 order, please. All right, hey, we'll welcome everybody to our April, April first, and I don't have any jokes, April 1st, anti racism webinar. We're so glad that you could join us today. And we're thrilled to have several administrators with us today. So thank you very much for coming to hear more about the program. And we're excited about today's session. I'm Una Dailey with the Community College Consortium for OER. And I co-lead the project with James Clappa Grossclag from College of the Canyons. Hello, everybody. Welcome. So our agenda today, kind of introductions. And I want to introduce our speaker in just a moment. And I think we know her topic is the vision for racial equity. But before we turn it over to Dr. Natalie Lump, we are going to give you a few program updates, because as we're kind of we're mid semester right now, we're kind of recede the end in sight. But there's a few more milestones along the way. And there's optional breakout rooms after this session, you know, which we expect will will end about one o'clock, as usual. And we did have optional breakout rooms before. And I was here very lonely. Just kidding, doing other work, waving. But we're trying to do that before and after these webinars, so that you have, you just have some time that you could jump into a team room if you if you if you want to make take advantage of that. And I also want to thank Liz Yada, who works with me at CCCOER, and provides much of our logistic support here. So for those of you who aren't familiar with the Community College Consortium for OER, we were founded actually in California in 15 years ago, but we work with colleges around the country on promoting OER to improve student equity and success. And we do that through a lot of work with faculty, professional development, and also fostering leadership around open education. And we have a website if you want to check us out sometime. And I have to say we have a lot of California members, including the Chancellor's Office. So and I want to talk about, before I turn this over to James, and I'm sorry, I skipped over that. I want to say just a little bit in a perhaps I should go back one slide. I want to go back to our speaker today. So it our speaker is Dr. Natalie Beatville Lum. She's the Director of P16 Education Policy at Education Trust West. And I think you know, we've had speakers from Education Trust West, they're an organization while they're a national organization, but this is the West Coast branch. They're located in Oakland, California. And they do wonderful advocacy and research work around education, equity in education. And we'll hear more from Natalie on that. Dr. Beatville Lum, she supports, as you can imagine, the policy research analysis and position development in the areas of equitable funding and accountability. And her work is grounded in understanding the experiences of stakeholders directly impacted by educational policy decisions, such as parents, students and community advocates. She is a proud product of two California higher education systems. She attended San Diego Mesa College for her AA, and a BA with honors and ethnic studies from the University of California, Sandy Ago. And she earned her Juris Doctorate. Hope I got that right. Juris Prudence Doctorate from Howard University School of Law. So we're really thrilled to have her today. And we will hear from her in right after we go through the calendar. Off to you, James. Okay, thanks, Eunice. So a little bit of housekeeping for our OVAR participants. Some reminders of some dates coming up. We sent out a couple of communications earlier this week and last week with these with these dates with more detail. Just a reminder, coming up soon now, your mid semester reflection is due in the Canvas course. Final program reflection will be due at the first half of June. And we'll be sending out more specifics about that around the beginning of May. Also earlier this week, we sent out I sent out a communication to you with more details about all the research activities this spring that are really commencing now. So in April, you'll receive a prompt to participate in a faculty post survey. Then also, you'll receive a link to share with your students for a student survey in mid, well, later later this month. And then into May, you some of you will participate in interviews and in the email that I shared earlier this week was a sign up sheet. So please, please pay attention to that. And then in May and June, we will invite some of your college leadership to participate in interviews as well. Those primarily those who offered a letter of support for you. We'd really be interested in hearing more about how your participation, your team's participation here might impact your colleges in a positive way. Next slide, please. Then coming up, we have two more after today, we have two more monthly webinars in May, we will engage in what we're terming a an intentional conversation, more detail in just a second. And then June 17, your college team showcases sort of your end of the year showcase. And then reminder, please do continue to revive invite department chairs and deans again, we want to want to support you in having a positive impact on your institutions. Next slide, please. So for May 6, we will be hosting a facilitated discussion intentional conversation under the title of strategies for advocating for students and communicating the importance of transformative pedagogy, sort of the larger idea of what what what you're engaged in will explore in a facilitated discussion will explore strategies for responding to students and others who might express dissatisfaction or unease with the transformative and culturally responsive pedagogy in which you are engaging. So we'll think through how to do this and how to pretend to respond to potential dissatisfaction. Also, in the next couple of weeks, we will be sending to you of our participants, a very brief survey inquiring about your personal experience in the classroom this year in implementing your changes to gauge the extent to which you have encountered, let's say dissatisfaction unease about your your transformation. So we're trying to gather some more information about that. Next slide, please. June 17 team showcases the end of the year big reveal. Each each team, we're asking you to present together as a team, which we see as an opportunity for you to really summarize what you've done and identify similarities between your approaches. Of course, you as individual instructors are doing things in your