- [Announcer] This is a production of PBS Charlotte.

- Just ahead, it's back to school time for the first time in more than a year.

Students meeting in person full-time, parents and teachers now faced with new challenges.

43% of Charlotte-Mecklenburg students at-risk of falling further behind.

How will CMS bridge the achievement gap widened by school closures and virtual learning?

Join us for a special conversation on seeking unity.

We're talking with parents, teachers, and a CMS board member to explore how the community can work together with the school system to help students recover from pandemic learning loss.

Our Seeking Unity special on Education Equity starts, right now.

- [Announcer] PBS Charlotte presents a special Carolina Impact: Seeking Unity.

- Good evening, thanks for joining us.

I'm Amy Burkett.

60,000 CMS students not performing at grade level.

That's nearly half of the student population.

Our local numbers are not that different than national numbers, which show Black and Latino students and students in high poverty elementary schools hit the hardest, the largest declines in math.

Over the next half hour, we're digging deep into the issue of learning loss recovery, the teacher shortage, and the big question, how do we create equity in education?

Let's meet our panelists right now.

We begin with Carol Sawyer.

She is a CMS board member representing District Four Charlotte's East Side.

Carol, CMS is working on multiple equity initiatives.

What is the biggest challenge in creating equity for CMS right now?

- Well, I think right now our first goal is to get kids back in school, where we can put hands on them and assess what their needs are.

Our children are coming with widely different experiences over the past year.

Some have experienced tremendous loss, others, other kinds of trauma, and we need to get them into the classroom where our staff can assess both their academic needs and their social emotional needs.

And once we have a clear picture of what our student needs are, thankfully we have funding from the American Rescue Plan to target those needs specifically.

- Well, that'll get us started.

Next, we have Dr. Devonya Govan-Hunt, Executive Director of the National Black Child Development Institute here in Charlotte.

She's also a former fifth grade teacher, and the mother of a CMS sixth and ninth grader.

Thanks so much for being with us.

Let's talk a little bit about the biggest issue that you've seen and the challenge to get kids back to school.

- There, of course, there are a number of challenges, right?

But we like to focus in on the opportunities for our children and our families.

So they are dealing with some emotional and social issues, some insecurities, some trust issues from a family's perspective, and so one of the biggest challenges would be just making sure that we bridge the gap between home and school and the community, and that we are actually meeting our children and our families exactly where they are.

- Thank you so much for being here.

Also, joining us is Deborah Boyce and Melissa Veloz, both CMS middle school teachers.

Let's start with Deborah.

You're at MLK Middle and Melissa, you're at Whitewater as teachers.

How are you feeling about being back in the classroom?

- I am so excited about being back in the classroom.

In order to serve my students and help them, some without their mothers or fathers in this country, I need to be in the room with them.

I need to be building those relationships with them, and that's what brings me joy as a teacher.

- Excellent.

Thank you so much.

Your turn.

We want to hear.

- I'm excited as well.

However, I will not be starting back initially.

I'm giving it a little time as an individual who is immunocompromised and a high risk household with individuals with illnesses.

I'm actually going to just kind of ride it out for a little bit.

I've never missed an opening day in over two decades, and so there's a bit of a sadness there, but excited that our children are able to get back into the building.

- Thank you so much.

You know what?

We want to mention that we invited CMS leadership to join the conversation, but the district declined due to scheduling conflicts.

Now, before we talk about the plans for this school year, let's first get a lay of the land.

We all experienced unprecedented change.

What our students and teachers are dealing with in terms of some of the aftereffects caused by the pandemic.

Let's start with Dr. Govan-Hunt.

How are we handling this, and how do we help get them off to a good start this year?

- Absolutely.

I think right now we're handling it as best as we possibly can.

One of the things that we can do for sure as a community and making sure that our children and our families and our teachers get off to a great start is actually kind of moving away from the deficit based language and look at the opportunities that we have to do something great to rebuild better and bigger, and make sure that our teachers feel supported, that our children are getting the education that they need, and that our families are looped into the conversation because we can't do this without them.

