Musings for the week of October 21st

Thursday will be a BLT meeting. Department chairs will be updating the school improvement plan and developing tools for the all school learning walk in December.

Friday's Learning Improvement Time is employee directed. Please use the time in whatever way you feel is best to improve learning experiences and opportunities for students.

We began the year designating the bathroom in the nurse's office as our one single stall bathroom for students requesting additional privacy. The volume of students requiring that bathroom however has been more than we can manage and has made facilities unavailable for students who need them due to illness.

For that reason, we will need to designate one of the single stall bathrooms near the counseling offices for student use. We have submitted a work order to the district to have it re-keyed so it will be a student use bathroom. Once the rekeying has taken place, students requiring access will sign in and out at the counseling reception desk where the key to that door will live. We know this is less than ideal and that it is taking a bathroom away from staff. That said, it is important, particularly for our LGBTQIA students that we have a single stall bathroom regularly available to student. Unfortunately this is the best option for doing that. We also have designated one of the bathrooms near the main office for students on behavior contracts due to misbehavior in bathrooms.

The Racial Equity Team is a group of staff, students, and parents that works to design, coordinate, and organize building level activities in support of the district’s equity initiatives, policies, and strategic plan. The team supports the school’s improvement efforts by leading for the elimination of policies and practices that contribute to group-based disparities including those based on race, gender identity, sexual orientation, nationality, disability, and language. 

We lead with and center race (but don't stop there), because we understand that race cuts across all aspects of identity and that within marginalized communities and groups, there are race-based disparities that need to be named and addressed. In other words, racism exacerbates how communities of color experience sexism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, and other forms of marginalization and for that reason race needs to be consistently, considered, named, and centered even as we work to address those challenges more broadly.

Over the past couple of years, our Racial Equity Team has been taking a deep look at practices which will guide us in being as welcoming, inclusive, and supportive as we can be to ensure that all students have the best possible educational outcomes. In partnership with district leadership, we conducted a Landscape Analysis to assess where we are currently, read Glenn Singleton’s book Courageous Conversations About Race, and learned how to lean into challenging conversations with one another.

This coming year, we will be focusing on increasing family engagement and unpacking the information gleaned from the Landscape Analysis with our full Mariner community. We look forward to ongoing conversations amongst all of us as we strive together to make Mariner the best learning community that it can possibly be. If you have any questions about our work, please feel free to speak to any of our team members.