Education Pioneers Fellowship Experience

I’ll admit it, I’m not a business minded person and I don’t have a background in economics. In college, the closest I came to the business school on my campus was using the side stairs to cut to my dorm. I have a decent grasp on basic concepts in both, but that was never my element. So when our EP staff told us we would be having a workshop on school decisions around finances at Boston Public Schools (BPS) for the day, I was interested but not nearly as eager as others in my cohort who had been anticipating this topic. I was really just looking forward to getting the school district perspective in light of my placement at the state. Truthfully, I only had a few questions on school budgets. Yet by the time we made it to our first break after guest speakers, I had at least three slightly illegible pages of questions and thoughts in my notebook.

Our first set of speakers included the CFO and Deputy CFO of Boston Public Schools. They spent the morning sharing that the district was about to shift to a weighted student funding model as of this coming academic year. Essentially, money allotted per student is now need based and built on a system that directs more funds towards students who may be low income, an English Language Learner, or in Special Education. The goal is to provide equitable distribution among schools so that they can adequately meet the needs of their student population. So here it was, 9 am on a Friday morning and I had some key players behind this new model sitting in front of me asking our cohort to push their thinking and challenge their system. We were told, “This is as much for you as it is for us.” With 44 deeply invested minds in the room, the Q&A session at the end of their presentation was an experience that will remain permanently etched into my brain. I’ve always understood there was an overlap between my policy background and their work around budgets, but this experience was inviting everyone to the table to dissect something that will be impacting 130+ schools. What could work? What might not? How is this system really going to affect Boston’s students during this first year? This day hadn’t started out as being a part of “my element” but the concrete line that I’d always dawn between business, finance, and policy was long gone. The picture I had initially started with looked very different now.

The next panel had directors from enrollment, strategic planning, and the Assistant Superintendent for Special Education. Those who know me well nodded or smiled at me as we settled in because this was group of people who I’d been waiting weeks to finally have in a room. My background is in Special Education and English Language Learners so I’ve always been drawn conversations around these students. Little by little, some of the gaps between decision making, funding, and operations were finally being filled in for me. By the time we broke for lunch, we’d heard from incredibly influential people at BPS. The day continued with a visit from Scott Morgan, the founder and CEO of Education Pioneers and kept going with three leaders from significantly diverse schools in the Boston area. Glancing at my notebook after their panel, I realized that the stream of thoughts I had jotted down would definitely need some reorganization later on.

After all of it, I had to consider that the knowledge and ideas that I was walking away with were just as much from our guest speakers as they were from my cohort. Different backgrounds have a unique way of framing a question or thinking about something. As leaders engaged in active education reform, this type of conversation naturally lends itself to something we may not have originally considered. One of the best parts about this fellowship experience is that I don’t have to sit at the table with a specific business, law, policy, or economics lens because it all has to work together to develop great schools, support quality leaders, and create genuine progress. It all depends on our collaboration and willingness to invite others into the room for conversation – maybe not just cutting through the side stairs.

We are five weeks in, half-way through the EP experience. Knee deep in our projects and sites, many of us have not had, nor made, time to get to know our cohort members well. This may be especially relevant for a large cohort of 50, like DC. I was guilty of being too busy to be present outside of workshops until Friday after our Human Capital workshop. The discussion ending our Human Capital workshop was rich. Led by Valerie Evans, we entered into a new level of group cohesion (I’m a psychologist in training, so my references often relate to my field). Someone took a risk and was vulnerable with the cohort about her insecurity in education reform work, which was tied to her lack of classroom experience. That opened up dialogue where we processed the benefits of various perspectives in this work, while we also noted the limitations of all involved (educators and law, policy , and business people). Some people felt that there was a need to have an education background, and others disagreed, but we did so in a way that brought us a bit closer. So, after that session, I had an opportunity to further engage this discussion with a few cohort members at Jazz in the Park.

In EP, there is another way to look at Human Capital. We are human capital to each other. The value of conversing with cohort members outside of our formal setting brought me out of my work-focused isolation. I got to know an EP staff member and two other cohort members a bit better, and the conversation was the kind that can only be had when one feels safe. We talked about a little bit of everything, but my take away was that the value in our human capital is that we can capitalize on our experiences to be of service to this reform movement. My experience as a Black woman born to working class parents in a small rural town who is transitioning class as I obtain higher levels of education is somewhat unique and very valuable to our conversations. Sometimes I struggle with how much of that I should share, because I don’t know how others outside of that experience will perceive me. But after talking with my cohort members, I realize the importance of speaking from my worldview.

This weekend restored my courage to engage in the difficult conversations and to challenge those who intend to be helpful, but lack insight into the realities of rural and urban students. I look forward to spending more time cultivating these relationship and engaging in the type of sharing that will greatly impact the way we think about the systems we intend to influence, and what our contributions might be.