October 23, 2020
In response to the community outcry and BIPOC students sharing stories of discrimination, the Iowa City Community School District (ICCSD) has worked on implementing a number of new practices to help students of color in the district.
“The main focus of our work that we narrowed down really revolved around that professional development training, looking at our K-12 social studies curriculum, a new evaluation standard for teachers and administrators, creating a position for an ombudsperson,” Matt Degner, the Iowa City Community School District’s superintendent, said.
One of the new initiatives includes the creation of a position for an ombudsperson in the district. As defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary, an ombudsperson “one that investigates, reports on, and helps settle complaints.”
“So say something terrible happened to you or one of your friends in school and for whatever reason, you don’t feel comfortable going to Ms. Swan, Mr. Jespersen, or Mr. Bacon, you would reach out to this person, a district person, and say ‘Hey this event happened to me and I’m not sure of my options, but I wanted it addressed.’ And that person’s really what we see as a safe person, because they’re not going to do the investigation, and they’re really more like an advocate for you to make sure that that situation gets addressed,” Degner explained.
The district ombudsperson can navigate the system that an individual would have to go through, manage the communication with other parts of the administration, and serve as an advocate for the individual.
“When something tragic or substantial happens, it’s really stressful and overwhelming,” Degner said. “And then trying to take on the challenge of knowing who to report it to or how to file a complaint can be overwhelming, so that [ombuds] person is supposed to be an assistant for that individual.”
The district has started the year with mandatory training for teachers and staff, and has made improvements to professional development training that will continue throughout the year.
“So in the start of the school year, we looked at this in two different ways,” Degner said. “One is professional development. And that’s how we improve, right how we get better in our practice. And once we know better, we need to do better. And so the first thing we need to do is to try to provide professional development to our teaching and support staff. And then the other part is just general expectations about how we should essentially work together and live together in the school system.”
Additionally, students have expressed frustration in the history curriculum, claiming that the time spent learning about minority groups is less significant and in depth than the amount of time learning about more privileged groups, specifically white people. The first thing we need to do is to try to provide professional development to our teaching and support staff. And then the other part is just general expectations about how we should essentially work together and live together in the school system. — Matt Degner
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“I’ve learned so much more [about Black history] in the past five months than I have in school,” Lusala explained. “A lot of times because they like to whitewash education.”
Lusala is a part of the Iowa Freedom Riders school board committee which plans to introduce a full Black american history unit in the next few years. She also took initiative and started advocating for Black Lives Matter within the school district by setting up a meeting with Degner.
“We started off by finding a few Black teacher allies from within the school district, then we set up a meeting with Mr. Degner and like Ms. Malone, and had like a small meeting about if we were to bring this into a school board meeting with our demands, how it would look and like and who’s gonna stand on our side just to make sure we weren’t going in there without any support,” Lusala explained.
The Iowa Freedom Riders, along with the District Equity Advisory Committee, met with the school board on August 18 to discuss their demands, which include the need for more diverse representation, for ties to be cut with Johnson County Law Enforcement, and for different disciplinary processes. There are seven demands in total and the full list can be found here.
“The other component that also stemmed from that [diversity, equity, and inclusion] work and the movements from the summer would be that we met with the Iowa Freedom Riders and the District Equity Advisory Committee, and the board and the administrative team are moving forward on some action steps that are directly linked to that Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion plan to improve our system,” Degner said.
In December of 2019, the district rolled out a new Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) plan. Now, they are building upon that work as well as the demands from the Iowa Freedom Riders to create new DEI action steps, a list of which can be found here.
Although Lusala is unsure of progress being made, the Iowa City Community School Board committed to all of their demands.
“Matt Degner was so open to learning about our demands, committed to our demands and told us what type of progress he’s going to make towards our demands so he was really helpful in that sense,” Lusala said. “It’s frustrating being in these meetings sometimes but it’s all worth it in the end when you’re trying to fight for equity and equality.”
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