individual classrooms, oftentimes in different disciplines, but we think it will be helpful for you overall to identify what you've done as a team. You see the prompts here. We'll send these out, of course, via email so that you can work with them in more in more depth. And we're thinking seven to eight ish minutes per team. With eight teams, you know, the the time just adds up. So keep a watch out for that communication. And then next slide. For those of you who might be joining us for the first time today, thank you so much for being here. We really appreciate it. Here is the overall picture of what the open for anti racism program aims to do. We want to support faculty to explore how to use OER and open pedagogy to make their teaching anti racist. Our participants have learned about anti racist pedagogy. Oh, we are an open pedagogy. They are they have already developed an action and are now implementing an action plan to change something now right to do take concrete action now in their classes. We offer a range of supports throughout the year. And as you can discern from my comment earlier about the research activities, we are really intentional about documenting what impact we and you are all are having through all kinds of different surveys. And our research partners in this effort is the RP group, which many of your colleges already worked with. So next slide please. This year we have eight colleges participating. You'll see the colleges represented here. And we had 68 applications for participation this year. So we're very, very excited that to know that there's so many colleges and colleagues across the state who want to engage in the work of making their instruction anti racist and leveraging the tools of open education. With that, then we're going to turn it over to our speaker today Dr. Natalie wheat fell lumb. I want to provide the formal introduction. I am personally extremely excited to hear her presentation and on the topic of vision, the vision for racial equity in California education. And we will monitor the chat. There should also be opportunity for some Q&A at the end. So with that, Dr. Wheat fell love and please take it away. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. Let me share my screen. So as I mentioned, I'll be sharing a bit about what Ed Trust West vision for racial equity and California's education system looks like. And in order to do that, I'll be talking about where we've been in California in the policy decisions and history that we've seen in California, how racial disparities have been established in our state in the education system, and then where we can go from there. And as you mentioned, my name is Natalie wheat fall lumb and I'm the director of P 16 policy at Ed Trust West and at Ed Trust West, we both like to share our, you know, professional biographies, but we also like to share what brought us to the work. And the reason why I come to this work is because I was born and raised in California, I'm a California native. And so I'm a product of California's public education systems. And in my experience, particularly in K 12, I was witness to the disparities that students of color experience in the system. I started my K 12 experience in a working class district, close to the border in Jula Vista. And as predominantly students of color, I have lots of educators of color, and it was an environment where I felt supported and and encouraged to work to my potential. And then around eighth grade, I switched districts to a more white more affluent district in North County, California. And as soon as I got there, I found myself battling back and forth with counselors to get into honors courses. I experienced teachers who didn't believe in my ability to excel in advanced coursework. And I also saw a difference between the materials, the textbooks, the buildings, the, the desks that I saw in these new schools and saw that there are significant differences in the resources available to the students at this new district. So that got me wondering, as a young person, why are these differences here? Why am I experiencing this vastly different experience from one district to another? And that informed my dedication to fully understanding how these disparities play out in our education system and working towards systemic solutions to increase fairness and justice in the education system. And that's exactly what we endeavor to do at Ed Trust West. We are a nonprofit, as I mentioned, and some folks may be familiar with the organization. But in case you're not, we're a nonprofit organization that engages in policy research and advocacy. And in our research work, we work to uncover the various gaps in educational opportunity that we see in the system, and also seek the solutions that will close those gaps and work with and on behalf of students, parents, educators, leaders in the system to implement those solutions. And as I mentioned, so we publish reports on the experiences of students of color, we work with those students and leaders to to make the changes we want to see in the system. And I like to start this presentation with grounding us in what we all think education equity means. I've found that in the work that we've done at Ed Trust West, people have very different understandings of what educational equity is. So I encourage folks to come off mute or in the chat, share what educational equity means to you. Any takers, anyone want to share what they think of? And they think educational equity? Would you would you like me to read some of those? Oh, that would be great. Yes. Okay, great. Let me. We've got quite a bit. Boy, there was a floodgate. It took it took a minute. And then students a chance to get a foot in the door. And equity means access and empowerment for all students, meaningful access to culturally relevant resources that expand opportunity and access, allocating resources in a way to help all students succeed, providing resources proportional to what students need to be successful and thrive. Each student has access to the resources they need in order to succeed, opportunities, equal access to all quality resources. And it and the list goes on. I thank you. Thank you so much for sharing some of those. And now I'm seeing the chat light up with many responses. But we share similar, similar definitions of educational equity with one small difference, well, actually, it's a significant difference. I think that for us, equity means recognizing the historic and systemic disparities and opportunity and outcomes. So it's