CES embarked on a critically important initiative in December of 2013, to heighten awareness and understanding of what social justice and equity means to each one of us, to our collective work, and to our ability to embody our mission and core values. We began this journey by forming an in-house planning team to help inform our thinking and planning around issues of social justice and equity. Over the course of a year, the planning team and other individuals engaged in a number of meetings and learning activities that resulted in four facilitated Professional Learning Communities discussions and a final SJE mission/vision statement.
In FY2014, we launched the CES Social Justice and Equity (SJE) Initative, and embedded this initiative and our SJE values into our 2016-2020 strategic plan. Our movement includes all CES staff and begins with an internal effort to heighten awareness and understanding of what social justice and equity means to each one of us, to our collective work, and to our ability to embody our mission. We hope to then engage with our external partners in meaningful dialogue and action.
Since 2014, CES has made an agency commitment to both internal and external work explicitly in SJE. Internally, we have been engaged in self-reflection, learning, and action about social justice, equity, inclusion, and anti-racism, providing training retreats and workshops, professional learning groups, dialogue groups, and affinity circles for our staff. CES has invested in dedicated SJE specialist time for internal work in these areas, and has worked to infuse SJE in our programs, services, proposals, and interactions. Externally, we have provided PD, coaching, assessments, and strategic planning in these most challenging issues for several member districts and others.
To help us strategically and productively move forward in this initiative, the SJE planning team sought out consultants well-versed in social justice work who could help us.The SJE planning team plus several others had our first meeting with Dr. Barbara J. Love and Dr. Russell Vernon-Jones in February of 2015. Our next steps include an intensive two-day social justice retreat in April, which involved the CES Leadership Team, the SJE Committee members, and several other staff, including staff members who are People of the Global Majority (POGM). The primary goal of the retreat was to build our organizational capacity for engaging in and leading with this work.
In 2015, CES adopted SJE goals, including a goal to ensure that all policies, procedures, and practices align with and reflect social justice and equity values. (This includes employee handbooks, job descriptions, recruitment, reimbursement, HR orientation, measurements of diversity, etc.). To further this goal, the CES SJE Platform worked on developing a framework using two national models for consideration: Equity and Empowerment Lens, Multnomah County, Oregon County, Office of Diversity and Equity; and the Anti-Oppression Framework Community Organization Toolkit, Springtide Resources Inc. HR is currently championing this approach. CES policy review includes multiple levels of consideration: (a) legal compliance, (b) risk management, (c) CBA considerations, (d) language clarification, (e) equity framework assessment, (f) implementation barriers and (g) best practices. CES’s Executive Director, in partnership with the HR Department and policy review workgroup, advises and recommends policies and revisions to the CES Board of Directors Board Policy Committee members.
In addition to policy revisions, CES has developed a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Plan for Recruitment, Retention, and Employee Engagement. This formal plan incorporates the SJE principles, goals, and identified strategies to build equitable policies and practices throughout the organization’s core operations and programs.
Over the past five years, we increased our support to districts and other partners. CES partners with our member Superintendents on in-district work as well as joint public position statements such as letters to state agencies as well as local news outlets. We also facilitate a monthly group of 36 Superintendents to dialogue about and get support with equity issues in their school districts.
We are facilitating monthly dialogue/action groups focusing on the characteristics of White Supremacy Culture. We support social justice mediation when bias is a part of conflict between employees. Since we have vastly different areas of work focus, our social justice and equity specialists provide on-call technical assistance to department leaders and schedule 1:1 meetings with leaders to support thinking through their unique equity challenges in their departments.
Remote work and the COVID-19 pandemic make it difficult to slow down. The pandemic has also presented an ongoing challenge of supporting relational work in a fully online environment. It has been a core part of the CES commitment to this work that our specialists and facilitators have employed multiple strategies to place relational work at the center of each project, interaction, or endeavor.
We continue to share resources and hold spaces for reflection and dialogue with both internal and external groups on a regular basis to support this work. In FY21, CES entered a new strategic plan process in partnership with our external strategic planning consultants, Strategy Matters. The strategic planning process has been intentionally designed to be inclusive, reflect our social justice and equity principles, and ensure that voices are heard from all levels of the agency.
