Trellis Crew members share their experiences being in a CEC District 13 meeting
The CEC District 13 zoom meetings are a safe place for members of the community, including the school community to express their thoughts, opinions and inquiries. There are usually one to no students during these meetings and this is a sad but true fact. Some student crew members recently had the opportunity to join a CEC District 13 meeting. They were able to express their thoughts and opinions and had some of their questions answered by the host. These reports were written to enlighten us on the experience they had.
In the start of the meeting the staff were very welcoming. I met tons of CEC staff and they had some really great ideas and things like that which they shared during this zoom. This meeting was very helpful to me especially because I am a high school student. At the end we joined breakout rooms and talked among ourselves about the schools and introduced ourselves. My CEC breakout room leader was Faraji Hannah Jones. He and the other CEC members and the parents asked me a lot of questions with me being the only student there. Someone mentioned having a adequate ventilation system to proceed with allowing students into the building, which I do agree because yes we can wear mask , social distance and sanitize but having a great ventilation system is key because sometimes schools don't open their windows which keeps all air and germs in the same room not allowing it to flow in & out. Something that I mentioned was that teachers lack of keeping on top of their work and making sure students are okay and understanding the work. For example today i needed help with an assignment but I couldn't reach my teacher. I remember last year my algebra teacher had an open zoom meeting for students to join in time of need which I think all teachers should be doing. One goal I noticed they had was to ensure anti racist learning which is a great thing. I would like to end off by letting you know what CEC is , they are a program that helps parents ensure that their kids have the best experience in school. I truly enjoyed this meeting & can't wait for the next on October 6.
—By: Jalil Smith 09/22/20
We went over what a CEC was in the introduction then some of the leaders introduced who they were and why they were there and they talked about their roles in the group. Rev Greene went over what the group is in charge of title 1 schools and what a title 1 school is which is a school that has 60% or more free kids lunches or reduced lunches. Rev Greene then went over how much he wants to change district 13 and how he would love feedback he mentioned your name and how you were coming up with surveys so that you guys could hear concerns. We then went over vacancy and how Covid-19 is changing the world and how they would like to include students voices in the group. Working on creating a anti racist district and how equity would look across the school district.
Samuels talked about how he dealt with pre K and Janice deals with high school some of the things I learned during the meeting was that even though there is diversity in schools there might not be enough to deem it a non racist environment. I was kind of shocked but not really that racism and or inequality in the school system still exist. I'm glad that me or anyone I know hasn’t had to experience this. Karen watts expressed how much she enjoyed seeing teachers and student interact with people virtually Janice implied that all 47 high schools are doing ok the percentage of remote learning through the school districts .went over the goal of reopening all 47 high schools and steps took to make sure everybody is ok when re opened launching website soon Rev Greene wanted to talk more on vacancy during the pandemic. Samuels shared the slide on building readiness shared experience with his child and virtual learning (Accountability-high expectations-equity-access-diversity) i agree with all these steps and think that these rules or this motto in the school system would be great for creating diversity. Going over the racial demographics in schools, something that was kind of weird to me was how the Latino and Hispanic were the highest race on the chart. This stood out the most to me. If I had the slide I would add more details on the subject. On the last slide we talked about economic advantage and economic disadvantages Other areas of racial inequity Implementation in remote environment Community engagement strategy.
We finished up by going into breakout rooms and we discussed what the people in the breakout rooms did by the time the live was coming to end and we were in breakout rooms we discussed what we did and who we were all of the people in my room were adults so I didn't feel the need to share in this breakout rooms they're daily lives and interest were interesting though.
A take away from this life or something I learned is what the CEC does and how it plans on making all schools in district 13 title 1 schools.
—By: Jalen Powel