looking back at our system and how our system establishes, and then reinforces disparity and then from there, providing the resources necessary to address those disparities and ultimately dismantle those systemic barriers. So with that, I will jump into an education equity policy timeline, just so we can chronicle a little bit of how we came to get to the point we're at in terms of the disparities and opportunities in our system. And to reinforce why this is important, I love this quote from Ella Baker, where she says that in order to know where we're going, we not only must remember where we have been, but we must also understand where we have been. It's not just a matter of knowing the history, but putting the history in the context of race of of class and making sure we understand that these are not innocuous decisions. These were decisions that set up a system that that has created disparate opportunities for folks. I'll start with early California with the at the outset of statehood in California, we see these disparities surface. So in 1854, excuse me, 1852, shortly after California statehood, the state legislature passed a fugitive slave law, which not only required what were deemed fugitive slaves to be returned to their masters from other slaveholding states, but also established the fact that black students who were free in California will not to have access at all to public schooling in the state. So we started our education system from a place where we didn't even deem black students worthy of being educated. And we see this reinforced with the school segregation decisions in 1863 during the Civil War, whereby if a public school was seen to be educating non white students, they would have their public funding stripped away from them. And then finally, we see in California, the establishment of a separate but equal doctrine that we see in the federal level with Plessy versus Ferguson. And not many people are aware of that, but we had established Jim Crow by law segregation in California, with the Ward V flood decision in 1872. And what we see often, of course, the civil rights era is a pendulum swing away from these really restrictive laws that reinforce racism in our systems. And we see that in California with the Mendez v Westminster School District decision, whereby the segregation in public schools was deemed unequal and unconstitutional and the state of California and this provided a lot of support and a really important precedent for the Brown v Board of Education decision at the federal level. And then subsequent to Mendez v Westminster and Brown v Board, of course, we see the 1964 Civil Rights Act, entitled six of that Civil Rights Act pertaining specifically to public education in the United States, requiring that all public education institutions provide equal opportunity to all students. And then in 1974, we see the Lowry Nichols decision, which was a US Supreme Court decision that originated in San Francisco Unified Schools, which made it necessary and a requirement to ensure that all students who were English learners had full access to the curriculum taught in schools. Up to that point, schools didn't have to ensure that non English speaking students got the full educational curriculum, but this decision to establish that requirement. And again, we see this period of opening up inclusion, opening up opportunity with the Civil Rights era. But as I'm sure folks are aware, there was a backlash to this that we see through the 70s to the 90s and 2000s with the backtracking of some of the civil rights gains we saw. We see this particularly in school funding, school desegregation and affirmative action. So in school funding, we had the Serrano v priest decision, which required that property tax revenue be rolled up to the state and allocated equitably across school districts. Up until that point, local property taxes went to those local districts such that affluent districts got more funding than their counterparts that were in lower income, low property value areas. So we saw as a as a response to this prop 13, which in part was to you know, regulate the amount of property tax residential property tax or property owners owned to the state. But it also was a response to folks seeing their property taxes go outside to schools outside of their own communities. So I refer to this as property tax nimbyism. People did not like seeing their dollars go to other places. So they wanted to significantly restrict the amount of property tax that they were to pay. We see this also in desegregation. As a result of Brown v board, there was, you know, a period of white flight from urban school districts as they integrated to suburban districts. And so in some areas, there were efforts to integrate across district boundaries to increase the level of integration across districts. But this was seen as unnecessary under the Constitution with the decision of Miller can be Bradley, which allowed folks to to kind of re segregate and not have to integrate across district boundaries. And as a result of this decision, we see levels of school segregation that are similar to right before integration began as a result of Brown v board. And then finally we see this with an effort with affirmative action. You know, the federal Supreme Court case, UC regions, the Bakke that of course originated in California reinforce the legality of affirmative action with certain parameters. And we saw a response to this with proposition 209 in 1996, where California voters chose to ban all forms of affirmative action, whether that is in admissions to public institutions, or if it's in hiring decisions or contracting decisions, etc. And we've seen recently, again, another pendulum swing to challenge some of these decisions, which during this kind of 1990s era were called racial propositions. And we see this with prop 187 in 1994, which restricted social services for undocumented immigrants, including public schooling. We saw that that was struck down by the United States Supreme Court as an unconstitutional violation of equal protection for immigrants. Again, we see that with prop 227, which implemented English only instruction in our schools. So English learners and native English speakers were not allowed to be instructed in any other language other than English. And that was struck down or reversed by prop 58, I believe in 2016, which allowed for there to be dual emerging programs and bilingual educators in schools again. When area we have not seen overturned, however, is prop 209, there was