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Schools/parent teacher groups have been developing funds to fulfill basic needs like rent , groceries, gas. Haven't been able to mobilize quickly enough with increased need.

Model on the west side. West High Collaborative provides cross-school resources for food, rent, other needs. Occurs through social workers can be accessed when our sources aren't possible. Legal challenges related to who is seen as providing resources to families and how school funds can be spent.

One community school has distributed resources: Monthly distribution dates @ school with a “one-stop shop” so that supplies, winter gear, etc. all occur at once (makes it worth the time and remove the element of shame). Items are quarantined prior to recirculation. Current concern: How to maintain their level of service with higher demand and new needs with students returning to school buildings/recess. Trying to create school supply kits but those are costly. Limited space, storage is a big issue.

Charity model vs. mutual aid/mutuality model, the latter is the mindset that we all -- communities and families as well as individuals -- benefit from helping each other. People have immediate needs that we need to help meet, AND we need systemic change as well.

Parent Faculty Organization (PFO) a more inclusive term than Parent Teacher Organization (PTO). Family Faculty Organization (FFO) is an even more inclusive term.

Community Fridges in the City. One on Johnson St. one on Mills St., for example, contributions come from River Food Pantry, individuals... Help businesses learn how they can contribute to fridges, too.

Tenney Lapham Neighborhood Association has a mutual aid coordinator now.

Families moving around bc of covid19, adding a complication in getting needed resources to folks.

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If we have resources, how do we do a better job of distributing wealth?

How to distribute fairly and equitably? Especially when schools/school communities don’t have similar resources.

How can schools work together?

How can community organizations/businesses contribute?

Are there any restrictions on how individual parents can contribute items to classrooms?

Does anyone have resources on reparations?

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Joining Forces for Families (WSJ article about them)

Community Action Coalition (CAC)

Tenant Resource Center

River Food Pantry (northside)

Madison Community Fridges https://www.facebook.com/MadisonCommunityFridges/

List of Madison Resources for Impacts of COVID-19 https://docs.google.com/document/d/1L5ktN4v46rbZGpeKrodo3Obuk69PJHruDD5QCAQJvNA/edit#heading=h.qhrkzktp0ptb

West High Collaborative

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Summit Speaker: Jeanette Taylor, Chicago Alder and Community Organizer

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Summit Speaker: Jeanette Taylor, Chicago Alder and Community Organizer

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Community Organizing and Family Issues (COFI)

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Community Organizing and Family Issues (COFI)

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A family-focused approach to organizing for justice. (Link to organizational website is the image, below).

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For nearly 25 years, COFI has been building the leadership, power and voice of low-income parents (primarily mothers and grandmothers) to improve life opportunities for children and families.

COFI's innovative parent leadership and community organizing model Family Focused Organizing, has engaged thousands of low-income African American and Latino parents in improving preschools, schools, communities and public policies in Chicago, throughout Illinois and beyond.

Using a multi-step process, these grassroots parent leaders have made major changes in public policies and systems that make a difference for low-income families, including winning the return of recess to the Chicago Public Schools (CPS), the banning of suspensions for children younger than second grade and convincing CPS to adopt restorative justice and scrap its zero tolerance policy, and creating and winning support for a program in which parents go door-to-door in low-income communities to connect families with high quality early education programs.

Three strategies

COFI uses three strategies to implement Family Focused Organizing:

1. Local Organizing

We train and organize neighborhood and school-based parent teams to take action on issues they identify as important to improving life outcomes for children.

2. Policy and Systems Change Organizing

We support cross-community parent-led organizing, to have the power to change the way things get done. In Illinois, POWER-PAC IL unites parent leaders across neighborhoods, race and ethnicity to impact policy changes of priority benefit to children and families such as preschool access and eliminating the school to prison pipeline.

3. Sharing the Learning

The COFI Institute provides training and resources to others, and engages other parent-led organizations around the country. Share-the-Learning is how we and other organizations adapt and replicate COFI's work.

