Upcoming Meeting With the District

Eureka! We have a meeting date. After reviewing our document, the district has agreed to meet with us, which is very positive news.

For those of you just tuning in, the group has been working very hard toward the goal of meeting with the Edmonds School District to present our concerns. Here is the basic timeline up to this point:

1. Share our stories
2. Identify the issues
3. Prioritize pinpoint the three most critical issues
4. Determine the root causes behind those three issues
5. Create a document outlining our concerns to the district
6. Ask for a meeting with the district

That's where we are now. The next steps are:

1. Create a presentation
2. Meet with the district

According to the Lynnwood Diversity Commission, the district is very much looking forward to meeting with our group, and is very interested in hearing our concerns.

Meeting Info:

Date: August 23, 2007
Time: 2:00pm
Location: Edmonds School District building, 68th Ave., between Edmonds Community College and the courthouse.

Getting to the Root of the Issues

We did it -- we'd like to share the document we've created which outlines our concerns for the school district. This document lists the issues within the three critical areas (Personnel, Discipline, Expections/Programs), and also identifies what we believe are the root causes behind these issues.

Click here to take a look: Issues & Root Causes.

Prioritizing the Issues

At the previous meeting, the group had worked to identify issues affecting students of color. At the June 23rd meeting, we took the next step, prioritizing those issues to pinpoint the three that we believe to be the most critical.

As before, this was no easy process, as all the issues affecting our students are very important.

We are very grateful for the students' input in this process, as their prioritized list was a bit different than the adults' list. Combining those lists, we were able to see the following three areas as the top issues:

1. Personnel (administration, faculty and staff)
2. Discipline
3. Expectations and Programs
   

The next step was getting to the bottom of these issues to determine the root causes behind them; again, an emotionally challenging but necessary task.

We believe we have identified the root causes that are behind many of the things our students are experiencing at school. This would not have been possible without the input of the students and families, and the support of various community members.

From there, the plan is to create a document to share our concerns with the district. I hope to be able to link to the document here, so that we can also share it with all of you.