a challenge to prop 209 in 2020 with prop 16. And we saw unfortunately that it was unsuccessful. So the reason I bring up these decisions is that all these decisions have impact, we see how the policy decisions from early California to recently have impacted the opportunities, the success of students of color and low income students in California. And we see this with the impact of prop 13. Alphonia has lost approximately $585 billion in funding that could have gone to schools. And this is just taking into account commercial property value in this graph in particular. So prop 13 not only applies to residential property, but commercial property. And had it not applied to commercial property, we would have seen significant a significant amount of resources for our public school systems and for students of color. And we also see this in the levels of funding per pupil in our K 12 system. Before prop 13 in 1965, California was fifth in the nation for per pupil funding. And now we are 38. And as of 2019, this was our ranking and per pupil funding, it's probably gone up since then because of the surplus and resources we've seen in the last couple of years. But it's certainly not at the level it was pre prop 13. We see this in students access to the courses that are necessary to be eligible for UC and CSU schools. Based on this graph, we know that black students, Latinx students, Native American students, Pacific Islander students and low income students all fall below the state average for the completion of a 3g requirements. And this of course is a result of this combination of decisions that have limited the access to resources and increase the disparities that impact those groups of students in particular. Of course, we see the impacts of prop 209 in the admissions to the UC system. Shortly after prop 209, there was a significant disparity between the number of the proportion of 12th graders were black and Latinx in California and the number of students that were enrolled in our UC system. And we see this significant this gap increase significantly for Latinx Latinx students in particular, about 20 years post prop 209. And again, in admissions, we see the same disparities. Before prop 209, Latinx, applicants were admitted slightly more frequently than the average. But now we see significant gaps between average admissions rates and the admissions rates for black and Latinx students in particular. And the impact of prop 209, we don't just see it in higher ed, we see it in K12 as well with the significant disparities between the diversity of the students in our K12 system and the teacher workforce that serves them. And we know from research that we've seen again and again that students of color benefit greatly from having diverse teachers and also white students benefit significantly from having diverse teachers. However, in California, we don't see the number of diverse teachers that we would need to make sure that students could benefit from this. But we have to ask ourselves, why is this the case? Why do we see these disparities continue? And we believe it's because of the choices that we make as a state, the choices that our leaders make. And those choices reflect the values that we hold. One really stark illustration of this is that since 1980, California has built 22 prisons for public universities. This is one example, one will be significant example of the fact that as a state, we've put more resources and more value into incarcerating people rather than providing folks with higher education. And again, we see these types of decisions happening across the board. In the K12 system, we see that students are more likely to have approved A through G courses in their school if they go to an affluent school versus a high poverty school. We also see that adding affluent school, you're more likely to have a school librarian than if you were into a high poverty. And I think this quote sums up well what we see with this phenomenon is from Dr. Bonilla Silva, colorblind racism is the new racial music most people dance to. The new racism is subtle, institutionalized and seemingly not racial. I think that this is a phenomenon that a lot of folks are beginning to acknowledge and a lot of our state leadership is beginning to acknowledge. So we have seen a lot of progress in the policy making in recent years, which I'm encouraged to share too. We see that there have been efforts to establish equitable funding formulas, both in the K12 schools and in the community college system with student centered funding formula and the local control funding formula, which were great steps in the right direction in acknowledging that different students need different levels of resources to counteract the disparities that they experience in our systems. We see this with the English learner roadmap in the K12 system, where we acknowledge and affirm the great benefits that English learners bring to our systems and provide the proper supports that are necessary to both develop home languages and English learning in schools. And we also see this with the establishment and development of the cradle to career data system, which we hope is moving in the direction of making transparent information on student experiences from birth to the workforce in order to be able to identify where we see inequities and come up with targeted and informed solutions to those inequities. And with that, I think that we as a state are in a space where we can start thinking about what our vision is for racial equity in our education system. This is a time where we can think differently about how we want to transform systems to make sure that the students who are currently most marginalized are at the center of our systems. And as an organization, Ed Trust West has worked on a set of vision statements that we want to see kind of lived out in our systems to increase the level of fairness and justice in the education system. So I will share those with you now. The first is every black native Latinx and Asian student has equitable access to affirming high quality learning and reaches their educational goals. Next. Every school employs and supports educators and leaders that represent California's racial and ethnic diversity. Every school, college and university receives abundant and equitable funding. And finally, every student, family member and community member can understand how well California's educational systems are operating and hold them accountable. So these statements are sort of our guiding principles for how we