observe because I wanted to
see what she was learning. And I sat in the
back and I saw this white female teacher treat a
white female student I mean they were seven years old
and a black male student. Completely different. They were both
(12:48):
kind of disruptive in the class. She sat there with
the white female student and got down on her level
and said, okay, I think you just need a time out.
Why don't you go over there in the corner. And
she was just so kind in gentle with her and
the wise she didn't you know this little girl, which fairly,
I mean it was I thought the way she handled
it was really wonderful with this student. About ten minutes later,
(13:12):
a little black boy disrupts the lesson and she right
away points to him and says, get out, get out
of the classroom. And I was shocked. And then he
didn't want to leave. He started crying. He's like, I
don't want to leave. She's like, no, get out.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
Go to the office.
Speaker 3 (13:30):
And I was like, I am seeing what I just
read about it live, you know, And of course I
mean as a mother, as a researcher, like knowing what
this means. I went to the principal and had a
whole conversation with her, and it was I was. Another
shocking thing was that she didn't know what the prison
school to prison pipeline was she had never thought about
disproportionate discipline and how.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
This plays out.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
But yeah, these are the things that Okay, can we
you know, when when they're made, when folks are made
aware of this, can they revisit these conversations and think about,
you know, looking at the data, who's coming to the office,
who's being sent to the office more frequently and why?
And these are the policies that you know, school boards
can kind of put in place, school leaders that kind
(14:17):
of thing to address.
Speaker 1 (14:20):
I this brings me the thought, it's really a sad thought.
But we covered an experiment that took place. This was
years before our show started, but it was documented and
the visuals were documented. The experiment had to do with
sort of implicit bias in teachers, and you know, just
(14:44):
in the interest of making sure that all the details
that I recaller laid bare for our listeners here, they
ran this study on white teachers and black teachers. And
the the experiment was essentially four children playing with toys
(15:05):
at a table and the teacher was the observer. So
the teacher would observe on the screen all four of
these children and they were asked. The teacher was asked,
do us a favor identify the disruptive behavior on the screen.
(15:25):
And these were preschool aged children and they weren't being
charged with actually identifying disruptive behavior, but they were really
studying where their eyes went because they had to wear
special glasses in order to see the scene, and the
glasses tracked their movements of their eyes. And the white
teachers and the black teachers like, spent most of their
(15:46):
time observing the little black boy as he played with
toys with the rest of the children. So the deduction
there was that there is a bias against black males
because there was a black female child there as well,
But there's a bias against black males that is present
(16:07):
in the minds of teachers. But I think a larger
conclusion would be that that exists in society at large,
because these children aren't old enough to have offended anyone.
And so to see how that develops, you mentioned, you know,
sixth grade being kind of the starting point. But you know,
(16:28):
that study, at least I've seen where it gets really
deep and it does cross racial lines to where kind
of the whole world looks at black men like black
men are problematic, and you know, around here we deal
with data, and so we recognize that indeed, a lot
(16:51):
of the data reflects what we've come to consider criminal
behavior with respect to black men, but a lot of
the data is a result of at least the type
of crimes that are being tracked. A lot of it
has to do with crimes that poor people commit, not
crimes that bad people commit. So if you look at
crimes that bad people commit, and I'm not excusing poor
(17:14):
people crimes like theft and you know, gang activities and
drug sales and all that sort of stuff, But when
you think of like bad people crimes of things like
sex crimes, things like that, black men are not overrepresented
in those types of categories, white collar crimes that affect
you know, huge swaths of the population that sort of thing,
(17:37):
not crimes greed in those sorts of things. And so indeed,
it's a very singular type of person that is really
responsible for those crimes that around here we would consider
those bad people crimes, not poor people crimes. And so
just my thoughts, I wanted to add that, anything to
add before we move on, because I do have a
lot more questions. So let me say this. The reason
(18:00):
why I was important to have this conversation. I think
because I came across a piece of information. This might
have been I'm not sure how long it was, but
recent enough in my life, but before you and I
started talking about getting you up here. And it's like
(18:23):
a little data pointed, and it is that fifty four