- It definitely takes a village to do this.

Well, let's talk about the learning loss and what CMS can do to bring students back up to speed.

Right now, there are more than about 140,000 students, and at least 60,000 as we mentioned in the open are considered at-risk, meaning they're falling behind due the pandemic and not up to grade level.

Now CMS offered Camp CMS, a state mandated six-week summer camp as a first step to help students catch up.

Here's a look at those numbers.

Just over 20,000 students attended at least one day in the first week, and just over 1100 of them were considered at-risk.

Now there was a pretty steep attendance decline with just over 11,000 attending in week six.

And of those students, about 7,500 fell in the at-risk category.

Carol, let's talk about what were some of the challenges with attendance?

- Well, I think with any voluntary program, it was mandatory for CMS to offer the program, but voluntary for participation.

You know, family events come up, vacations come up, so students, there was some attrition and some in and out, but I think the students who attended had access to the kind of small group instruction that they so need.

And we like to actually talk about unfinished learning rather than learning loss.

We're trying to frame this not in a deficit mindset as Dr. Govan-Hunt mentioned that we're really looking at unfinished learning.

And so our, you know, we will meet children where they are, and Camp CMS gave an opportunity to thousands of children to address some of that unfinished learning, but clearly we will have more in the coming months.

- Deborah and Melissa, did either of you work with Camp CMS?

- [Deborah] I did not.

- [Melissa] No, I did not.

- Nope, Nope.

But Dr. Govan-Hunt, you have your own summer camp not tied to CMS, is that correct?

- [Devonya] That is correct.

- Tell us a little bit about what that summer camp was all about.

- Well, first of all, it was super exciting to have the children back into the building.

One of the opportunities that we took advantage of was actually having conversations with parents, so that with family, so that we can actually provide them with tools and resources to march the children back into the school year.

So it was definitely obvious that our children needed to be in front of us in a classroom setting, so that they can receive the instruction that they needed, and so that we could go back and recover some things that they probably missed, you know, just a little bit of during the remote learning, sit down period.

- Did you see, was there excitement in the students to be back together?

- They still don't want to leave.

- [Amy] Oh, that's beautiful.

- They're super excited, absolutely.

- Well, you know, teachers really had to get creative this past year with virtual learning and keeping students engaged.

The CMS teacher retention rate is almost 90%, slightly higher than the national average, but some of those teachers aren't returning.

So let's talk about the teacher shortage.

There are 9,400 teachers in CMS, and as of this taping, there were 123 vacancies and 175 teachers on extended leave.

So let's break down those demographics a little bit more.

The majority of CMS students are black, while the majority of CMS teachers are white.

80% of the teachers are women.

Also the largest student-teacher gap is in Latin X students with CMS doing, what are they doing to recruit more teachers, and specifically teachers of color?

Let's talk about it from a board standpoint.

- Yes, absolutely.

We acknowledge that the teacher demographics that you mentioned are frankly national figures.

The demographics of teachers has historically been predominantly female, and we are making some inroads.

We are being intentional about addressing that.

We have expanded our reach into recruitment.

Actually one of the things that our HR team has learned that during COVID with virtual job fairs, that they were actually able to reach more students of color per you know, growing future teachers of color to attract them to CMS.

So, I mean, one of the benefits that we have gained from experiencing a year and a half of COVID is that we have learned new tools, tools that we will carry forward.

- [Amy] One example of a tool.

- Well doing virtual job fairs, so that's one thing in terms of teacher recruitment.

We also have an in-house program to grow our own teachers.

We have teaching assistants and other staff members who may have a bachelor's degree, but not have teacher licensure.

And we have a program to bring those staff members and others into the teaching profession, and the participants in those programs are majority future teachers of color, so we're very pleased that we are growing our own.