approach our advocacy and systemic change in California's education systems. But how can California achieve this vision? We have come up also not only with these vision statements, but a policy agenda where in the next year we thought through a set of priorities for our early learning and care system, our K-12 system and the higher ed system where eight leaders and advocates can focus on these priorities to get us closer to the vision that I just shared. In early learning and care, this includes that when we see implemented these significant investments in universal transitional kindergarten and universal preschool, when we see local education agencies implement these programs, it's done in a way that ensures that families of color are engaged and a part of the decision making process such that as these systems expand, they're done so centering those families. We also see that in this year, the state can increase the equity in the early learning and care workforce by increasing wages and professional development. We know that we have a predominantly woman of color, early learning and care workforce and they are woefully underpaid and undervalued and we want to see this shift because they are doing the most important work, in my opinion, in our system, caring for California's youngest children. And also we want to make sure that as the data system for the early learning and care system develops, it's done so in a way that is integrated into our cradle to career system to shed some light on the data for our youngest learners and ensure that we can see from birth to the workforce how Californians are faring. In K-12, some things that we can do right now are ensuring that students have access to rigorous college and career preparatory courses, in particular in STEM, either through aligning graduation requirements with a 3G requirements and also increasing the rigor of course offerings. We also see a significant need to fully integrate English learners into high quality, culturally affirming and great appropriate curriculum. And this can be achieved by adopting accessible instructional materials, providing the resources to educators in both the materials and professional development to ensure that English learners along with all of California's learners are set up for success. We can also equitably implement California's state math frameworks, which is a decision that the State Board of Education will be making in July and to incorporate culturally and linguistically affirming instructional guidance such that we can set up educators to instruct and build curriculum for students that affirms their experiences, abilities, and also affirms their capacity to learn math. We also need to do more to recruit and retain teachers of color and bilingual teachers through statewide initiatives with goals setting to increase the diversity of the workforce. Finally, the things that we can do now for college access and success are to ensure that all students have equal access and equitable access to dual enrollment opportunities if they so choose regardless of their background, the schools that they go to, or their academic history, all students should be able to experience taking college courses in high school if that's something that they'd like to do. We want to ensure that financial aid applications are universally accessible to all students, particularly low-income students who qualify for California aid and make sure they have the supports necessary to complete these applications. We also need to put our abundant resources into our state aid systems such that all students who qualify have access to aid. We want to see all traditional remedial courses in California community colleges replaced with credit-bearing transfer level courses and paired with co-requisite supports and academic supports necessary for success. We also want to see access to child care and campus-based care increased for student parents as well as better systems for tracking the needs of student parents. So this is just kind of an idea of the work that Entress West is doing to live out the vision that we've set and to give folks, particularly our state leaders, the priorities that we have for getting to where we want to be in our systems. And there's also abundant examples of where this has happened already in our state locally. So at Whittier Union High School District, they implemented an A through G for All policy linking their default curriculum or graduation requirements to the A through G requirements. And we've seen outcomes that have far surpassed the state average in A through G completion in Whittier Union High School District, in particular for Latinx students who were achieving A through G completion at 15 percentage points higher than their Latino peers statewide. We also see this at Pasadena City College, one of the members of OER with their pathways program. We see that at Pasadena City College, pathways programs participants have seen extreme levels of success in completing associate degrees for transfer and then and going on to transfer. We see huge persistence rates among these students when compared to their peers who are not participating in pathways programs. And we see that these pathways programs provide the support, the counseling supports, academic supports that students need to be successful in transfer level coursework. And there are ways for us to get involved in making these gains of reality across the state for all students right now. We're working currently on a couple of advocacy efforts to expand opportunities, particularly in higher ed. We saw a huge investment laid out for dual enrollment in the governor's budget in January. So we are working to inform that investment to make sure that the students who have traditionally been marginalized from dual enrollment opportunities are actually centered in this investment. So we're focused on Black students, Native students, and Latinx students who tend to have less access. And we're doing that through a bill, AB 2617, that will help bring some structure to this significant investment in dual enrollment, such that practitioners are given the information they need to center students that could most benefit from the investment. We also are seeing some opportunities to get involved in remediation reform. We are championing a transfer course transition grant whereby community colleges could get access to resources to transition from remedial coursework to transfer level coursework, including co-requisites supports, academic supports, and