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JOIN OUR MOVEMENT Over 10 years we will train and support

fundamentally changing how BIPOC students experience public education in the United States.

2,500School Board

Members

Representing

25%of majority-minority school district board

across all 50 states,

Prioritizing a set of regions where we can train and support 25%

of minority majority districts — 2,500 school

board members — in anti-racist policy-making. The lessons learned from

this group can then be used to scale nationally;

Supporting and recruiting a diverse

cohort of equity-minded individuals interested in running for school

board and prepare them to be knowledgeable

candidates; and

Creating and disseminating a national

framework and toolkit for school districts across

the country to assess their policies through an anti-racist lens and access resources such as a policy library. This includes the creation

of a dashboard that will evaluate districts on the

extent to which their policies are equitable.

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OUR 10 YEAR PLAN INCLUDES THREE STRATEGIES

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School Board Partners believes that our nation’s school boards aren’t diverse enough, prepared enough, supported enough or bold enough. This results in school systems that perpetuate racism and oppression and fail to close the opportunity and experience gap between kids of color and their white peers.

We believe smart, prepared, courageous, representative school boards can interrupt these systems and create

antiracist and equitable policies and practices to help our black and brown kids thrive and self actualize.

School board members make life and death policy decisions every day - about who has access to their schools, whether students feel safe and connected to school, how school police officers are trained, the impact of discipline policies on students, curriculum content and messaging, transparency for families, school choice and equity, health and safety protocols, and allocation of resources. Policy decisions like these, and more, have a direct impact on whether our students end up in prison or in college, on track for healthy lives, or tagged as delinquent or deficient and blocked from receiving opportunities to thrive. We will dramatically diversify school board leadership and equip school board members with the ability to evaluate, craft, pass and execute policies that disrupt racial disparities for students.

THEORY OF CHANGE

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We start with individual school board members and work with whole boards when they are ready. When working with individual school board members, we focus on their skills, knowledge and mindset, by providing the supports outlined below to these leaders in a fellowship setting:

There is enough content that we could easily create a full-time 2-year graduate degree program for school board members. Unfortunately, most school board members we work with have full-time jobs and are unpaid or underpaid volunteer board members, with limited time for professional development for their volunteer role as a school board member. Therefore, we have prioritized and narrowed our curriculum to fit into six 3-day convenings (3 per year) and 18 monthly webinars (9 per year), plus an optional certificate in Education Finance from the Georgetown Edunomics Lab.

FELLOWSHIP PROGRAM

A national cohort and community of practice of ~40 courageous

school board members from ~30 cities, with affinity groups that focus on specific regions, roles

and priorities

An individual mentor or coach A summer policy fellow to provide short term policy writing

capacity

An optional paid policy-writing fellowship

Access to a library of resources and exemplar policies and

toolkits

A 2-year curriculum of content on how to be an effective anti-racist

school board member

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FELLOWSHIP PROGRAM

African American: 49%

White: 21%

Latinx: 24%

Bi/Multiracial: 4%

South Asian: 2%

OUR FELLOWS

53ELECTED LEADERS

41CITIES

3.9MSTUDENTS

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Our content and curriculum falls into 6 categories, which we believe are the most important levers of power that school board members have: Effective board governance; Hiring, managing and evaluating an anti-racist Superintendent to manage a portfolio of high-quality schools; Strategic and equitable financial and budget management; Anti-Racist policymaking; Community engagement and organizing; Individual leadership, politicking and communications.

Within those six content categories, we have 32 modules. Our fellows go through all 32 modules during their 2-year fellowship, and we pick and choose modules for whole board training based on their board self-assessment.

CURRICULUM

EFFECTIVE BOARD GOVERNANCEHIRING, MANAGING AND

EVALUATING AN ANTI-RACIST SUPERINTENDENT

STRATEGIC AND EQUITABLE FINANCIAL AND BUDGET

MANAGEMENT

ANTI-RACIST POLICYMAKINGCOMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT AND

ORGANIZING

INDIVIDUAL LEADERSHIP, POLITICKING AND

COMMUNICATIONS

• History of School Board Governance Models

• Racial equity and governance • Board self-assessment and

commitment to improvement • Governance goals and

guardrails

• History of the Disenfranchised & Rise of Reform

• Introduction of SBP Rubric, CRPE Rubric & BELE Framework

• Creating Policy to Advance Racial Equity

• Tools of the “Policy” Trade• Passing Policy with HELP• Intersectionality – disability,

poverty, LGBTQ+, language, gender

• Pro’s + Con’s of policy efforts during the “accountability era”

• Anti-Racist Charter Authorizing

• Your budget is your strategy• Education finance 101• How to analyze inequitable

and equitable budget practices

• Budgeting best practices • A transparent and accessible

budget cycle process

• Defining your personal theory of change

• The role of board presidents and vice presidents

• How to whip votes and build coalitions

• How to leverage your interns and volunteers

• How to maximize a coaching relationship

• How to set up your life to maximize your goals

• The search process for an anti-racist Superintendent

• 100-day plan and goal setting with a new Superintendent

• Annual cycle of management• Evaluation of an anti-racist

Superintendent • Managing a system of diverse,

high quality schools

• How to build long term community demand for change

• The organizing cycle and power mapping

• How to plan and execute a personal communications plan in support of your (hopefully shared) Board goals

