Addressing Equity Starts With Listening
Honoring Student Voices
Students are experts on their experience of school. Listening to students and coming alongside them to enact change can be a powerful and effective way to make informed policy decisions that benefit all students.
In the fall of 2020, based on student requests and in partnership with Santa Rosa City Schools, Sonoma County Office of Education set out to hear from students of color to understand individual struggles and the larger picture of the minority experience in Sonoma County schools. We don’t see this as a manual for solving racial inequities, but an opportunity for educators and the community at large to begin to understand new perspectives on our schools, paving the way for positive, inclusive changes to curriculum, classroom environments, and campus communities. By listening to our students, we can ensure that everyone has the support they need to be healthy, feel welcome, and find success in school.
This report seeks to further amplify student perspective by highlighting common problems and challenges individual students and specific groups faced, while also making note of proposed solutions. We discovered many shared trends across the groups, so we’ve organized our analysis by those trends, while also presenting unique observations found within each group’s forum to accurately reflect the different lived experiences of racial inequity. Looking beyond this document, we’re focused on how to bring these perspectives, insights, and solutions to life across the broader community. It’s our feeling that limiting our impact by only considering campuses and classrooms is to sell the people of Sonoma County short — specifically those facing inequities across the community.
The Student Voices Series was held in the Fall of 2020. These virtual panel discussions provided a platform for students from representative racial and ethnic groups to speak to their experiences at schools across the County. Their involvement didn't stop with the Forums; many students from each event continued to be involved in the larger leadership discussions, driving the direction of our work and keeping their perspective at the center of all activity. In this way, the project is truly a reflection of the student voices we're advocating for. By setting this example, Sonoma County Office of Education looks forward to ongoing conversations, projects, and an evolved environment in which student voices are given space to breathe, thrive, and grow.
Thanks to Our Moderators.
The Student Voices Series would not have been possible without the support and leadership of Sonoma County Office of Education/Sonoma County Superintendent of Schools. The strength and success of the series are a reflection of all who were involved, including the moderators and organizers.
Diann Kitamura, Santa Rosa City Schools Superintendent
Delmar Billy, Restorative Specialist, & Elizabeth Billy, Native American Community Worker
Monique Luke, Vice Principal at Montgomery High School
Gabriel Albavera, Principal at Elsie Allen High School
The Forums Were Created as a Partnership Between:
The Starting Point.
Through these students’ voices, we find a strong call to action: we can’t sit by and do nothing. The student perspectives and recommended solutions that follow can be used to better understand the experiences students encounter on campuses and in classrooms across Sonoma County. Schools should take student voices seriously and take concrete steps to address their concerns so that all students feel safe and engaged.
Working with a diverse group composed of students and educators representing districts across the county has resulted in recommendations for districts to adopt and put into place, largely informed by the students who participated in the forums. Many districts are already engaged in this work and we applaud their efforts.