then there be some research infrastructure included so that we can see what has been most high impact in this transition, what's been working, so that we can scale up that shift. We're also supporting AB 1705, that is endeavoring to close some of the loopholes that we saw in AB 705, that continue to marginalize students of color in particular from transfer level coursework. So if folks participating today are interested in either of these efforts, please feel free to contact my colleagues at Etrus West, Manny Rodriguez or Denise Castro, or please of course feel free to contact me at Etrus West and I can connect you to them and to more resources for how you can get involved in both of those efforts. With that, I thank you again for the invitation to join you and I'm happy to respond to any questions folks might have. Well, thank you so much, Natalie. This has been such a wonderful overview of how we got where we are and some real champions who are moving moving this forward. And I think there's been lots of great discussion in the chat window. I don't expect you to get a chance to look at it now. We can also send that to you later, but people have been reacting to all of the great information you're sharing with us. And I would like to open this to questions. Please feel free to unmute yourself and speak up. I don't mind asking a question, Natalie. This is wonderful. I'm curious the sort of California focus of the presentation. Are there any policy models happening in other states that might be useful to the work that you sort of described? Yes, there's a number of models that we've seen across the country related to kind of different efforts that we've seen associated with our policy priorities. One example is that we actually in California are starting to follow is in Louisiana, they created a graduation requirement around completing the FAFSA. And in California last year, we passed a FAFSA for all proposal that was in the budget that requires LEAs to report that all of their 12th graders have completed the FAFSA. So we use that model in Louisiana to advocate for a similar policy here in California, but instead of putting the onus on students through graduation requirement are the requirement in California sort of puts the onus on local education agencies or districts to report that all their 12th graders are completing a FAFSA or a California Dream Act application. So that's one example of learnings that we've seen from other states. I also have heard recently that Texas is working towards eliminating all of the remedial courses in their community colleges, but I haven't dug in into the specifics of that effort. So it's definitely something that we can do more to learn from, but we're looking all the time to some examples of where this has been implemented and where it's working. And but we do like to look at bright spots in California because our local context is very distinctive from a lot of states. And so when we see things that are implemented that are working here in California, we really like to uplift those. May I? I'm Sanga Nyogi from DVC. Thank you so much for the history lesson as well. So important to point out why we need all of this. We are in the process of developing our new equity plan at DVC. And this is a larger philosophical question. So I know that our particular workshop is focused on anti-racism and you're talking about racial equity. But we have been wondering if we need to take an intersectional lens and if that's problematic in terms of watering down things. And as we know in this work, we have to set priorities. And so I'm wondering how we would deal with that issue of intersectionality without watering down the goal of racial equity. That is a really great question. And I can only offer my own personal perspective on incorporating intersectionality in equity efforts. I personally think that it's really important. We know that people don't exist just as one identity. So we need to acknowledge multiple identities and how the intersection of those identities result in disparate opportunities and differing treatment by systems. So in my mind, I think that intersectionality is important when you see particular disparities impact in a particular intersectional identity. And not just blanketly apply intersectionality to all things, but zero in on where we do see a very specific impact. And I think one example of that is women of color in STEM. We know that there are disparities in STEM for women, but those are exacerbated when you look at the experiences of Latinx and Black women in particular in STEM fields. There's significant disparities in particular discouragement of women of color in STEM. So that's kind of one example where intersectionality makes sense in my mind to consider when you're making policy. But again, I think you have to really acknowledge where exactly you see the disparity and not just blanketly say everything needs to be intersectional. Lisa Solomon Imperial Valley College. I had taught dual enrollment one semester at an area high school. I don't know if I would do it again. More so because of issues with different districts and different requirements and different schedules. The issue of dual enrollment came up at a history discipline meeting at IVC a few weeks ago. And the debate came about as to whether dual enrollment is better than concurrent enrollment where high school students at a certain age can start taking classes at the college, not necessarily having the college classes offered at the high school. From the Ed West position is one scene is more beneficial to the other when we're talking about equity? That's a really great question. And I feel like this is not to provide a not answer, but I honestly think and the work that we've done to look at dual enrollment programs across the state, they all look different. And I think the thing that matters the most is the strength of the partnership between high schools and colleges to look at what the needs of their students are and how best to meet those needs, how best to work together either through braiding resources across K-12 and higher ed, providing transportation, providing counseling support, etc. in partnership. So it really depends on what works best for students in that particular context in my mind. So dual enrollment or concurrent enrollment both have some challenges. It just depends on how we're, what is the best for the students in that particular area and what the mutual support systems could be. Exactly. Something to take back to my next meeting. Thank