Pride Month And Planning For HUSD
In Which: Hayward announces a Russell City Redress Fund with the County, HUSD's LGBTQ+ Comms Plan on shaky ground after cuts, And The SIR reveals issues with how things are done
Reparations Incoming For Russell City
Today the Alameda County Board of Supervisors and the City of Hayward announced that they are creating The Russell City Redress Fund. The fund will include $250,000 from the City of Hayward, $400,000 from the Office of Supervisor Elisa Marquez, and $250,000 from the Office of Supervisor Nate Miley—a total of $900,000. The two Supervisors sit on the Alameda County Ad Hoc Committee on Reparations.
For those who don’t know, Russell City was an unincorporated area in what is now the industrial area of western Hayward. Long a home of poor people of color, Russell City advocated on multiple occasions to get services from Alameda County—including running water and paved roads—and were consistently denied.
During the Federal Government’s Urban Renewal period, they made money available to remove blighted buildings—and sometimes this was used to displace black and brown people. At the time, Alameda County used Eminent Domain to push out residents and pay them below-market rate for their homes in a bid to allow Hayward to incorporate the area and turn it into the industrial hub it is today.
Many residents fled, but some who refused to leave shared stories of mysterious fires that razed homes when people weren’t home.
This history was pushed to the forefront thanks to the work of the Community Services Commission—which has since been forbidden from doing such work in the future—in 2020 and resulted in 26 recommendations to the City of Hayward. The County eventually followed suit, though the committee appeared to have been plagued with delays and arguments over funding.
It is unclear where Hayward found the $250,000—there was no mention of it in the recent budget document that we could find. This is undeniably a good thing—reparations are long overdue—but given the City’s laser-focus on austerity, the announcement was a stark change in tone.
Pride Month Plan Faces Uncertainty
June was Pride Month and HUSD once again celebrated with a special feature. However, unlike most Pride Month proclamations and celebrations, HUSD went over its LGBTQ+ Communication Plan. However, the Plan continues to be a concern for some Trustees because the person who had taken point on LGBTQ+ outreach and communication has been reassigned.
Staff attempted to reassure the Board that, even with the changes, the work would continue. “[We will] continue to support our teachers, GSA allies, the best that we can,” Staff said. “It might not be at the same level [as when] we had the full-time position completing the work, but we are committed to ensuring the work is done.”
Trustee Bruckner-Carrillo, who was largely responsible for pushing for the Communication Plan, was unconvinced. “One of the most painful things is having parents reach out to me and say ‘My kid transitioned and Heidi was there and she held my hand through the entire process’… Who’s going to continue that work?” He compared the position to an “in-house PFLAG person”—PFLAG (originally Parents and Friends of Lesbians And Gays) is a LGBTQ+ advocacy organization.
Staff insisted, “We are committed to the work. We will rely some on our partners and we will do our very best to ensure our students are safe.” Trustee Bruckner-Carrillo pressed for a single point of contact for parents and families. “This doesn’t tell them who to call… not individual people.”
Trustee Prada also highlighted the need for protection in the current political climate. “We need to make sure that our plans are solid and that we have direct contacts of support for our students, for our families,” she said. She asked for details for future outreach, and Staff said that they hadn’t done any outreach this past year, but are making plans for future Parent Power Sessions.
Before the end of the item, Trustee Bruckner-Carrillo reminded Staff that the Plan also included student listening sessions.
SIR, We’ve Got Plans
HUSD Staff gave a quarterly progress report for the Systemic Instructional Review (SIR) implementation. As we’ve mentioned before, this is a big plan that the Alameda County Office of Education put together that outlines ways to improve student outcomes. HUSD has worse-than-average outcomes for students—around 20-30% lower proficiency in English Language Arts (ELA) and math than the County average.
This is due, at least in part, to some particular issues our District faces: higher than county-average percentage of students that are poor, English learners, and/or homeless. This huge report is trying to improve student outcomes that lead to an over 20% lower graduation rate than the State average.
The document lays out 18 different recommendations for how HUSD can improve things, but putting them all into action is a different matter. The District is focusing on three different priority areas: Professional learning and instructional support, Curriculum and instructional alignment, and Data use and program evaluation.
The idea is to focus professional learning on academic instruction, develop and use local assessments to guide instruction, and create standardized district-wide systems for gathering student data and using it to make good changes.
What’s Happening Next Year
This work has already been going on for at least a year, but the presentation showed off what the next year’s work will be. A big part of the work to come is going to be even defining the metrics—basically figuring out what they’re going to test to show that students are learning.
