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We recognize that many of you are in the midst of wrapping up the 2020-21 school year and as you are getting to the final stretch, the SIA team is providing a short update that includes a few reminders in this week’s message. As you complete this school year, we hope the summer offers a time for rest, reflection, and rejuvenation before the 2021-22 school year starts!
End of Biennium Wrap-Up
As a final reminder, please keep in mind the following items are due to ODE by the end of the day on Wednesday, June 30, 2021:
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EGMS Claims - please claim 100% of your SIA funds, even if you have requested a summer extension to continue spending funds through September 30, 2021.
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Summer Extension Grant Amendments - please sign and return the amendment (via the Smartsheet link) as soon as possible so we can process them before the end of the biennium. As a reminder, these grant amendments do not need to go through your governing board process in order to be executed.
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Progress Report 1 & Progress Report 2 - if there are any lingering outstanding items for your P1 or P2 Progress Report, please work to resolve them before the end of the biennium.
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Plan Updates For Current Grantees - please make sure you have submitted your plan update for the 21-23 biennium via the Smartsheet form if you are a current grantee. The last office hour opportunity for plan updates is on Wednesday, June 30, 2021 from 2:00-3:00pm - you can register here!
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New Applications - if your district didn’t apply last year or you are a new independent charter school that wants to apply separate from your district, please submit your SIA application via the Google form.
If you need support or have any questions about any of the items above, please reach out to our team at SIAinfo@state.or.us.
Increasing academic achievement for historically and currently underserved racial or ethnic student groups is explicitly named in the law governing the Student Investment Account. The opportunity-centered teaching Tenet #3 -- Naming, discussing, deciding and acting with Race -- from our initial resource share reminds us that educating is more than a deep understanding of your content area; it is intimately tied to reaching students across racial differences. Oregon’s context, with 89.2% White teachers and 38.5% racially/ethnically diverse students, highlights the importance of building White educator racial literacy in order to close persistent and predictable racial achievement gaps.
To that end, we share this comprehensive overview of promising practices that facilitate White educators' understanding of racial dynamics, allowing them to shift practice and policy to improve relationships across racial differences and increase academic achievement:
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Starting with oneself - White educators can begin their journey by acknowledging that they have absorbed racial biases through cultural systems and messages that impact their relationships with diverse students. By examining these implicit biases (the Implicit Association Test is a useful personal awareness tool), they can develop the tools needed to interrupt harmful habits.
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Discomfort signals progress - White educators ought to worry less about the appearance of lacking racial understanding and instead lean into discomfort as a “roadmap” to uncover implicit bias’ impact on our beliefs, practice and decision-making that uphold inequities, just as this White teacher of Black students did by vulnerably sharing her racial autobiography.
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Creating context for vulnerability - White educators can create brave spaces by developing common agreements to stay engaged, speak one’s truth, experience discomfort, and expect and accept non-closure, along with working definitions for terms like microaggressions, privilege, intrapersonal, interpersonal, institutionalized and structural racism.
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From discussion to action - The article shares an example of shifts that have occurred in Broward County Public Schools (Florida) as a result of dialogue about race: suspensions and student arrests have significantly decreased while access for students of color in Advanced Placement classes and gifted and talented programs has increased.
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Please send any questions or comments to SIAInfo@state.or.us.
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