- How long does that take though?

- It would take a couple years.

It's a program they are able to continue to work while they participate in the program.

But the fundamental problem in the teaching profession is pay.

I mean, that is nationally, and especially in North Carolina, which ranks near the bottom in teacher pay that prevents people from saying to their child or their grandchild or their niece or nephew, gee, you should go into teaching.

- And if you do you may be going up north 'cause you're gonna make more money.

- Right, because in North Carolina, after 25 years in the classroom on the state pay scale you're in the mid-50 thousands.

That's after a career in teaching.

- Or you can start out around 50 if you're up north.

- And if you choose a different profession, you can, you can start double that.

And when you think about things like student debt and how much it costs to go to college, it's not, - [Amy] It's difficult.

it's not a great proposition economically.

- I want to hear from our teachers.

Deborah and Melissa, in the classroom, and let's start with you Deborah, as a white teacher with minority students, where do you see the challenges with a different representation?

- I think that your priority is building relationships, and luckily that's always been the focus of the principals that I've worked for.

You have to build trust, and being from the north moving down to the south, that was right in my face.

I had students ask me, like, why are you being so nice?

And I knew that his mom worked third shift, and he probably didn't eat breakfast, so I was offering a snack.

Or I have another student who's living with his brother, his parents are in Mexico.

So I just try to be my authentic self, and let him know because I'm all about you and building that relationship.

If you think back, all the subjects are important, but in your life, it's the teacher who was kind to you, who was compassionate, who gave you that joy to go to school, and that's where I want to be.

I have my business degree.

I made more money before.

So this is a choice, and the pandemic made it very difficult to be at home.

It was the most difficult year of my life, and I am so happy that we can move forward and I can share my joy of teaching with all of my students.

- Thank you.

Melissa, I want to hear from you.

- Well, I have to kind of piggyback off of what Deborah just said.

The idea that building relationships is essential, and thinking about not just the relationship capacity that you build with children, but with adults as well, and that gums in line when we think about administration that comes in to play.

When we think about relationship and the extension with say board members, and and just building that community.

I heard you mentioned a while back, it takes a village and thinking about the village and that whole wrap around process, so when we think about where we are present day with our students, I always say that I'm not just here to exclusively teach.

Before I can teach you, I have to be able to reach you.

In order for me to reach you, I have to know something about you.

I have to understand you.

And so when we go back to that question you asked about the keeping teachers of color.

Well, it is a pay issue across the board for all everyone, but a lot of that comes into play too with when we think about developing these inclusive environments.

Inclusivity.

So therefore we can have the diverse environment.

We start out that way, but how do we maintain it so that it stays inclusive?

And the same thing happens with our children when we teach.

And I've had conversations with, you know, the diverse teachers, women of color, Caucasian women, and just even coaching teachers, and being in their space so that they understand that you must be able to understand this child.

This child is a package.

What they bring to you on a daily basis.

I might not be prepared to learn.

You have to make sure that you get me ready to learn.

So more than ever with this pandemic, we have to be prepared for our children who are coming at us, and not just thinking that we're just going to sit here and we're going to get down to business academics.

- Thanks, Melissa.

Dr. Govan-Hunt, as a parent, I want to give you a chance just to put your mom hat on.

Talk to us a little bit what you saw in your kids personally struggling with this virtual learning, and also as a former teacher and an educator and you're still, you're advocating, how do you, how do you make progress?

- So for my own children, I have a rising ninth grader and a rising sixth grader, so right now we're in a big transition period for both of them.

With the ninth grader, it was pretty much kind of a portion, she represented a portion of what our CMS teachers have experienced through the remote learning.

She can take it and fly with it, right?

Because that was her field.

She can kind of self-guide.

She's self-motivated.

Then I had another one who has health challenges, who unfortunately was sitting in front of a screen with teachers who were not always culturally responsive and don't understand what culturally relevant and inclusive or affirming learning environments, even in a virtual setting is.