you. Yeah, of course. So Christine has her hand up. Thank you, James. So I'm Christine Jun from Norco College. So I appreciated what you had to say. I'm a big fan of California history. So this may be a funding question and I just may be venting because I'm just frustrated with California politics. But while you were giving your presentation, I was looking at the chat and someone contributed that how even internet access is such, if they just had that, it just seems like such an obvious simple solution, right? Now, I'm not quite sure what you and your colleagues are able to do, but do you think you can convince Governor Newsom not to propose or support an idea where they give the super rich like this tax rebate for gas because the top 10 or 15%, they don't need $400, $800. I mean, people that earn six or seven figure salaries now and of course they don't even pay capital. I mean, that capital gains tax on the tax proposal, it's not even equivalent. And I think it's very interesting. I do know about Prop 13 and the property taxes. Has been limited. And of course, this has shortchanged a lot of students. However, nevertheless, there is a windfall in taxes right now and the fact that he just wants to distribute it, what he's essentially doing is buying votes. You know? So I don't know, can you just solve that for me, Natalie? I'm just venting, but surely. No, I totally agree. And it's absolutely an election year. So we see those types of efforts happening. Unfortunately, we can't tackle everything. And that's kind of outside of the scope of our work, but obviously it's significantly problematic when we see all the disparities across our systems. Fundamentally, it's about funding. Like we can do all these wonderful things if there is money and they manage the money well. You just can't keep taxing the middle class. First of all, they're just finding ways to taxiduck everything. You know what I mean? Anyways, but I just wanted to bring up the funding issue, I suppose, but thank you for hearing me out. And Deborah Crumpton also has her hand up. Thank you. And Natalie, I really appreciate everything you had to say. I can't wait to get your slides, but I'm just troubled by something. And I just don't want to miss this opportunity to get your guidance here, your perspective. You know, I work in a district where we have lost 30% of our black students. And we started this slide before COVID. And, you know, I am aware of, you know, 87.05 and this whole notion about doing away with remedial courses. I understand why I get this, you know, historical lens on that. But what confuses me is that we've done away with this and we put this corequisite requirement in here, which is really remediation by another name, quite frankly. But we are bringing students in to transfer level courses, right, where, and we know they are unprepared for it. We know it because we know, we know the pipeline, right? And so now we, sometimes we beat our chest on the success we've had. But I wonder if we ask ourselves the question of who is no longer present? Who has, how has this pipeline become a funnel, quite frankly, guided pathways? AB 705 become a funnel where now this huge block of students are no longer served in any capacity. And I specifically am talking about black students right this moment. It's just very troubling to me. And it seems disingenuous, not your presentation, right? Not your presentation. But the perspective of how successful we're being and what we're trying to do to meet the needs of black and brown students. What's your take on that? I know it's huge, what I ask, but I'm just not to represent California. But I mean, you know, how does, how does the organization work for a look at this? You know, that's a really huge question. And I think it's a really important consideration, particularly for black students, as you mentioned, we've seen like significant declines in enrollment for black students before COVID, well exacerbated by COVID. And we've seen funding that has started to get at the types of outreach opportunities and programming that are needed to support the students that we've lost through COVID and black and brown students in particular. But it's not enough. And I think that it's not just, I don't think it's a both and when it comes to, I'm sorry, I don't think it's either or when it comes to remediation and transfer level coursework. I think that we need to make sure that there are structures in place to ensure student success. So we don't like looking at remediation because we see it as a cycle of keeping students spending their tuition dollars on courses that are not getting them to the outcomes they want for themselves. But if we don't provide transfer level coursework, without the supports that we know our students need to be successful, then it's not a feasible option. So that's why we say we do like co-requisites. Some folks have implemented it better than others. And we've seen success when implemented well. But it's not just co-requisites. It's the wraparound supports that students that are in our systems currently need that not many are getting. It's about making sure they're connected to the supports outside of school that they need, that they have financially they need, that they have the basic needs that they require, making sure they have the academic supports they need at school to see success in transfer level courses. And we've seen even students who come into the system underprepared for transfer level courses, we've seen them be successful when their right structures are in place that are tailored specifically to their needs. And their success. So it's a tough question because it's a nuanced question because our systems aren't structured in the ways they're supposed to, they need to be to support the students that are more marginalized. But it's about making sure that we put in place the things that students need in particular to be successful. I don't know if that's helpful, but that's where we sit on issues like transfer level coursework and remediation. Well, I appreciate that response. I mean, my question to my to my district is, what are you doing about the students that are no longer here? Right. I mean, that's to me, that's the bottom line question. So I appreciate what you're saying. And it's, you know, it's a tough road to hope. But somebody's got to do it because somebody's getting paid big bucks for it. And with every student we lose, we lose an entire generation as you know. So thank you. Absolutely. And Debra, you have a lot of affirmation