Racial Justice for All Children Task Force (RJAC) Had a Busy Year

In 2024, RJAC was active on a number of fronts, including developing new avenues for promoting racial justice for our youth.

Education Advocacy Group (EAG)

This group focused firmly on monitoring the implementation of new early learning literacy requirements as outlined in Wisconsin Act 20, for which RJAC had advocated in 2023. This advocacy took place on a number of fronts. With the Madison Metropolitan School District (MMSD),  the EAG met twice with Gabi Bell, MMSD’s director of Literacy, Bi-literacy, and Humanities. MMSD had begun its pivot to a science-of-reading based literacy curriculum prior to the passage of Act 20. We learned the following:

 

1. MMSD will continue using its current screener, as the Department of Public Instruction has not yet selected a required screener(s) as part of its Act 20 implementation.
2. MMSD will create individual reading plans for students with low reading scores by January 2025. The outline of these individual plans will be available to the public soon. 
3. MMSD is working on support for families and tutors, and Ms. Bell will be connecting us with this team.

The proposed 2024-25 MMSD budget identified literacy as THE district priority and proposed funding 20 additional positions at the K-1 level to support this effort. The EAG facilitated an advocacy campaign with the MMSD Board  regarding this proposal. RJAC Co-Chair Shel Gross presented in-person testimony at the June 24 Board of Education meeting, and six MOSES members sent written testimony, including MOSES President Saundra Brown. Saundra also met with new MMSD Superintendent Dr. Joe Gothard and described their meeting as inspiring and hopeful. She will be connecting the task force with Dr. Gothard, who said he appreciates MOSES’s advocacy work.

Early Literacy Curriculum Council (ELCC): Act 20 created the ELCC, which was charged with identifying curricula that meet the requirements of the law. Schools purchasing these curricula would be eligible for state grants to support part of the purchase price. The EAG connected to the ELCC through one of its members, whom we met through a parents’ advocacy group called Decoding Dyslexia. EAG member Judy Fitzgerald was also monitoring the work of the ELCC. The EAG successfully advocated for a shorter list of high quality curricula that the ELCC had identified, rather than the longer list of curricula put forward by the DPI that minimally met Act 20 requirements. 

Sun Prairie Area School District (SPASD): Our April meeting featured a presentation by Lisa Goldsberry, Sun Prairie School District Board member (who recently resigned due to other district issues). Lisa spoke about concerns with the cultural content of the new Sun Prairie literacy curriculum; MOSES had sent a letter in March to SPASD leaders and board members regarding these same concerns. Lisa also told us about the changes that she and others had made regarding who should be part of the team addressing these concerns and how that work should be done. SPASD worked with the curriculum’s publisher, but it does not appear that the publisher plans to make any changes. Led by EAG Chair Tracy Frank, we advocated on a number of fronts for consideration of appropriate cultural content – especially as required by other state statutes, such as Act 31 – in selection of curricula eligible for grants.

Department of Public Instruction (DPI): At our November meeting, we welcomed Barb Novak, the head of Wisconsin Reads, which is the DPI office in charge of implementing Act 20. Her presentation put Act 20 in the larger context of the various education requirements that schools need to meet. She discussed Act 31, which requires an instructional program that provides understanding of human relations, particularly with regard to Native Americans, Black Americans, Hispanics, and Hmong and other Asian Americans. This was in response to concerns the EAG had raised about the SPASD curriculum. Barb also discussed the Wisconsin Standards for English Language Arts, which also encourage texts that reflect diverse experiences. Barb also talked about the DPI’s relationship with the ELCC, which she says has improved. 

Coalition Building: Members of the EAG have done networking on a variety of fronts: attending the Wisconsin Association of School District Administrators (WASDA) meeting, participating in a literacy event at the Goodman Community Center, participating in the Wisconsin Reading League Conference, and meeting with the director of the Literacy Network.

Looking Ahead: A huge disappointment this year was the state Legislature’s failure to release the funds that were appropriated to defray school districts’ costs for purchasing approved Act 20 curricula and hiring literacy specialists through the DPI to support implementation. The EAG anticipates working with the Legislature on a “trailer bill” to address this failure, as well as the concerns about the curriculum content.

Housing Group

In 2023, the Housing Group (HG), along with other members of RJAC and MOSES, participated in a successful effort to have the state Supreme Court shorten the record retention period for eviction cases in which no money judgment is entered from 20 years to two. The HG monitored implementation of this rule change into 2024, when it was finalized with a modification to address a previously unidentified conflict with another state statute.