So we had to do, it was a struggle with that one because we weren't able to meet her virtual, you know, where she was, and match her learning style.

As we move into the school year, the way that we make progress is by making sure that we are taking time to create inclusive affirming learning environments.

- And how do you do that?

- How you do that is by, just like my colleague over here said, you want to meet them exactly where they are.

You have to understand the environments and the communities that these children are coming from.

You have to look at their parents and their families as an extension of them and as a partner in this process.

You cannot do this work without the families.

You have to take off that deficit mindset, and start looking at people through a strength-based lens, because this is an opportunity to do something different.

The pandemic did not cause all of this.

We like to say COVID caused this.

COVID merely provided a magnifying glass for people, and to kind of see what was going on the entire time.

These families been living this for years, right?

So we have to first acknowledge that, and then kind of take a step back and say, how can we meet them where they are by being culturally relevant, responsive, and creating an inclusive learning environments?

- Thank you, Dr. Govan-Hunt.

Well COVID did create a lot of change, which made it extra challenging for families.

Let's talk about what it takes going forward to get students back on track.

We were just sharing a little bit of that, and particularly with those 60,000 students that have fallen behind.

We can focus on it from a strength-base, but we've got to help them get there.

What are some of the equity initiatives in place, Carol?

So we're talking about this now, so that we can focus on their strengths.

- Sure.

CMS has a number of equity programs because equity touches all aspects of our students' lives.

Everything from our disciplinary practices, which we are shifting to a restorative practices to build a culture that supports behaviors, and that keeps children in the classroom.

Time matters, the amount of time students have in the classroom, and if students are being kicked out of class for behavior, that doesn't serve them educationally.

So CMS is being very intentional about instituting restorative practice, practices to keep kids in the classroom so they can continue to be served and support them and their behavior in those classrooms.

So that's one.

We are also being very intentional about pushing students into advanced classes and to remove barriers to entry to advanced curriculum, because we know we have brilliant students who are not taking full advantage.

- I want to go to Melissa for a second.

When you see at that middle school level.

- Mm-hmm.

- It's probably an important time to get them ready because those advanced classes often, you know, really focus on high school.

How do you do that in middle school to get them ready for that?

- Well, I believe in what I call the delicate dance, and my colleague here, when you said the idea that we have to leave the deficit mindset behind us, and that's what always helps to build that relationship capacity, and I think about the fact that we need to be able to yes, remediate, but truly accelerate.

That's the delicate dance.

It's not always a thing of what you come in lacking, that deficit.

It's the supports and the scaffolding that our students need, and the confidence that we instill in them that they know that they can do.

That they have that.

- But how do you accelerate?

If someone's struggling, let's use reading as an example, and we all know we've seen the statistics.

If you're not reading on grade level by the third grade, it really gets harder.

How do we, how do we do this?

- You still present children with challenging text.

- [Amy] Mm-hmm.

- You do, you give them the opportunity because they will eventually climb up, and if they feel that they're secure and safe in your environment, that you're not going to leave them, then they even on their own will go home, and they will practice more.

They will want to be that student that makes the strides and the gains because they, what I've learned, the children tend to do more for me than they'll ever do for themselves.

And when I show that I have that belief and that love, and I want to give and see them succeed and be successful in life, and that can-do attitude that you will be a success.

And a lot of times we listen to our children, especially our children of color.

They've never heard this before.

They don't get this conversation, and because there's so much in society that overshadows the negative, and that's what they see.

That's what they feed into, but as we hear here on the panel that I keep thinking about that wraparound service.

So how do we get them there?

We have to have the wraparounds.

We talk about the behavior, so now we have to understand, why are they acting out?

I don't come to school to be a troublemaker, to be put out of class.

There's something else going on, but, you know, and that comes to even as an educator, being schooled and taking the time and understanding like, I need to reflect.

What role do I play in this revolving door in this child's life?