in the chat with your question. I think that's my observation is a lot of a lot of colleges are struggling with that question. I want to acknowledge that we're at the top of the hour. If you have to leave, please do. Doctor, we'd follow them if you're able to stay a few more minutes. I think we certainly have more questions and comments for you if you're able to stick around for a few more minutes. Sure. I'm happy to stay. I can definitely thank you. Keander Jimenez has her hand up. And I before before people take off because I know some people have got to take off, we do have a survey and I put the link in there. As you know, we ask you just to tell us about what you learned today in those surveys. So thanks so much. Great. Thank you. And Keander. Thank you for allowing me to go and I promise I'll try to make this brief. And I don't mean to pile on what Debra said, but I teach English at Norco College and I teach within the Emoja program. So I'm definitely working with our FM students, but we also have Latinx students, Pacific Islander students. And I can tell you unequivocally, absolutely. My students come to me so underprepared that it almost seems like what we are doing with taking away remediation is less equitable than giving the remediation. And I do have the corequisite. Not only do I have the corequisite, we actually pair our students in my class with a guidance course. So they go into a one-unit guidance course before. We team teach that class. My Emoja counselor, coordinator, co-coordinator, and I, and even with that, it still isn't enough. And what I hear from my students is they have the English class with me. They have the corequisite class. We've added on the support course, which is helpful. And they also have to do lab hours. So I'm already naming four different things that these students have to do just to be able to try to perform at a level and it's piling on, piling on, piling on. And it's almost as if I wish I could say, just give me them for a semester. Let me catch them up to speed. And then I can get them out within a decent cycle. It may be a semester more, but then that's better than me losing a suit for two and possibly three semesters because they can't do all the supportive things. We have embedded tutors. We provide free materials. We provide laptops. We provide internet service. We have study halls. I mean, it's exhaustive what we do, let alone the work that it is on me and my team is exhaustive. And I'll just end with saying this. My thought is perhaps the issue is not that we're offering them remedial courses to get them up to speed. Perhaps the issue is that the four-year colleges need to give them credit for doing the remedial work and getting up to speed. Why is it that they're taking these classes to bring them up to speed because our K through 12 is doing such a disservice for them and then we're not giving them credit for those courses that they go wherever that may fall. To me, that's where the issue goes. I tell my students, you have to show me what you don't know so that I can help you. Well, they're afraid. They're afraid because then they're like, I'm not going to pass the class and it just becomes an unending loop. So any resources, any advice, anything, I'm all there. I'll end by saying this. Another thing that I'm actively trying to fight and realize in is our assessment tools. Our assessment tools are so problematic and that's one of the other reasons that I keep our students in this loop and I'll get off my soapbox. Kendra, I love your soapbox. Kendra and I are colleagues at Noraco College. And Kendra, thank you for mentioning the need for remedial or developmental type classes. I'm a big fan of those as well, but I did like your solution that they deserve college credit. That would be the saving grace, I imagine, and reflecting their intellectual growth and effort. But I will say this too. I know that in God and Kendra, when you were just listing all the things at the English faculty, you guys do all the heavy lifting in teaching grammar structure style and academic style as well, which is why I wonder because I do this. Even though I teach American government, I do teach a little bit of writing skills. Like you get a point if you put an apostrophe, you know, when you use contractions, like things like this and students respond. So I really do wonder if there should be maybe more of a cross-discipline effort to kind of improve writing style a little bit, just so that all the English faculty members, they don't do this arduous task of, I don't know, bridging 10 years of poor instruction, you know, based on, of course, their background and coming from their neighborhoods. But anyways, that's my soapbox. Last thing I say, I promise. Thank you. Let's give the last word to Dr. Weidfalum. Any, I don't want to say defenses or kind of nations of AB 705 and the changes to remedial courses. I know that's like, we could be here the rest of the day, but any observations? Yeah, no, I think it's really valuable for us to hear the experiences of instructors, of professors at community colleges and how and whether these policies when implemented are working for students. So I really appreciate you sharing those experiences. And at the same time, when we look across the state, at the research that's been done, we see success when we see an elimination of remediation for students. We see a shortening of time it takes from beginning your community college experience to degree or transfer. So we're trying to be guided by the broad look at what the research is telling us, what happens when students are put into transfer courses and have those supports. It does sound like there's a lot happening and the supports might be overwhelming for students. So I think that's something that's important to consider as we continue implementing AB 705 but from where we sit holistically, we see at least it's incrementally, it's been successful. So that's what we can go off of and we absolutely acknowledge and think it's important that we hear what those experiences are on the ground so that we can refine our policy advocacy and priorities. So I definitely appreciate you sharing your experiences. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Yeah, it's been a wonderful session. We'll share the chat and all the love in the chat window. And I want to thank all of you for coming in. I know a number of you are on spring break and so I hope you're enjoying your last day of spring break. And we will see everybody in May in online before, I'm sure.