Embedded Files
I currently work at Equitas Academy 6 (EQ6), the 6th charter in Equitas Academy Charter Schools. I am a proud founding teacher of the school and was initially interested in applying for school leadership and had the opportunity to connect with our former principal, since we were acquaintances at our previous charter network. When she told me that she was founding a school, I was attracted to the opportunity, but more so to her vision. I remember her describing a vision based on anti-racism, social justice and equity. I had never been a part of a founding school and was excited to join the team. More specifically, I was excited to build out structures and systems from scratch at a school that I knew could prevent perpetuating inequities that I have seen in the public education sector. Unfortunately, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, we opened fully remote in the 2020-2021 school year. Out of the 6 schools in the network, there are 3 schools that are middle school (G5-G8) and 3 schools that are elementary (TK-G4). Last year, we served 3 TK/K mixed classes and this year we have 2 1st grade classrooms and 4 TK/ Kindergarten classrooms. Our school’s plan is to expand by 1 grade level every year until we reach 4th grade. Our school’s mission was fully developed by our network staff and our former School Director (principal). Our school’s mission, as pulled from our website, is to “provide a structured, achievement-based community that prepares students to graduate from four-year colleges and universities. Equitas Academy Charter School provides a high-quality education and challenging school experience”. EQ6 is based on a model of high expectations, college readiness, family partnership, and a safe/supportive school community. There are 8 “core values” that our network follows including: curiosity, optimism, gratitude, grit, self-control, social intelligence and zest. As a school team, we are in discussions of changing our core values to make them more grounded in anti-racism, since we have given feedback to our network on why some of these “core values” are problematic and perpetuate inequity. For example, a core value that currently exists is “self-control”, which currently states the following definition: “Regulating what one feels and does; being self-disciplined”. This core value has been flagged as being inequitable because it implies a focus on compliance and negates all external systemic barriers that our students face.
As for our political context, we are given somewhat autonomy from our overarching charter network, however there are several items that are “non-negotiable”. Such items include, but are not limited to, operations plans, family handbooks, and bell schedule requirements. Schools are given some autonomy in regards to curriculum, hiring staff and school culture systems. All schools within the network have “common measure” goals that all campuses are trying to achieve, with markers regarding student achievement, staff retention/satisfaction, financial health and parent survey data. As a charter organization within LAUSD, we are subject to certain rules and regulations given by the district. As a social context, our founding Principal no longer is with our school site and in March of 2021, I became Interim School Director. Because of the abruptness and lack of transparency with the transition, there currently exists a high level of distrust from the staff members at our school site with the network team.
Located just north of the El Salvador Community Corridor in Downtown Los Angeles, 92.2% of our families are Hispanic. I am proud that out of the 6 homeroom teachers, 4 of the teachers are teachers of color. Three of them identify with the main demographic of our students, Latina, and 1 of them identifies as Black. We have 4 support staff, 3 of which are folks of color, and the rest of our operations and janitorial staff represent our school’s demographic. Our school is 93.6% free and reduced lunch program, 59.9% emergent bilingual and 12.6% Special Education. A specific set of our marginalized students who are at risk are those who are emergent bilingual (EB) students. Given that we are in our 2nd year of founding and 1st year on school site premises, we are still building the school culture, routines and operations that create environments conducive to strong ELD support and instruction. Priorities have been placed on other instructional areas first, such as the Math curriculum and Phonics. I am hoping to provide more comprehensive training and practice to ensure that staff feel supported in implementing strong Designated and Integrated ELD instruction. Minimal training has been provided to staff on scaffolds of how to support our emergent bilingual students, and that has been reflected in the data. Our network, although existing for 13 years, just hired a Director of ELD in 2019 and has just recently instituted a 2nd position related to ELD. From a network perspective, across all testing grades within Equitas, only 13% of EB students met or exceeded the standard in mathematics on the SBAC, while around 73% of English Only, Initially Fluent English Proficient and Reclassified Fluent English Proficient met or exceeded the mathematics standard on the same assessment. Specific to my school site, emergent bilingual (EB) students have performed significantly lower on the NWEA MAP assessment, with the average percentile being 24.70 for EB students and 59.04 for non-EB students. In addition, parent attendance is lower for EB families, with an average of .67 hours of attendance at school meetings than non-EB families, with an average of 1.63 hours of attendance at school meetings. This is deeply concerning because it demonstrates a significant equity gap between the data of our EB scholars and families and the data of their English proficient peers and families.
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