percent of Americans or one hundred and thirty million people
read at or below the sixth grade level. Right. And
when I came across that, it was at a time
(18:47):
when we were I think we're all a lot of
people are going to question the results of a lot
of things. I don't want to, you know, I know
that you being here as a I know that there's
a lot of weight that comes with someone of your
caliber taking time to talk with this. So I don't
want things to get too far left or right. But
(19:09):
the fact is, I do believe that a lot of
people are deeply concerned with how people can be convinced
of something that may not be true and then defend
it while it's actively being not true and actively going
against the logic that they used to indeed make the
initial decision. So I have to use language like that
so that I don't, you know, in any event, one
(19:33):
of the things that has happened more recently, and I
certainly say in the last ten years at least in
this country, is that people would say, hey, you need
to do your own research, Hey you need to fact check,
Hey you need to consider the source of where you're
getting this information. And when I came across that statistic
that said that more than half of the population can't
read it a sixth grade level, which is I'm sure
(19:56):
enough to get by, but it's not enough to understand
intention behind an article. It's not understand to distinguish between
propaganda and credible journalism, and on and on. You recognize
how vulnerable the population is, and when you think of
(20:17):
sixth grade level, you think of okay, so where did
this education system break down for the population at large?
And around here? We paid particular attention to black men.
We really didn't have to pay particular attention to black
women because as always, they did their job in our opinion,
(20:37):
mine and cues. And we paid attention to Latino populations,
which indeed are very diverse populations, from Cubans to Mexicans
to you know, New York, New Orrigans and and adjacent
I guess communities and whatnot. But we paid particular attention
(20:58):
to the outcomes and the unusual voting patterns that we
ultimately ended up seeing there that we wouldn't have expected.
So not unusual, but unexpected, you know, voting patterns that
(21:20):
we saw from the exemples. And so we started to
think like, well, how is it that people are making
these decisions when it comes to their vote? And then
it's like, well, you know, more than half the population
can't read above a sixth grade level. Meanwhile, a person
like me, who's I mean, I'm not trying to flex,
you know, doctor Samson, but you know, I went to
(21:41):
school a bunch of times, you know, and I got
enough degrees to think that I don't read at an
experience level with this right. But a lot of people
that just wasn't their path, right, And so I wanted
to make sure that I stated that because it's important
to understand the why in terms of you being here.
Do you want to add anything before we get to
(22:02):
some real questions.
Speaker 2 (22:03):
Or yeah, yeah, that's.
Speaker 3 (22:08):
Some there's some large connections. I mean, my thoughts on
that are a few things. One, you know, the way
we measure reading in this country is interesting. I'm not
(22:30):
a huge advocate of high stakes accountability testing and the
way that it's used in schools. I think that it
has pressured a lot of schools to do a lot
more focus on test prep, which means oftentimes not engaging
sometimes and like you know, encouraging students to read full
(22:50):
books and like really understanding stories and like critical thinking skills.
You instead become focused on, let's prep kids to pass
the test or try to, you know. So there's that one.
There's this idea of yes, critical thinking, are we teaching
that in schools? And you know media literacy, you know,
(23:13):
are so are our youth And I mean a large
most of our population is so engaged in social media
and just get you know, bits and pieces of stories,
and so are they really understanding the full context of
what's happening or what these stories are? And so are
we teaching kids to really engage critically in media social media?
(23:41):
And then I mean there's just the the old ideas
around power and systematic power, and so I think that
is what play has played out in some of the
voting patterns when it comes to what happened. And so
I don't know if I would make the connection necessarily
all the way just to literacy, right, Oh yeah, yeah,
(24:04):
but yeah, I can see what you're saying, and you know, like, yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
Loose connection. I know that. Yeah, just because people read
at a sixth grade level doesn't mean that they don't
know who they're voting for what they're voting for. Absolutely,
But a lot of what we found that people believed
was not supported by evidence that probably would not be
on the radar of a person who could not interpret
(24:30):
that evidence because it's written in a scholarly type of
language that again doesn't really so it's a loose connection
and it's not really all the way there. But around
here we were easily able to make that connect because
again we consume scholarly journalistic sources and data driven you know,
documents and so forth like that, and so my thoughts.