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Community Organizing and Family Issues (COFI)

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For nearly 25 years, COFI has been building the leadership, power and voice of low-income parents (primarily mothers and grandmothers) to improve life opportunities for children and families. COFI's innovative parent leadership and community organizing model Family Focused Organizing, has engaged thousands of low-income African American and Latino parents in improving preschools, schools, communities and public policies in Chicago, throughout Illinois and beyond.

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Link: Mutual Aid 101

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1) Building relationships between families (family power)                    2) Learn and share resources about issues important to families            3) Act collectively for the schools all students deserve

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Chicago Alder and Parent/ Community Organizer Jeanette Taylor is a long-time advocate for children and families on the South Side of Chicago. At 19-years-old Taylor was elected to the Local School Council of her child's school. She helped organize against school closings on the South Side of Chicago (including a hunger strike at Dyett High School) and you may have heard her name in the news recently (on NPR, etc.) because she helped secure landmark status for Emmett Till's childhood home.

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Confidentiality: Take what you learn and protect the personal information

Keep students and POC voices at the center

Assume positive intentions with people

Speak your truth without apology

Listen and share airtime

Be open to others, challenge your own assumptions

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Information and links shared by participants during Alder Taylor's talk

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Information and links shared by participants during Alder Taylor's talk

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Local School Councils (LSCs) in Chicago:

About Local School Councils (CPS website)

"an important vehicle for participatory democracy, allowing not only educators but also parents the opportunity to make important decisions about how their children will be educated." (Click link above to learn more)

School policing in Madison:

MMSD voted to discontinue the ERO contract in June, 2020. The annual contract was $380,000 at that time

Freedom Youth Squad's #PoliceFreeSchools Campaign demands 1) A complete removal of police from schools and an accountability process to hold adults accountable for calling the police on students; 2) Invest in the leadership, creativity, and wellness of Black youth and youth of color; 3) Use restorative and transformative justice instead of punishing youth; 4) let most impacted students, parents and trusted adults have real decision making power about school https://www.facebook.com/FreedomYouthSquad

Madison budget and spending on policing:

Link: City of Madison 2021 operating budget
Link: City of Madison 2021 budget (executive summary)
Law Enforcement Spending in Wisconsin: Wisconsin Budget Project

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Law Enforcement Spending in Your Community - Wisconsin Budget Project

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Look up spending on law enforcement and related costs for Wisconsin's largest 100 cities and all 72 counties, and see how that amount compares to public spending for other other purposes.

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Parent Organization Do's and Don'ts Tool

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Parent Organization Do's and Don'ts Tool

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Resources to Share (also see general resources column)

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Resources to Share (also see general resources column)

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Groups:
https://www.familiesforjustice.org/
https://www.facebook.com/A4BLMadison

Models:
-Family Engagement Team (from community schools): Will look at the curriculum for representation from BIPOC, open school house nights (once a month!), look at barriers for students to attend school (eyeglasses, etc.)

-Small Fire for restorative justice professional development (to give circle keeper training to staff)
-Critical participatory action research https://www.cpsd.us/building_equity_bridges/phase_one__inquiry_and_engagement/critical_participatory_action_research_cpar

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Yoga / mindfulness: Namadu Yoga (local) + Wellemental (national)

MMSD: Sara Parrell, MMSD Mindfulness Lead
Phone: 608-442-2170

Email: sparrell@madison.k12.wi.us

Kristen Guetschow, Coordinator Mental Health, crmoore2@madison.k12.wi.us

Cynthia Moore, Student and Staff Support, Universal Systems Lead, crmoore2@madison.k12.wi.us

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What supports are available during transition and re-entry, especially when teachers/staff can’t actually be in physical proximity?

COVID-era’s impact on social / emotional going forward

What is going to be bottled up (and how will it come out) once kids go back?

What can we do for children who aren’t enrolled in school right now? How can we support them?

How do we emotionally support kids during the transition back to school?

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Kids of all ages, esp middle and high school, are really struggling.

Parents are stressed, everyone’s cooped up

Considering the benefits of good touch - worried about extended absence of physical touch

What are the district’s policies around disciplinary issues? How will this interact with student need for physical and other social-emotional interaction? How does implicit bias play into teacher perceptions of what is cause for disciplinary action versus a a need for emotional connection?

