We know students learn best when they are cared for and supported in school, see themselves and their cultures represented in the curriculum, and have access to enrichment opportunities. Unfortunately, our school systems were not designed for all students to thrive. BIPOC students especially face hurdles of individual and systemic racism including higher rates of discipline, inequitable funding, being passed over for academic opportunities, and curriculum that minimizes the many contributions of their ethnic and racial heritage to U.S. history and culture. While Washington State requires the inclusion of ethnic studies and the Native curriculum Since Time Immemorial: Tribal Sovereignty in Washington State, neither have been widely implemented in classrooms across the state.
In this two-hour session, you will hear from leaders in the field of education who are working to challenge assumptions and structures to make our public schools a place where BIPOC students thrive. You will hear about the importance of working with the assets of Black students and their families, learn how some school responses to the pandemic have supported BIPOC student learning, and learn about successful strategies being implemented for equitable change. This event offers a chance to reimagine public schools and to learn what you can do to support equity in our school systems.
Please join us to hear short speaker presentations and panel discussions, and to engage in small group discussions with other alumni around the topic of educational equity.
Presenters:
Bernadette Merikle, LT’11, Executive Director, Community Center for Education Results
Anthony Shoecraft, LT’11, Senior Director, Strategy and Business Development, Kingmakers of Oakland
Mary Fertakis, Honorary LT, M Fertakis Consulting, LLC, and on the Washington State Board of Education.
Trevor Greene, Honorary LT, Superintendent, Yakima Schools
Who: LT Alumni, current class members, Honorary LT, and guests
Cost: Pay what you can ($0-$50)
When: April 29, 2021, 6:00-8:00 p.m.
Where: Zoom - Register so we can send you the Zoom link the week of the event.
Presenters’ Bios
As the executive director for the Community Center for Education Results (CCER), Bernadette Merikle, LT’11, ensures community voice is centered in all that CCER does by leading from the front on race as we seek to create the actively anti-racist world we want to live in. They received their Master of Education in student development administration from Seattle University and their Bachelor of Science from Cornell University. Bernadette has spent decades calling the question on racial justice and reconciliation by shifting power in ways that redefine and reclaim agency and power stripped away from communities like the border town of El Paso, TX where they were born and the roadmap region of South King county. A joyful intersectionalist that always starts with race, Bernadette loves soup. You can find them at Vina Pho most weekends.
Anthony Shoecraft, LT’11, is the Senior Director of Strategy and Business Development for Kingmakers of Oakland. Previously, he served a number of roles at the City of Seattle, including Special Adviser to the Mayor in the Mayor's Office of Policy & Innovation and Strategic Adviser at the Department of Education & Early Learning following years of leadership in regional education organizing, policy and advocacy.
Anthony was selected for the inaugural cohort of the Harvard Business School’s Young American Leaders Program and graduated from the University of Washington (MPA, MSW) and Hampton University (Psychology). He is the most proud south Seattle native (Skyway) you will ever meet, giddy husband and father of two young children, and an enthusiast of all things cooking and chess.
Mary Fertakis, Honorary LT, is the CEO of her own consulting business, specializing in P-12 education and equity issues, and the intersection of education with housing, transportation, workforce, health, and human services policies. She is a Consultant with the National School Boards Association Equity Department, providing training and assistance to state school board associations on equity and diversity issues, and a member of the WSSDA Leadership Consultant Cadre, which provides training to school boards in Washington State. Fertakis served on the Tukwila School Board for 22 years, representing a school district that has been called the most ethnically-diverse in the United States. During her tenure, Fertakis served two terms as the Board President, seven years as the Board Vice President, 10 years as the Legislative Representative, and was engaged in the policy, resource, and culture shift as the district transitioned from being a majority White to a majority Students of Color district and community. Fertakis was the 2012 President of the Washington State School Directors’ Association (WSSDA), chaired the Association’s Nominating Committee, and has served on WSSDA’s Closing the Achievement Gap Task Force, Urban Issues Committee, and Diversity & Multicultural Action Team. She also served as Chair of the Washington State Federal Relations Network of NSBA, advocating for her students at the federal level for 21 years. She represented WSSDA on the Expanded Learning Opportunities Council, a task force of the state legislature, and served on the Early Learning Work Group for Washington State’s ESSA plan process. She is an original member of the Racial Equity Policy Design Team of the Puget Sound Educational Service District (PSESD) and WSSDA, which created a process for school district leadership teams to develop Race and Equity policies, and delivers this content through a series of all-day convenings.
In year one of his current position as superintendent of schools in the Yakima School District, Trevor Greene, Honorary LT, led the development of a six-year strategic plan with systemic equity as a non-negotiable. His leadership resulted in fiscal stability of a 250-million-dollar budget that was 15 million dollars out of balance, and the District initiated a transitional kindergarten program for underserved students to enter school fully prepared to succeed. Year two brought the initiation of elementary dual-language programs and the establishment of a Department of Racial and Educational Justice. During the pandemic, the Yakima School District led the state in the distribution of meals to all children, regardless of whether they attended the District, and free Internet access for every student within district boundaries is on schedule for full realization this summer.
As a principal on the Yakama Indian Reservation, Trevor led a high school with a 99 percent poverty rate to unprecedented success. He worked with staff and partners to establish nationally certified engineering and biomedical programs, and his students realized a near 95 percent graduation rate and a 67 percent increase in state science scores. Subsequently, Trevor was selected by his colleagues as the Washington State High School Principal of the Year and is the only principal from the Pacific Northwest, and first Native American, to be recognized as the National Principal of the Year by the National Association of Secondary School Principals. Following this honor, which included meeting President Obama, Trevor completed the first principal fellowship for the Association of Washington School Principals.