• How to make your board meetings welcoming and accessible

• Student, parent, and staff voice in board meetings

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Ultimately, we work towards each of our fellows bringing forward (and hopefully passing) the following nine priority policies in their district:

We also believe there are some necessary state-level policies that will move barriers out of the way for school board members to be their most effective selves:

We evaluate our success and the success of our fellows in the following ways:

POLICY PRIORITIES

Equitable Procurement Practices – redistribution of wealth to MWBE Businesses

Differentiated funding formulas that account for centuries of compounding racism and oppression

Diverse and culturally appropriate curriculum

Diverse staffing at all levels

Required racial equity training for all staff and students

Anti-Racist superintendent evaluation

Confession of the wrongs and racial equity audit (resolution)

School boundaries, school choice and common enrollment, so that every student has real access to a high-quality school and data to make decisions

Discipline practices steeped in restorative justice and trauma-informed practices

School board member living wage law with income requirements

State-level equitable funding formula

State-level policy encouraging school board members to receive professional development

State-level policy requiring curriculum standards in social studies and history to be diverse and culturally appropriate

State-level resolution encouraging school board members to participate in racial equity training

Fellows take a pre-assessment and post-assessment each year using our Anti-racist School Board Rubric. The goal is for each fellow to move to level 4 in at least three categories each year

Fellows pass (or at least bring forward) at least 2 of our priority policies, or a policy aligned with our anti-racist rubric, each year

Number of fellows who take on the role of President/ VP of their Board

Anti-racist Superintendents hired

Number of fellows who complete racial equity training

Number of fellows who seek re-election

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Our impact from our first 2 cohorts:

We have a proven track record of supporting school board members over the past 2.5 years, and we are well-positioned to dramatically expand our reach and impact. To date, we have launched three cohorts of school board fellows, 90% of whom are leaders of color, impacting roughly 3,988,925 kids. Our fellows have successfully stepped into President and VP roles and have passed a dozen exemplar anti-racist policies, leading to real change for students, families, educators, and community.

Our groundbreaking rubric for anti-racist school board leadership describes what an effective, impactful and anti-racist school board member looks like, and guides our fellows through goal-setting, mentorship, and action. With further investment, we can add significantly to our bank of exemplar policies and toolkits to be accessible to all school board members nationally.

IMPACT

32FELLOWS

24CITIES

7BOARD PRESIDENTS

6BOARD VICE PRESIDENTS

12ANTI-RACIST POLICIES OR

RESOLUTIONS PASSED

1,627,968STUDENT IMPACTED

12STATES

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Dismantling white supremacy within corporate and nonprofit organizational cultures is a critical part of the work. We started with the belief that every conversation and decision must be grounded and centered in the lived experience of people of color.

Therefore, we will never have a cohort, meeting, panel, Board of Directors, or mentors who are less than 66% POC. We believe that in order to counteract the dominant white supremacy culture, we need to ensure that at least 2/3 of everyone involved in making a recommendation or decision at SBP are people of color.

School Board Partners has also committed to working with 100% minority-owned (WMBE) businesses, vendors and contractors – from the meeting spaces and caterers we book, to our bank and professional services, to our consultants and contractors. Anyone who claims they can’t find high-quality minority-owned businesses and firms to work with simply isn’t looking hard enough.

OUR APPROACH TO DIVERSITY, EQUITY & INCLUSION

Ethan serves as the Board President of the Orleans Parish School Board. Ethan has an extensive policy background that includes positions on the Hill, Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, Urban League of Louisiana, Black Alliance for Educational Options, Anti-Defamation League, and Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Urban Affairs. He serves on the boards of the National Juvenile Justice Network, Boy Scouts of America Southeast Louisiana Council, and the New Orleans Regional Leadership Institute. Ethan was also a 2014 fellow of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation’s Community Leadership Network.

Carrie has an extensive background in education as a former teacher, school leader, district leader, funder and national nonprofit leader, including leadership positions at Boston Public Schools, Aspire Public Schools, Rogers Family Foundation and Education Cities. Carrie is an alumnus of Education Pioneers and the Broad Residency in Urban Education. She has a Bachelors in Education and an MBA from Boston University. Carrie is an elected school board member for Bend-La Pine Schools where she serves as Board President. Carrie also owns two successful small businesses and has two daughters.

After graduating from Emory University, Jasmine joined Teach for America as a Miami-Dade corps member and received her M.S. in Education & Social Change from the University of Miami. Jasmine is an Atlanta native and represents her hometown as the youngest elected member on the Board of Education at Clayton County Public Schools, Georgia’s 5th largest school district. Most recently, Jasmine served a neighboring state department of education as a Public Policy Fellow for Leaders for Educational Equity and graduated from the Atlanta Regional Commission’s Regional Leadership Institute.

Our greatest strength is our internal team of three diverse elected school board members. In addition to our school board leadership, we bring significant experience as successful entrepreneurs and small business owners, as well as deep experience in education, policy reform and advocacy.

Quite frankly, there are very few high-quality supports of any kind for elected school boards, and we are the only organization in the country focused on supporting anti-racist school boards with a focus on policy. Our small but mighty team brings a critical combination of diversity of race, gender, age and place, and a deep commitment to school boards as a critical lever of change for our country.

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OUR TEAM

ETHAN ASHLEYCO-FOUNDER & CO-CEO

CARRIE DOUGLASSCO-FOUNDER & CO-CEO

JASMINE BOWLESVICE-PRESIDENT OF STRATEGY & PROGRAMS