(24:51):
But okay, let's get to really a big question that
I've wanted to ask a person who functions in your
capacity for some time, and this is for the benefit
of our listeners. Okay, I'm going to put you on
the spot forgive me, but I think that you might
(25:12):
handle this well for a lot of people that maybe
they don't read at a sixth grade level, maybe this
is just their reality and it doesn't matter. As long
as they can read a receipt, they're okay. As long
as they can read to receipt and feed their kids
and do their job, they're fine, okay. But they may
not know the reason that they have come to hate
(25:33):
certain things because the narrative, the definition has been rewritten
and whitewashed and taken away from those that actually were
using it to do something good. I would like to
ask you for those people who do not know what
is critical race theory?
Speaker 2 (25:55):
What is critical race?
Speaker 1 (25:55):
They yeah, in your own words as simple terms as possible.
Speaker 3 (25:58):
Sure, Well, critical race theory has a connection or has
kind of evolved from theories and critical legal studies. Actually,
it is a theoretical framework that is often taught at
the graduate level, graduate school level. So I teach sometimes
(26:19):
critical race theory to my PhD students that I have
courses with, and there's usually generally, I mean, there's different
types of critical race theory, five to seven tenants of it.
And the idea is that according to this framework, and
(26:39):
it's really just to help us understand how systems and
policies and laws perpetuate racism. And so there are these
kind of assumptions underlying assumptions when you use this framework
to think about and develop research questions or develop studies
from a scholarly lens, and that's really what what critical
(27:01):
race theory is used for, either through education scholars use it,
legal scholars use it, public health scholars, et cetera, a
lot of social science scholars. So it helps us to
kind of come with these assumptions. Yes, racism exists in
this society, and it's kind of embedded in many of
our systems. And so if we come with that assumption,
(27:24):
then as we were thinking about studies, for instance, on education,
I can really understand better the school to prison pipeline
and how that impacts and how racism is a big
part of that pipeline. And so if I'm going to.
Speaker 2 (27:37):
Disrupt that with policies practices like.
Speaker 3 (27:42):
You know, and I'm going to understand that deeply, then
I need to have that kind of framing so that
I can see that and how that plays out to
get us to a place where the school to prison
pipeline even exists. You know, there are other assumptions, right.
Intersectionality is a tenet of critical race theory. It's the
(28:04):
idea that gender for instance, that we all come with
a different different sets of demographics that impact our experiences.
So as a black Latina woman, middle class, but I
grew up working poor, working class, like I have a
different perspective and experience in different levels of oppression and
(28:28):
privileges that come with my life. And so this idea
that you know nothing, no one has like a singular
kind of experience. There's different levels of oppression. And there
are a few other pieces, right that interest convergence is
another piece, I mean gets really complicated, but the idea
(28:49):
that yeah, policies will pass when their interests our interests
across divisions or divides converge, and that plays out out
a lot.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
And so it just helps us to think about the world.
Speaker 3 (29:06):
And then if we can think about it within this lens,
and we don't not everything kind of applies to this lens,
but as researchers, if we can think about it through
this lens, it helps us to helps us to kind
of come up, like I said, with questions or collect
certain types of data that will help us to disrupt
issues of racism or other areas of oppression.
Speaker 1 (29:28):
If I may yes, just a yes or no. Critical
race theory does not exist in the public school system
K through twelve.
Speaker 3 (29:38):
If you're asking, do we teach critical race theory? And
I mean no, Most teachers and school leaders don't know
about critical orace theory. Some do and maybe they you know,
but yeah, this is not something that is being taught necessarily.
Speaker 1 (29:54):
Still broadcasting from the civic Cipher studios. Welcome back to
the QR code where we share perspective, seek under standing,
and shape outcomes. Big shout out to mamanqu Ward who
is away on family business. But he shall return soon
and we will get right back to what you know
in love. But in the meantime, in between time, we
are sitting here with today's guest, who is the author
(30:15):
of the book Navigating school Board Politics as well as
an associate professor at the Arizona State University. She goes
by the name of doctor Kerry Sampson. Her research focuses
on K through twelve educational leadership, policymaking, and equity, with
particular emphasis on school boards, districts, and community advocacy. She
serves as a fellow the National Education Policy Center and
(30:37):
the Black Education Research Center. That still sounds super fancy.