That there hasn’t been any district-wide assessments—aside from standardized State tests that happen once a year—was brought up in a previous meeting and seems like a big gap. It means the district only gets an idea of how students are doing once a year—even with the tests and homework they are assigned. There’s no way for the district to know which classes are doing well and which aren’t.
Another project is aligning the whopping five different content plans—Literacy, Math, Multi-lingual, VAPA, and Special Education—to the SIR and LCAP (two other big strategic plans). What this means is that the five plans were all developed independently and have a lot of overlap.
So multiple different departments may be doing the same work, wasting time and energy that they could save if they worked across departments. Removing silos is also going to be a big future project. This will be led by a set of three teams, each of which will be focused on a different priority area, and led by the SIR Lead Team.
The hope is that the teams will meet twice a month and develop strategies that will be piloted at individual school sites and, if successful, rolled out to the whole district. However, the teams aren’t finalized right now and likely won’t be until Fall, after meeting with labor teams.
Doing This With Less
The recent budget cuts loomed over the discussion of how this plan is going to be implemented. Trustee Bruckner-Carrillo asked who was going to lead the work since the Administrator On Special Assignment (AOSA) was cut. Staff said that the Education Services Department, with some help from the Alameda County Office of Education (ACOE) will guide the work.
But Trustee Bruckner-Carrillo said he wanted the District to have one point person. “My understanding is that this work is intense,” he said, “and that in order to do this right… 50-70% of a person’s time should be focused on this.” Staff said that Education Services is being restructured and that, once it’s all settled, one or more people will be assigned.
Trustee Prada said that the ACOE offered to cover a SIR position, but suggested that the District may be dragging its feet in accepting that help. “Where is the hesitation?” she asked. Superintendent Chen Wu-Fernandez said that they are developing the role/job description before accepting that help. “We need to have a role that actually can carry out the things that we’re talking about,” she said.
Trustee Bruckner-Carrillo then seemed to place blame on HUSD for any delays or slowness in getting this taken care of. “I know the county Office of Ed is incredibly prompt,” he said. Superintendent Wu-Fernandez said that some questions were only just asked recently. “We literally asked the questions today,” she said. “I wish we would’ve been more prompt,” Trustee Bruckner-Carrillo said, “so this was hammered out and we had a plan.”
He then pressed on how labor groups were engaged with the plan. “This is alignment with our labor partners?” Trustee Bruckner-Carrillo asked. “All of our labor partners are on board with the recommendations?” Staff said that labor groups had given feedback around the teams and process and that feedback was accepted. “That doesn’t sound like we’re unanimously on board,” Trustee Bruckner-Carrillo said.
Trustee Bruckner-Carrillo stressed that labor buy-in was of top importance. “This plan means nothing if we can’t get our labor partners behind it,” he said. “Especially because we rolled this out without talking to them.” Staff said that they had included labor in developing the priorities and that there would be ongoing conversations with them.
President Bufete asked what the strategy was for de-siloing. “I see that to be a very critical piece of this plan,” he said. Staff said that discovering the large amount of overlap between the five different content plans was a huge surprise. “I would say that this has kind of been the most eye-opening work for the district,” Staff said. “How can we bring all of these plans together and do the work together?” They plan to develop a district dashboard, though they didn’t specify what that dashboard would contain.
Trustee Prada asked what was going to be monitored to show progress and what the risks were if things didn’t improve. “Our students are going to suffer,” Staff said, if changes are not made. They may also face County mandates and, potentially, loss of local control if changes aren’t made.
Trustee Prada then shifted to outreach and sharing information. She asked for the Board of Trustees to receive information more regularly. “I personally felt in the dark somewhat,” she said. She also said that the African American Student Achievement Initiative (AASAI), which was one of the few groups to get a presentation about the SIR, had a lot of issues and concerns with the presentation they received.
Trustee Bruckner-Carrillo asked what the timeline was for the work, and Staff said they wanted to develop a 3-year plan. Currently they have been planning year-to-year. “This is ongoing work,” they said.
Pointing Fingers
The Vice President of the Hayward Education Association (HEA), Mary Walsh, spoke during Public Comment laid some blame on the Board of Trustees. “The board needs to focus… where your funding and what your true priorities are,” she said. “We are in trouble here and we need to take care of that as a board. We all have areas we care about, but we’re in a crisis here for kids. This is a basic needs crisis for all of our students.”
Ms. Walsh called for a return of the Teachers On Special Assignment (TOSAs) and cast doubt on whether the ACOE would be able to navigate things in the District. She said they don’t know about contractual obligations and “the rules of the game and how you do things.”
Ms. Walsh finally recognized the issue with silos and called for a systems approach. “Quit protecting fiefdoms and look at [it] as a collective,” she said. Though it was unclear who this was directed at beyond the District at large.