ALDP

Communities as Architects of Public Policy, Not Objects of Public Policy

Rachel Mayes, Southern Echo & Winsome Waite, The Opportunity Institute

Over the last 12 months, our communities have lived through a series of contrasting occurrences:  Economic devastation among low-income households and yet record surpluses in the state budget; a violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol to prevent the transfer of presidential power versus a return to competency in presidential leadership; the benefits of scientific education and process made real in the middle of a deadly pandemic even as would-be naysayers continue to flout science, reason, and the demands of equity in many of our states.  

Mississippi remains, as much as ever, a place where spirited new community leaders continue to rise in the image of freedom fighters like Fannie Lou Hamer and Ella Baker while the state remains locked in battle with the grown children of Jim Crow. For example, Mississippi replaced a key symbol of the Confederacy by adopting a new state flag in 2021, yet white nationalists have given up “dog whistles” for outright howling. Mississippians have gained historic and beneficial federal investments in public education, public infrastructure, and healthcare, but continue to face multi-front battles against entrenched white supremacy. The battles are manifested in many ways, such as the manufactured “outrage” over critical race theory, abortion rights, ongoing attacks on the integrity of the election system, and governmental disregard for the health of all.

As we stop for a moment of reflection, our next push forward for equity begins with a timely look back on the past.

Southern Echo was founded in 1989 to empower African American and low-wealth communities in Mississippi and the Southern Region with the knowledge, skills, and resources needed to demand accountability and to take action to secure political, education, economic, and environmental justice. Southern Echo uses an Intergenerational Model to empower communities, increase their understanding of important issues, and take action to improve their quality of life and wellbeing.  This includes learning about the historical roots of inequity, getting civically engaged and becoming the architects of public policy and not the objects of public policy.  

More than 1,500 miles from Mississippi, and 25 years after Southern Echo’s founding, the Opportunity Institute sprung to life. National leaders then were seeking new ways to support the advancement of equity in states through more strategic sharing of information, staffing and resources. Like Southern Echo, the Opportunity Institute supports practices and policies to advance equity for underserved communities – by integrating supports and services for the “whole child”.  This is accomplished by aggressively pursuing greater transparency and equity in the allocation of funding and resources, and by highlighting evidence-based approaches to serve communities. Southern Echo, a statewide organization, and the Opportunity Institute, a national organization – work together to effectuate impactful changes and to support policies and practices in specific school districts and their communities. Stakeholders in our targeted communities (Indianola, Greenville, and Moss Point) are knowledgeable of their needs and can impact policy by advancing effective strategies to meet their own needs.

The work of Southern Echo and the Opportunity Institute’s Whole Child Equity Adolescent Learning and Development Project is to put young people - with the help of all the adults around them - at the center of problem-solving and decision-making. Schools are the most pivotal and accessible locations for advancing equity in education and life within communities. We value the work of educators and recognize fully the enormous responsibility they carry. And we know that it takes more than the schoolhouse acting alone to advance academic learning and community wellbeing. This is why we build our efforts around the essential principles for learning and development: 1) strong and supportive developmental relationships; 2) environments that are safe and help people feel that they are valued and belong; 3) robust academic learning experiences grounded in social and emotional wellbeing; 4) culturally affirming development of habits, skills, and mindsets; and 5) integrated systems of support that attend to the holistic development of children and young people. 

The beauty of this work is that there is room for all of us– community organizers, lawmakers, parents, youth, educators, attorneys, stakeholders, marchers, protestors, and all others. The collective charge is to help all of us find the key roles we need to play in advancing equity, justice, and shared prosperity. These roles are deeply intertwined, and the strategy must include people of different ages and abilities. The recent passing of Congressman John Lewis is cause to remember that the Voting Rights Act finally passed Congress mere days after the march from Selma to Birmingham. Recall also that the historic march was only successful on its third attempt -- two previous efforts were thwarted, including the infamous “Bloody Sunday” attempt where a young John Lewis was brutally beaten.

After a late December respite, the lights are on in the statehouse in Jackson, and doors are open in the County seats and City Halls across Mississippi. We can take pride in the things that have undoubtedly changed for the better in the last year, as we acknowledge that there are tough fights ahead. Perhaps some of our victories may ultimately prove to be more superficial than structural, but we the people keep fighting.

The basic elements of the change we need are the same now as they were 60 years ago.  As Southern Echo and the Opportunity Institute collaborate with voices on the ground, we seek to ensure a common phrase often used in our work - “community must become the architects of public policy and not the objects of public policy.”