Fellow that's just that's like an old timey word to me,
but I'm sure it means something really cool, and judging
by the first part of our conversation, I'm sure that
it is, and indeed it was well earned. So thank
you again for being here with us, because getting a
(30:58):
chance to talk to someone like you who knows more
than we do about these things is really important. And
for many years, certainly throughout like kind of the beginnings
of the Trump presidency, the first Trump presidency on into COVID,
(31:23):
we were able to see because COVID was when there
was a lot of you know, it was a Black
Lives Matter protest, things like this, and uh, you know,
the there was a conservative backlash to that moment in
this country's history, and terms like critical race theory took
center stage where people were very critical about critical race theory.
(31:48):
That sounds funny, but that was kind of the truth
and people could not define it. And so again, the
conversation like this was a long time coming because the
argument you made in the first half of the show
seemed like to a reasonable person who has a modicum
of empathy and indeed, once a better country for all
(32:09):
people would look at that and think, well, this is
a field of study that could be important, maybe it
could solve problems. But I think a lot of the
conservative pushback on their version of critical because they redefine
critical race theory so that they could attack it. They
redefined it as American history, and they use that. I
(32:30):
believe my belief not yours. This is not a shared belief,
but or it may not be a shared belief. I'll
say it that way. But my belief is that they
use the it's like a straw man. They use the
the their version of it to attack it. And now
indeed they've been kind of stripping away a black history
(32:53):
and sanitizing American history to make something that's a little
bit more comfortable for them, with the intention being protecting children.
And the truth is, in my estimation, children are a
lot more resilient than conservative adults, and so shots fired.
I don't care. That's what I do. All right, Let's
move on. Let's talk about school boards, because you know,
(33:17):
obviously your book Navigating school board politics is something that
you know well. And recently in this country we've seen
school boards become a target for right wing and far
(33:44):
right activist groups, perhaps because the straw man argument of
critical race theory fever pitch. So two our listeners who
maybe they don't have children, or maybe they have children,
but they're like, look, I'm just trying to feed these kids.
They go to school, they do the school thing. I'm
(34:05):
just trying to keep the house running.
Speaker 4 (34:07):
Yeah, talk to us about what a school board is
and why school boards are maybe important and maybe even
if it occurs to you, why they came under attacked
by these right wing groups.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
Sure.
Speaker 3 (34:24):
I mean, we have about thirteen thousand school districts in
the United States. In that about almost ninety thousand locally
mostly elected school board members who oversee and govern these
school districts.
Speaker 2 (34:39):
School Boards you.
Speaker 3 (34:40):
Generally have between five to sometimes seven nine in some places.
It's Chicago right now they have a hybrid school board
that's about I think it's over twenty school board members.
But they represent their local community and you know, oversight.
One of their biggest jobs is to hire a superintendent
(35:00):
kind of who's the head leader of a school district,
manage that superintendent, evaluate that superintendent, and fire the superintendent.
Speaker 1 (35:09):
If I may school board hires a superintendent. They don't vote.
A school superintendent is not.
Speaker 3 (35:15):
Voted in Well, there yes, so they vote in they're hiring,
they need to have a majority vote. Is how they
hire that superintendent?
Speaker 1 (35:24):
Also, they're elected from within the school board. Is that
how that works?
Speaker 2 (35:27):
Or does the superintendent?
Speaker 1 (35:28):
Does the community elect this superintendent or the community elects
the school board and the school.
Speaker 3 (35:32):
Board community elects the school board school board ALECTI suit.
Generally some places school boards are appointed, and that's another controversy.
I'm a big fan of elected school boards. I think
that that offers a lot more democratic engagement in our
public schools. And so, but yes, the community elects the
(35:53):
school board. The school board then decides and votes on
the superintendents that run the school district, and they oversee
the budget. They vote on the budget or against the budget.