Through 2024, the HG continued to discern how best to respond to the wide variety of housing issues currently in play, including the challenges of advocacy for affordable housing in a market that is driving housing costs higher. Given the prominent failures in low-income housing developments that dominated 2023, we seek to stay informed and speak up as people in newer housing developments encounter chaos. The reorganized Education and Advocacy Committee of the Homeless Services Consortium has welcomed MOSES’ partnership in their efforts. In support of these goals, the HG engaged in the following in 2024:

• Met with Diana Shinall, director of the Salvation Army Family Shelter on Milwaukee Street, to learn about the services provided, people served, and regulations. Diana shared considerable information and extended an invitation for the HG members to tour the facilities at a later date.
• Met with Kennedy Elementary School Social Worker Bridget Cremin to discuss the impact of housing insecurity on Kennedy students. Kennedy has the highest number of housing-insecure youth in the district. She highlighted the severe housing situation in the area, including the troubled low-income Harmony, Meadowlands, and Ace apartments housing units; and the Salvation Army Family Shelter, which serves 35 families experiencing homelessness.
• HG members and others in RJAC submitted written and oral testimony to the MMSD Board in support of Kennedy Elementary becoming a Community School as part of the 2024-25 budget. This will allow them to receive more resources to support children and families.
• Learned about implementation of a $2.5-million grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development that was awarded to the Dane County Consortium of Care in partnership with Briarpatch. The program is designed to help communities support homeless youth, typically ranging from ages 12–24. Unlike many other HUD grants, the program requires that youth voices be heavily included throughout the planning and implementation stages. 

In her role as Board member of the Homeless Services Consortium, Patti La Cross engaged the HG in the Dane County Homelessness Summit in November, part of “Homeless Awareness November” events. Both Patti and RJAC Chair Shel Gross attended the summit and reported back on potential advocacy options going forward. During the 2023-24 school year, 2,284 students experienced homelessness in Dane County, and it looks like that number will be exceeded in the current school year. Patti noted two connections between homelessness and incarceration: (1) that incarceration of an adult often contributes to their children experiencing homelessness, and (2) that the experience of homelessness, itself, increases the likelihood of criminal-legal system involvement. Increasing rents and other landlord requirements are contributing to this. Services to these families are not readily available in many areas of the county, and lack of transportation to get to services was a recurring theme. Financial literacy is important for our youth, and educating adults on the requirements for obtaining and maintaining housing is also needed. The HG will look at some potential advocacy opportunities arising from this event. 

Restorative Justice and Wellness

Under the leadership of Barbie Jackson, RJAC is building on the restorative justice and school wellness work it engaged in during 2023. In January, RJAC collaborated with the Public Safety Task Force to hold a MOSES-wide gathering about school safety. The 39 people who attended shared their thoughts about the following question: What do you feel are the most important factors for creating safety for everyone in our schools, especially our Black students, who are more likely to be responded to in ways which lead them into the school-to-prison pipeline?

Responses fell broadly into five areas: increase youth community engagement; increase the number of teachers, administrators, and support staff with enhanced training; address life stressors such as lack of affordable housing and the behavioral impacts of these; use more informed interventions, e.g., social-emotional learning and nonviolent crisis intervention; and use school resource officers (which had both proponents and opponents). RJAC was unable to come to consensus on how to narrow down these issues. However, we noted that a number of the issues are being supported through the new superintendent’s Wellness Advisory Group. These are items that MMSD is already interested in, and we have a connection to that process through Barbie’s participation in that group. We agreed we would move forward by monitoring that advisory group and identifying key topics of interest for MOSES. A small group has been meeting, with the goal of creating an issue proposal.

As part of the MMSD budget advocacy in June, RJAC members also supported these two items related to restorative justice and wellness: 

• Funding the MMSD Restorative Justice (RJ) project manager, whose federal funding lapsed at the end of June, and calling for funding at least one additional school-based RJ coordinator for Capital and Shabazz high schools. These two positions were not in the proposed budget.
• 10.4 additional FTE positions for mental-health support professionals.

Barbie and Shel continued to engage with MMSD RJ program staff and RJ coaches at some of the high schools. They were part of a Community Conversation about Restorative Justice in Our Schools event in April, which was co-sponsored by Freedom Inc. and Families for Justice. Attendees learned how RJ was rolling out in the four comprehensive high schools and had an opportunity to participate in circle practice similar to what is being implemented as part of this program.

RJAC was pleased to welcome MMSD Restorative Justice (RJ) Program Coordinator Kat Nichols and her colleague Lonna Stoltfus to the November general meeting to talk about and demonstrate how RJ is being implemented in the MMSD. There was interest in follow-up activities that we hope to report on moving forward.

 

Transitions

In 2024, we restructured RJAC’s meeting schedule. Instead of having the task force meeting and the two working group meetings all on different weeks, we combined all meetings into one, using a variety of experimental approaches to keep us actively engaged in each area of focus while increasing our synergies and efficiency in meeting schedules. The working groups alternate taking responsibility for a focus topic for the month in which the entire task force participates. We then have breakout time for each of the task force groups to address their specific issues and concerns. This has reduced the time demand of meetings but still allows us to move forward on our issues. 

As they have assumed leadership roles in MOSES, Saundra Brown and Barbie Jackson have reduced their leadership roles in RJAC. Shel Gross transitioned into the task force co-chair and then into the chair role by the end of the year. Tracy Frank is chairing the EAG. We are grateful for the work that Saundra and Barbie did in developing the task force and leading it through its infancy.