What sort of support personnel will be in the building?

We need more support staff in this classroom

Concerns about misapplication of the Behavioral Education Plan

We have to get closer together, and contact is the thing we need the most, but that is going to be difficult to provide during COVID protocol.

Instead of focusing on testing and academics, we need to make sure kids’ are being emotionally supported and taken care of first

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Are there specific supports the SSWs might suggest for community members to help with connecting with students or families?

Advocate for the sharing of transition plans that go beyond the tactical.

Communicate that concerns about SEW for youth is a priority

Advocate for vaccinations so that we can address the physical proximity concern

Speak up for kids who are off the radar right now. What is the plan to find them and re-engage them?

CONCRETE ACTION ITEMS:

Ask what kind of staffing and training are in place to prepare for children who have changed since they last had in-person school?

Advocate for SEW as a priority

Role of yoga / mindfulness

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Families as Partners Summit Slides - Feb 2021

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Formally for informally coordinate across city, (neighborhoods/schools have unequal resources and schools with greatest need may have families that cannot give to the same extent they have in the past)

School family groups can distribute funds

Individual families can work with other families or school staff to identify needs and share/ redistribute resources; contribute to existing formal/informal efforts

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https://www.cpsd.us/building_equity_bridges/phase_one__inquiry_and_engagement/critical_participatory_action_research_cpar

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What do adults need to know to make schools better?

We spend too much on SROs, could instead have people who are there to de-escalate situations, like therapists

All schools should have the funding to have a pool; textbooks; teachers’ wages

Teachers should be paid more, the work they do is so much more important; Instead of police budget

Active shooter drills and emergency drills; Feel like we need the drills

What do you wish we had more of:

Recess

Ideal schedule: One day at home, 4 days in person; hybrid is okay; no virtual

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Questions and observations from the groups:

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Questions and observations from the groups:

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Students at the center is necessary for anti-racist schools.

This is a moment for change and what are we doing with it?

What does the “change” we’re seeking look like?

Having some cultural common experiences to work towards in developing anti-racist schools?  What shared cultural experiences do we have or can we create?

Joy being squashed in schools. How do we bring that back? We’re in a moment for change, but we’re quickly moving back into “normal.” What do we mean by joy?  The joy of learning?  Not knowing? Connections to people in the space? What are the barriers to joy in our schools?

What are the systemic ways we can build in the voices of BIPOC families. Decision making power?

The system we’re in doesn’t allow everyone to express themselves confidently and feeling successful. Rubrics we use to determine proficiency.

The hiring system is designed to hire more people who are White. Nothing changes.

How white parents are opportunity hoarding, pushing people and resources out of schools or for public benefit.  How are we helping white parents think critically about this?

-Why are parents not filling our buildings anymore?

-When we are teaching science, are we showing black scientists? (Etc. -- and everyday, not just during Black history “month” or a particular “day” etc - how are we directly showing that we are valuing POC every day, all the time)

-How can we get every school to be a community school?

-How can parent liaisons be present at every school?

-How do we form more authentic connections between white families and families of color?
-How can we honor all the work that teachers do and also call them out for work that needs to be done? -People can learn, we have who we have, so how can we establish solidarity for kids and not have the mentality of me vs you, but instead work for kids?

-How do we move from recommendations to be anti-racist to making it a requirement for people who work here to follow?

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Priority Actions from group A:

1. Sharing power, more voice in decision-making from families of color

2. Working with teachers and administrators to advance anti-racist schools

3. Examining and addressing white supremacy in the curriculum

4. Building a coalition of parent groups to advance anti-racism across MMSD

Actions from group B:

Ensuring Black scientists, civic leaders, innovators, community leaders, mathematicians, economists, computer scientists, etc are centered in daily curriculum -

Fight for POC in positions of leadership in the schools, PD

When trying to engage, tell  parents WHY - we want your voice to be heard

Don’t be afraid to engage

Connecting with school social worker who does lots of family engagement work for school

Starting back up the push for filling the schools halls with parents, families

asking: “Why isn’t EVERY school a community school?”

starting something like a “Families for Justice” group in other communities around Madison