Joy’s Vision for Durham Public Schools
We must center and protect the humanity of all youth in their educational processes and throughout the Durham Public School system. When we build policies, environments, supports, curriculum, and pedagogy that honor the power, authentic voice, and humanity of our youth, their communities, and the teaching professionals and staff called to support their learning, our youth never fail to demonstrate authentic learning and mastery of skills, experience autonomy and purpose in their education, and help to create the healing and freedom practices and solutions necessary to interrupt historic and systemic inequities, racism, trauma, and dehumanization.
My reality is that public school was not a safe space for me as a child or as a teacher for many reasons. It pains me that many of our youth, families, and educators continue to feel the same way. The systems change work required to transform our schools into safer spaces for youth of all ethnicities, races, genders, and abilities requires the belief that we can shift that narrative to one where Durham Public Schools become a place of joyful educational experiences that respects, nourishes, cares for, and protects the hopes and dreams of each student at every grade level throughout the Durham Public School system.
Create Safer Spaces for Students and Staff
Our students and staff are brilliant and thrive in spaces where they feel safe to be authentically themselves. Our families send their very best children to our schools with the faith and trust that they will be handled with care in discerning and safe learning spaces. If we want all students to experience their greatest potential, we must do what it will take to nurture and protect the learning environments they require to thrive, be healthy and safe.
Our education staff of professionals, who collectively hold the responsibility of these learning environments, require the same courtesy of care, safety, and support to be effective and impactful. Supporting the whole child starts with students and families feeling safe enough to trust our schools with their lives, cultures, identities, social-emotional wellness and health. Supporting the whole child requires intentionality to build and maintain authentic relationships throughout our diverse communities. We want our students, families, and staff to trust our schools to care for each other. We want our students and staff to love coming to school everyday. I support the following approaches to ensuring safe and healthy learning spaces:
Provide mental health and wellness support in the form of trusted counselors, school social workers, and community partners for students and staff. Remove barriers to providing on site services for students and staff and establish more effective systems that make it easier - not harder - for communities to support our school populations.
Embrace the recommendations of the Durham Safety and Wellness Task Force for Durham Public Schools, including expansion of the HEART program to DPS and increased commitment to implementing restorative justices practices with fidelity in each school throughout DPS.
Advocate for a school construction bond to improve school infrastructure. Priorities include mold remediation where necessary so that Durham does not experience issues such as those experienced in Alamance this past school year, HVAC repair, and other needed renovations in addition to new school construction
Ensure that all new construction within DPS is environmentally sustainable with a net zero carbon footprint. Utilize geothermal heat pumps, water reclamation systems, solarization, installation of electric vehicle chargers in parking lots, electric buses, etc.
Center Students, Communities, and Educators
“The idea of interdependence is that we can meet each other’s needs in a variety of ways… It means we have to decentralize our idea of where solutions and decisions happen, where ideas come from.”
Decisions about the education of our youth should be made with our youth and their communities and not left to politicians in Raleigh or in corporate boardrooms. Often, these politicians and corporations have different motivations and principles contrary to the needs of our community. They have never set foot in a classroom, have no experience or relationships with our student populations, and show no effort to authentically engage the diverse and dynamic youth, families, and communities that our schools serve. An evolution to a greater model of what we can imagine public schools should be for all youth will not manifest in silos. DPS must build and support a spirit of interdependence throughout the district in order to provide excellent, equitable, inclusive, and culturally relevant teaching and learning. I believe children know what they want and need. Our students harness great power to solve complex issues in society and adults should learn to listen, to guide, and to trust our youth more. Families are experts on their children, vital to their success and well-being, and our schools' most valuable partners. Teachers are experts in student learning and build strong, powerful relationships with students. As a district we can model for our students what it means to feel interdependent, connected to community, and supported to thrive, be seen, heard, and valued.
As a school board member, I will support the following approaches to create a spirit of interdependence and shared power from the central office to every classroom in DPS:
Advocate for the DPS board of education to be very intentional and excellent models of Durham’s Equitable Community Engagement Blueprint.
Simplify strategies for families and communities to support schools and students, especially as related to cultural competence for youth through multiple ways of knowing and experiencing learning.
Trust the professional expertise of educators and other school workers when setting policy regarding curriculum and pedagogy. We can unify standards for content and skill development while recognizing that students learn best when teachers have the flexibility to make professional and culturally competent decisions about how best to educate the unique student population they serve.
Build stronger youth and family voice in policy decisions especially related to systems and cultures of learning. This could look like DPS partnering with Durham’s Office on Youth and/or the Protecting Our Dignity Coalition of Youth organization to organize youth-led student and family engagement forums as well as other models designed to promote democratic engagement and community buy-in across our demographics.
Invest in Student Learning
Public schools are a service and require great human resources. Investing in student learning means investing in our teachers and providing the quality tools and resources necessary for highly effective teaching and learning. We expect our students to authentically engage in learning, display their brilliance, and experience their own excellence. Nothing is more frustrating than the expectation to deliver something magnificent without the correct tools and resources.
An investment in student learning is always a great choice. Our students deserve to have everything they need to be successful learners and our teachers should have every support necessary to be effective and impactful with our students. I support investments that will:
Add instructional assistant positions in early elementary grades to facilitate 1:1 and small group instruction, with a focus on reading and math skills.
Provide resources to support alternative learning strategies and methods for students who are unsuccessful with conventional or standard learning methods.
Support competitive teacher pay to recruit and retain great teachers in DPS
Provide supplemental pay for hard to staff positions, including:
EC teachers and EC instructional assistants
ELL teachers
Interpreters
Bilingual front desk and students services office staff
Address the DPS teacher, bus driver, and substitute teacher shortage and its negative impact on student learning.