They in many places vote for against different curricular changes,
different policies for a range of things, anything anywhere from
(36:18):
English learner policy related policy to books and book bands
to you know, uh, decisions around athletics and K through
twelve schools. So and right now, school boards have had
to make some really tough decisions about voting around whether
they're going to close schools or not. Across the country,
(36:41):
we're seeing large efforts and having decisions around school closures
because of various reasons. I won't get into that right now,
but those are really tough decisions. But school boards make
those decisions, transportation, those kind of things, So they make
a lot of important decisions.
Speaker 2 (37:01):
For a district.
Speaker 1 (37:02):
So why why did school boards become I know the well,
I think I know the answer, but I'd love to
hear in your opinion and share with with our listeners.
Why did school boards become targets for these are well,
I don't even know that they were far right. The
right has moved so far that just kind of center
(37:23):
right is like far right, you know now, But why
did they become targets for these right wing groups? If
you know, our bus routes that important to them, are
you know, meal the school meals that important to them?
Speaker 4 (37:38):
Like?
Speaker 2 (37:39):
Yeah, yeah, no, I mean.
Speaker 3 (37:41):
Sorry, I missed that second part of your question, So
glad you're circling back to that. You know, I think
it was a combination of things. It was almost like
a perfect storm that happened during that the time around
COVID Black Lives Matter. A lot of communities during that
protest after George Florida was murdered, communities started you know,
(38:04):
at the school district level, they went to school districts
and said, we want police out of our schools. There's
a big push in big cities mostly, and so that became,
you know, a centerpiece.
Speaker 2 (38:16):
For a lot of school boards where they.
Speaker 3 (38:18):
Were making decisions to remove police from schools, some keeping
police in schools, but they were making decisions around budgets.
La LA made a huge decision to remove their police
and use the budget to like come back to the community,
you know, do social workers, like hire more social workers,
et cetera. And then at the same time, we had COVID,
(38:44):
and those decisions to close or reopen schools happened at
the school board level. Whether you would mandate masks or not.
The mask debates were huge, and that usually was divided
across political lines.
Speaker 2 (39:03):
We saw a lot of.
Speaker 3 (39:06):
Lower income like black and brown communities were in favor
of more COVID safety precautions, likely because they disproportionately dealt,
you know, with more deaths in COVID, more you know,
COVID consequences of COVID, and so that became. And then
at the same time was the rise of the anti
(39:27):
CRT kind of sentiments and anti LGBTQ sentiments, and.
Speaker 2 (39:31):
That was very calculated.
Speaker 3 (39:33):
Christopher Rufos is a man who came out of a
political think tank, and I think he was a journalist,
but he was very calculated in identifying critical race theory
as kind of an enemy. And the narrative he created
is that K through Total schools supported critical race theory.
(39:54):
We need to get that out of our schools. And
so again, like you mentioned, not most people don't even
know critical race theory is. But I think the convergence
of those events created, like I said, a perfect storm
where all of a sudden, school boards became the center
of attention and groups like Moms for Liberty were formed
(40:15):
during this time. Parents Defending Education was formed during this
time with their right ring conservative groups that with the
sole purpose of huge well, one of their major purposes
was to flip school boards toward more conservative majorities so
that they could get folks on the school board that
(40:37):
would vote against certain things that were related to culturally
relevant curriculum or socio emotional development. Which again that all
became convoluted with this idea of critical theory, which was
not really happening in K through Toll schools, but nonetheless,
(40:59):
that was that.
Speaker 2 (41:00):
Was a huge mission.
Speaker 3 (41:01):
People came to board meetings, even the Proud Boys after
January sixth decided, you know, and there's there's evidence where
they were talking about we're going to think local, act local.
And they started going to school board meetings armed and
you know, outside of school board meetings armed and then
in school board meetings and not armed, but just in
(41:23):
to threaten school boards to vote in certain directions or
to show kind of muscle.
Speaker 1 (41:30):
And so to school Yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:32):
Yeah, so I said, outside.
Speaker 3 (41:33):
Of yeah, and they would come into the school board
meetings very kind of with a physical kind of threat.
