After an extended period of unblemished success and good relations with the School Board, Interim Superintendent Susan Moxley hit a bit of bump in the road last week when the board rejected the draft African American Achievement plan she submitted, saying it lacks clear goals and a way to measure the district’s progress.
School administrators now are scrambling to revise the plan, which lays out a multipart strategy to increase African American student academic opportunities, grades and graduation rates. Moxley and her staff want to get the board’s stamp of approval on the plan so they can submit it by the end of this year to a federal judge as required by a 52-year-old federal desegregation order the district is under.
“I don’t want you to approve anything you’re not comfortable with,” a visibly disappointed Moxley said during the board’s Nov. 12 work session when the plan’s shortcomings were discussed.
“We can take it back and work on it, but I still have an equity department of one, and a team of administrators wearing three or four hats. I still don’t have the extra support to write the plan to the level it needs to be developed.”
Moxley said she and other administrators will try to bring a revised plan back to the board in late November or early December
It’s important to submit a plan soon so that the district can show the federal judge it is taking steps to comply with the desegregation order. However, the submitted document does not need to be a comprehensive, fully developed plan, which will take more time to put together.
“This is basically a starting point,” Moxley said of the plan she offered the school board. “I see it as a fluid plan that will be added to in the months and years ahead.”
Most board members expressed support for the overall Achievement Plan but agreed some changes were needed. For example, one goal listed in the plan is to try and close the achievement gap between African American and white students by 2.8 percent each year.
According to school records, African American student proficiency rates in English and math lagged about 30 percent behind white students during the 2018-19 school year.
“I’m not satisfied by saying we will improve by 2.8 percent each year,” Board Vice Chairwoman Mara Schiff said. “I think we need to do better and set higher goals.”
Board member Tiffany Justice said she will not support the African American Achievement Plan “because I don’t think it meets the needs of all of our students.”
Justice also vigorously opposed the plan’s proposal to hire two additional staff to work in the district’s equity department. Currently, the department consists of only Equity Director Deborah Long. Justice said the hiring of additional staff was too costly.
“If we’re going to be devoting money and time, I want it to be used to put more staff in the classroom,” Justice said. “We need to put the best people in these positions and utilize them for the best interest of all our students. I don’t think this plan does that.”
Despite Justice’s objections, other board members voted to allocate funds to hire a data analyst for the equity department. Board members, minus Justice, also said they planned to approve funds to hire a “teacher on assignment” at their Dec. 12 meeting. Duties for that position would include working with teachers and principals at different schools to implement strategies to better meet the needs of African American students.
Rather than invest in the equity department, which is focused on helping African American students, Justice argued the district should instead create an equity, diversity and inclusion department that would serve all students in the district.
Her idea prompted a quick rebuttal from Schiff, who reminded Justice that the district is under a court order to specifically improve academic opportunities and success rates for African American students.
“I don’t disagree with you about the inclusion part,” Schiff said. “I do think we should have a department like that. But we are currently under order about this one thing, so I want to think through how we elevate this issue that has been a problem for more than half a century, and make sure this is the issue we’re addressing.”
Creating and implementing an African American Achievement Plan is part of an agreement the district reached with the NAACP to settle a lawsuit the civil rights organization filed to force the district to comply with the five-decade-old desegregation order.
Under the leadership of former Superintendent Mark Rendell, and a previous board, the district spent more than four years and $775,000 battling the lawsuit. Moxley and the current board have shown a dramatic change of heart, working with the NAACP to begin complying with the desegregation order.