 

 

 

From Greenbacks to Backpacks: Transforming Public Education in Mississippi

Winsome Waite, The Opportunity Institute & Rachel Mayes, Southern Echo

In Mississippi, as in much of the United States, the re-opening of schools has been a study in contradictions: bus driver shortages amid huge federal investments in public education; bitter and uninformed backlashes against vaccination policies and “Critical Race Theory” amid broad consensus that students need positive and supportive learning environments. Recent National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) results showed Mississippi’s commendable gains in reading and mathematics but lost their shine with the familiar and persistent race-based disparities reflected in those scores.

With the highest overall poverty rate in the nation, familiar divides persist among the wealthy and the poor in Mississippi. More politically connected communities thrive while lower-income areas worry whether the electrical grid will hold up to the first freeze, or how much longer their children will have to drink lead-tainted water. To be fair, much of this can also be seen at a national level: even in the worst of the pandemic, while poorer communities of color struggled to keep the electricity on, the national economy was busy minting new waves of white billionaires. Some billionaires even decided to shoot themselves into space to keep busy.  

The Hard Truth about Progress in Education

Back on earth, those of us who sat through webinars and presentations watched a bevy of national experts, better known for giving sound bites about “transforming education” than for offering much in the way of actual help, talk briefly about the depth and reach of race-based entrenchment and inequity before quickly transitioning to easy platitudes and truisms. The mind boggles to consider what would happen if they and the Rocketeers got together to focus on the real-life challenges of providing just and equitable learning opportunities for all children.

In reflecting on inequity, it is worth remembering that our collective “mixed bag” of school reopening experience is not by accident – it is by design. To change the design will require a good deal more than merely writing, delivering remarks, and pushing reports and toolkits out to those who have the responsibility of “doing.”  

It's not just the experts on webinars, either. Far too many education and government leaders continue to believe that simply making funds available for impacted communities will be sufficient to “fix” longstanding inequities. Particularly in COVID-ravaged communities, there is no question that federal rescue funding through the American Rescue Plan, the CARES Act, and related legislation was essential. There is also no question that inadequate attention has been given to how this funding can be used to uproot racial inequalities by strategically addressing the full range of needs of young people in places like the Mississippi Delta.

Of course, there was insufficient time, given the urgency and lethality of the pandemic and the tight timeframes in which districts had to develop plans for use of the federal Elementary and Secondary Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds, to strategically target the use of these funds on eradicating the various pernicious manifestations of American racism. Still, a good portion –most, even most of this failure is attributable not to the urgent timeframes of the pandemic but to ongoing, built-in systemic factors.

When those in charge of allocating resources are those who have benefitted personally from the uneven playing field, it is hard to envision funds being used to comprehensively support low-income communities of color. While there are indeed leaders willing to undertake the challenging work of advancing equity in underserved communities, they are working amid great and urgent need, with severe time constraints, limited staffing capacity, and intractable state and federal bureaucracies. Most do not last long in their positions.

This is why, as we say in our work, “it takes a village”: more people in positions of power, those with knowledge, expertise, and resources, must undertake the difficult work of more actively supporting the implementation of policy. Even those in research must begin to connect more deeply with the work in school districts and communities. We must get beyond merely talking about breaking down silos; we must collaborate as a community in the actual doing of the work.

A More Equitable Path

Even well-intentioned policy and ample funding, when disconnected from local priorities and knowledge of actual conditions and practices, do not create equitable change. Our states and localities are littered with examples of good policy gone stale due to lack of attention to people and practice.

The work of Southern Echo and the Opportunity Institute in Mississippi is to bring together policymakers, education leaders, and community to better connect broad-scale work with local needs and assets. “Transformation” in public education is indeed possible, but only with a deliberate focus on money, mindset, and movement.

Listening Carefully to Community

Over the past few months, our organizations have engaged in a series of listening sessions with families, youth, community members, educators, and businesses in Sunflower County. From this work, we are learning what individuals at a local level are prioritizing with regards to education. They want closer partnerships with schools, more resources within the community, opportunities for workforce training and sustainable employment, and a major focus on adolescents and teenagers – those in school and those that have dropped out. They want to center equity in all of this to ensure schools do not return to the old ways that did not work for many of their children.

The basic idea of “whole child” education – that the success of the system is tied to meeting the full array of students’ learning and developmental needs – is the essential premise of our work. We are excited to be partnering with superintendents, school administrators, community, and business leaders in Sunflower County to support the “whole child,” and aim to do the same with other low-income school districts in the state and elsewhere. The alternative —empty platitudes—should no longer be an option.