Speaker 2 (41:44):
And so yeah, the.
Speaker 3 (41:45):
School boards became a huge piece, a centerpiece. And you know,
I had been studying school boards before that, like I said,
about a decade, and they were not on the radar
like they were during that time. And so I think
a lot of people realized how import in school boards were.
I mean, these groups certain linked and in pushing back
(42:06):
and pushing for policies that they wanted. And so this
is part of, I mean the interesting piece about school democracy. Right,
we all have to be involved, and so I think
it's been a huge wake up call for all local
communities because folks would come to board meetings that weren't
even residents of that community, and they would speak up,
(42:26):
and they would speak out as if they were residents
or you know, and pushing and trying to persuade the
school board, and the school board didn't know who was
who at that point. And so I think, like I said,
in those instances, it showed that folks who showed up
at these board meetings it was really important to show up.
(42:47):
It was really important to vote a lot of people.
School boards have one of the lowest voter turnouts in
local elections, and so, you know, it became very important
to understand who was running. And school boards are nonpartisans,
so it's not always clear what kind of politics folks have,
you know, and so you really have to do your
(43:08):
research as a voter to know who you're putting in
these seats. And so yeah, I think I think folks
across the political aisles, you know, have come to the
realization that these are important entities.
Speaker 1 (43:29):
All right, When did you write this book?
Speaker 4 (43:31):
Now?
Speaker 1 (43:31):
I'm gonna plug it as often as I can, because
I'm sure some people are going to want to pick
it up. Navigating school board politics. When did you write
that book.
Speaker 2 (43:38):
I wrote it.
Speaker 3 (43:40):
I think I started writing in twenty twenty three. Well
it came out in twenty twenty four, so yeah, twenty
twenty two, twenty twenty three, okay.
Speaker 1 (43:48):
So this was post covid Ish era.
Speaker 3 (43:52):
Yeah, right after Yeah, as schools started reopening, I started
working on this book.
Speaker 1 (43:59):
Did you write that book to address those issues? Because
it says navigating school board politics? Is that really kind
of Are those particular politics represented well in the book?
Speaker 3 (44:13):
I think so? I mean the second part of it
is a framework for advancing equity. So I wrote it
with an audience of My target audience was school board members.
So I recognized, after doing this work for a long
time that a lot, I mean a lot of school
board members might not know they get into this position
(44:34):
and might not know how to navigate it. They might
not have the history of education policy in a way
that can help them contextualize what they're dealing with, and
you know, some of the skills and kind of framing
to navigate all that. And so I and then my
(44:55):
second audience was community members, because I think, you know,
how do we you think about Like, I think it's
important that communities know how to also navigate school boards.
Speaker 1 (45:05):
That's actually why I wanted to go in this direction
because another reason why you know, Q and I wanted
to have you on the show is because, again for
such a long time, we have pushed for our listeners
to not simply just listen to this program where we've
(45:26):
done this research and have these this framing of an
argument that you can then take into your community and
share with your boss or your racist uncle, lic thanksgiving
or your whatever. But indeed that you can be fortified
in your allyship if that's part of your ministry, or
(45:50):
to have maybe a little bit more perspective that we
hope would flower into empathy, understanding and perhaps even supporting
people who have a different walk from you. Right. So,
for some people, and we've advocated for this for some time,
for some people that looks like, hey, you know, get
(46:13):
out there with a bullhorn and write assign But for
other people it means run for local elected office, right,
And so we've pushed this for a long time. But
one of the things that I've known is that one
of the easier elected positions to access is that of
(46:38):
a school board official, right, And it's also less consuming
than perhaps other positions. Elected positions might be. And so
for a lot more people this might be a viable
way to change their material reality and be part of
the ripple that turns into the wave for those of
(46:58):
us that believe that this country can create equitable experiences
for all of her citizens. And so I say all
this to say that we have wanted to have this
conversation because you, more than most people, know how a
person goes from citizen who's interested in shaping his or
(47:23):
her community. Two you know this, we'll call it a
first step on what for some people be a career
as long you know, career in politics, or a career
long endeavor in politics, I should say, And for other
people might just be like, hey, look this is what
I do in this local community. But for a person
(47:45):
who's listening to us, have this conversation right now that says,
you know what, maybe I can do something, maybe I
can offer something, but I don't have kids, or I
don't know what the job entails. Or maybe I do
have kids, but I have too many kids. Is it
too much work for a person with too many kids?