- Dr. Govan-Hunt, let's talk a little about what your organization does to help the community.

- Yes, absolutely.

So BCBI Charlotte, our mission first of all, and I think that's important for people to understand, is to improve and advance the quality of life for black and brown children and families through education and advocacy.

So we provide literacy programs.

We partner with people who are on the ground actually doing the work.

So Read Charlotte, for an example, is a really strong partner of ours.

And we believe in family empowerment.

So we're not just going to shove a flyer or a packet in front of a family.

We're going to partner with our teachers.

We're going to support our teachers by showing our families how to use the resources, the material that's being put out there.

- Because often the challenges, perhaps some of the families, haven't had a good education experience on their own, so how can they help it be better for their children?

- Right, so that's one of them.

This is such an onion.

It's so many different avenues and layers, right?

But that's definitely one of them.

And the other is our families trust.

- [Amy] Yes.

- They trust, and I'm gonna say this on camera, they trust our district and our system a little bit too much.

And what I mean by that is they take their children and they send them to school, which is a big thing because they got up, they got them ready, they got them to school on time, they're dressed, they're clean, they have their school supplies, and they think that that's it.

The district, the school system is going to do exactly what it needs to do when that's not necessarily the case.

So we remind them that you have a huge piece in your children's academics.

- You have to advocate for your children.

- Exactly.

You're the first and most important educator, and a lifelong advocate, and we're going to help empower you with what you already bring to the table using a strength-based lens, so that they don't feel like they're doing it alone.

And so that when the school board gets together, and have to make these difficult decisions every single day, they know that they got a community out there that's going to support them, that's going to challenge them, that's going to push back because they're going to show up for their children every single time.

And that's what BCDI Charlotte does.

- Thank you.

Deborah, talk about in the classroom.

How do you see this happening?

- I think that you have to build that culture with your classroom.

You're building them up.

You're giving them the confidence, the belief in themselves.

You're not there to tear them down.

Sometimes I have to remind myself that because I'm human, and so when there is a behavior, you have to get to the core of it, what, why?

Because Melissa is right.

They don't come to school to act out.

So you have to provide them with small groups, with literacy programs in middle school.

So if they miss that in elementary school, we have to fill that gap in of unfinished learning, figure out what they do know and give them that confidence.

And sometimes they don't hear it at home so you have to give that to them.

- Is there an issue with not having culturally relevant books, enough for these people to young people, to be able to see themselves to be encouraged?

- Oh yes, yes.

- So, I live in a bilingual family and my husband is from Spain, so my son has been lucky at NCMS to have a bilingual education.

So I have to go out and look for the stories, and they are available and I teach other teachers.

So that's my job, is to give my experience and background to all the teachers I work with, and I'm lucky it's very diverse at MLK.

- Thanks, Deborah.

Final word, Carol.

I'm going to let you have it because time has just evaporated before us.

- Sure.

CMS has been investing in the last couple years and is rolling out curriculum, English Language Arts curriculum from K-12 that is intentionally culturally relevant and culturally responsive.

I look through the reading list for middle and high school, and there are authors and characters that represent a much broader slice of world culture than has ever been present before, and that's just one step that CMS is taking to make our students see themselves in the education that we're providing.

- I hate that we have run out of time, but I want to thank each of you.

Carol Sawyer from the CMS board, Dr. Devonya Govan-Hunt, Deborah Boyce, and Melissa Veloz.

Thank you.

Thank you ladies so much.

I know we've just scratched the tip of the iceberg, but working together, hopefully will be the point.

We hope this conversation has provided insight and hope into how we can work together as a community to create more equity in education.

If we want to see change, we must all do our part to stay informed and engaged, and we'll continue to create a space for transparency and authentic conversation here at PBS Charlotte.

Thank you all for joining us this evening.

We appreciate your time.

Good night, my friends.

- [Narrator] A production of PBS Charlotte.