Or what are like talk to if you will please
talk to the every person listening and let and explain
(48:09):
what it takes to go from listening to your voice
right now to becoming a person that's shaping outcomes for
large groups of people in a school board. So how
does that look?
Speaker 3 (48:20):
Yeah, Well, one of the beautiful things I think about
school boards, and you know, the accessibility of it, is
that almost anyone you know can get elected. I mean,
you have to be eighteen, you don't, there's not a
lot of qualifications.
Speaker 2 (48:35):
Need it right.
Speaker 3 (48:36):
It's also one of the challenges and again why I
wrote this book, But I think.
Speaker 2 (48:43):
What is.
Speaker 3 (48:45):
One of the reasons I went into this field and
started doing research on this is because I was interested
in what it means to have like a diverse representation
on a school board and does that can that shift
policy equity for a long time, and when I started
doing I started doing research on school desegregation in Las Vegas,
(49:09):
a big history project with my advisor, Sonia Douglas. And
one of the things I noticed is that the school
board made some really important, critical decisions for the community
and that impacted particularly black students and their families for
twenty years, negatively impacted it. And you look at that
(49:31):
school board, it was all white, seven white school board
members interestingly, six white men, one white woman, And I
kept thinking if there had been just one black school
board member on this board, would that decision have been different,
even just one, you know? And so now we have seen,
you know, a lot more diversity on boards, but still
(49:54):
not nearly representative of our student population. So there's a
pipeline issue still, even though this is a pretty accessible position,
but it's also a challenging position because you don't get paid. Generally,
some boards you can get small stipends, but it's generally
an unpaid position. Depending on the district, it can be
(50:16):
a lot of time. There's sometimes support, sometimes not, so
it really varies. So I would say, and there's a
lot of programs now out there and organizations who recognize
the need to get people any seats. There was a
survey that suggested about forty percent of school board seats
(50:36):
in the country go uncontested. That's a lot, you know,
And if you're running against no one, I mean, like,
what are we doing.
Speaker 1 (50:46):
To stay in that position? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (50:48):
Yeah, And so you know, there is a recognition that
these seats matter, that we need to prepare people to
be in these seats. So local would I would say, look,
ran into your local community and see who is doing
that work. There's in Ohio there's a group called school
Board school That's all they do is get citizens ready
(51:10):
for school board, like running for school board. It's like
a whole year long program. In Chicago, there's a program
called All Chicago. Arizona has a couple of different pipeline organizations,
Save our Schools, which I'm on the board for Save
our Schools Network. Emerge is a huge organization nationally that
just helps women mostly and non binary folks to run
(51:34):
for a local and state office. But school board is
one of the big ones. So there's organizations across the country.
I would say get connected to that, find out the
politics in that community, and start preparing for an understanding,
and show up at school board meetings. Find out what
you mean being at a school board meeting, watching your
(51:56):
school board meeting, and do that for several months before
you decide to because you really need to understand what's
happening in that school board dynamic within your local community.
But there's certainly a need for diverse voices on the
school board. I mean, what's on One of the great
things is you can have an educator and a retired
educator on the school board and a mom, and you
(52:18):
know a dad, and you know someone who works in
business and a lawyer. I mean, having these various perspectives
on a school board matters. It matters and helping people
form the right questions to ask the right you know,
superintendent to hire for that district. And you know, it
also matters of you know, in terms of how connected
(52:40):
they are to the actual community. Are they listening to
the community. I say that school boards are kind of
the major link between the district and the community, and
it is a sign of a healthy community. I often
talk about schools not just as good schools, you know,
but healthy schools. We want healthy schools, We want healthy
communities and democracy, and school boards are I think a
(53:04):
cornerstone to like a healthy local community, a healthy neighborhood.
Speaker 1 (53:12):
I know we're kind of running law in time here,
but I want to ask a question that I think
is and take your time with the question, but I
think it's you're a person that's qualified to give an
opinion that's based in something that won't likely have more
(53:35):
realistic positive outcomes. I recognize that the world is a
different place than it was five years ago. Ten years ago.
But if you had a magic wand and you could change,
(53:56):
let's say, three things about the education system in this country,
I'm going to ask what changes would you make. The
reason I'm asking this question, though, is so that our
listeners can get a sense of what you would prioritize
or what you think has fallen below what you would
(54:22):
have expected in terms of your expectations at this point
with respect to the world at large. I won't point
any fingers any direction, But if you could change three
things with your magic wand about the education system, what
would they be?
Speaker 3 (54:35):
Yeah, One, fully and adequately and equitably fund schools. I
think most of our states are not doing that, most
of our localities are not doing that. And if and
hopefully one day when schools are fully, inadequately and equitably funded,
(55:00):
paying teachers a not just a livable wage, but you
know professional salary wage benefit, like professionalize the teacher workforce, so.
Speaker 1 (55:10):
That professionalized I'm not sure I know what that means.
Speaker 3 (55:13):
Yeah, really give status to teachers, teachers in school leaders.
I mean they teachers are one of the most important
factors of a child's education. Yeah, I know, and oftentimes
we don't pay them what they deserve.
Speaker 2 (55:30):
We don't bring.
Speaker 3 (55:31):
This this this position to the level of status that
it needs to be, so that actually we can also
attract teachers to higher quality, you know, the highest quality.
I mean, we need some of the best people what
you say in are and a very diverse representation of
people in our schools, and we don't have that in
(55:52):
part because we have not professionalized and put them at
a status that it deserves they should be, like you know, lawyer.
Speaker 4 (56:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (56:02):
And the third piece would be to infuse culturally relevant
curriculum throughout pre K through K through twelve, I mean
throughout the pipeline, so that that curriculum and that pedagogy
really I think can help and and it kind of
(56:23):
comes to the heart of your show, is that those
pieces being able to learn culturally relevant history and culturally
relevant understandings, you know, read a book where it might
as a person of color, I can see myself, but
also I can see others in these in these sects. Yeah,
(56:46):
and and really double down on that so that our
kids are comfortable and under and having these conversations across
difference from the from the get go.
Speaker 1 (56:56):
So safe to say that you're opposed to book bands yes,
just all right, well listen, uh, it's it's been a
joy to have you on. I would love to have
you back on the show. I know that your work
is continuing to evolve and you're navigating, always navigating new
(57:20):
challenges uh in in your world. And so consider me
and Q your brothers uh as you need to, you know,
share your research and the findings of your research and
conclusions with the world. You know, count this as one
of the platforms that you can come to and you know,
(57:41):
for what it's worth.
Speaker 3 (57:42):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (57:43):
You know, there are some people that appreciate the work
that you're doing, uh and appreciate conversations like this. They
do matter. Trust me. I was giving away Cardi B
tickets once upon a time, and then I started doing
this and this is like the most meaningful work of
my life. People love Cardi B.
Speaker 2 (57:59):
But you know it's great.
Speaker 1 (58:01):
Yeah, you can recognize how important. So with that in mind,
thank you.
Speaker 2 (58:06):
Thank you for the work you do, of course absolutely.
Speaker 1 (58:08):
And yeah, with that in mind, we're gonna leave it
right here. So thank you again. Uh, and if you like,
be sure to check me out on a social media
at rams this job. You can follow Q at I
am Q word on all platforms and be sure to
follow the show at Civic Cipher And until next time, y'all.
Speaker 5 (58:33):
Yeah, like yo, we had to leave. These presidents are fabulous,
lady showing you more. Bomb traveled this well. Speak to
you from sunlight to busting on stage like fight, move
my back, You're like that. Journals, we can strike borders
with waters from headquarters. It's behind and the blid step
(58:54):
in the border with press pat We bring it to
you as it happens.
Speaker 1 (58:57):
The streets love music.
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