Growing up in a family that valued and prioritized education, and who loved her and constantly told her how capable she was, was a huge boost to Darielle Blevins as she went through school. It also proved to be a helpful, and necessary, buffer.<\/p>\n
\u201cComing from a family that was always very affirming and telling me I could do anything that I wanted was a stark contrast to when I would encounter discrimination or bias or racism. I was able to say, \u2018Wow, this is not me, this is you,\u2019 or, \u2018This is a system,\u2019\u201d she says. \u201cSo, going to college and learning this language of, \u2018What does that mean?\u2019 and that this is not me because my family already told me that I\u2019m great, so how can I help replicate that for children who don\u2019t grow up in that kind of family? What does it look like to have a teacher that could do that same type of affirmation, so that when a child encounters bias, racism, or just meanness, that it bounces off of them and they\u2019re able to stand in who they are? That\u2019s a lot of my work, thinking about helping children create that resiliency and then flip it to say, \u2018OK, what\u2019s wrong with this system? What is this that I need to call out?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Blevins is an assistant research professor at Arizona State University with The Children\u2019s Equity Project<\/a>, a partnership between researchers and advocates at a number of universities and organizations across the country, focused on closing gaps and increasing equity in the systems that affect the lives of children and families. She is also a panelist at \u201c(Eco)Exchange 38: The Truth About Inequity in San Diego\u2019s K-12 Schools\u2014From Understanding to Action,\u201d organized by the Sister Cities Project<\/a> from noon to 2 p.m. Saturday at the Pacific Highlands Ranch Library.<\/p>\n The Sister Cities Project is a nonprofit that works to address institutional racism<\/a> with partnerships between affluent communities and more underserved communities. According to their Equitable Schools Fund<\/a>, public funding for schools are determined by budget fluctuations and absenteeism rates. When comparing schools in North County with those in southeastern San Diego, those gaps look like the ability to establish parent teacher associations and school foundations in areas of North County where families can provide a suggested donation of $750 per student each year to make up for funding shortfalls, versus schools in southeastern San Diego that don\u2019t have that kind of access to resources.<\/p>\n Blevins, who is based in San Diego (and is also a niece of Dajahn Blevins<\/a>, founder of the annual Kuumba Fest<\/a> celebration), has a background in early childhood education and research and has been with The Children\u2019s Equity Project for five years, where she conducts research with families to discuss their needs in raising their children, and leads trainings and professional development around culturally responsive education. She took some time to talk about some of the work to make our systems equitable for families and children. (This interview has been edited for length and clarity. For a longer version of this conversation, visit sandiegouniontribune.com\/author\/lisa-deaderick\/<\/a>.)<\/p>\n Q:\u00a0Can you talk about your family, upbringing, and its influence on your current work and point of view relating to the needs of children and their education?<\/p>\n A:\u00a0I definitely learned from my family to love myself, and I think that that\u2019s what gave me such an asset-focused, or a strengths-based focus, when thinking about education\u2026My dissertation was actually working with Black girls to draw dual self-portraits. They drew a portrait of their true self, or their inner self, and then they drew a different portrait of how they thought their teacher saw them, so they could separate them and understand that it doesn\u2019t have to be the same thing. That\u2019s how I take my family background \u2014 which is very strong in education, very affirming\u2014and then saying, \u2018How do I help other people have this experience?\u2019<\/p>\n Q: From your perspective through your own work on this topic of inequity in education, what are some misunderstandings people tend to have about equality in our local schools? And what are some of the realities of the inequities that local children face in the school system?<\/p>\n A:\u00a0From the work that I\u2019ve done in, I don\u2019t know, dozens of sessions with teachers, educators, and parents, there\u2019s still a misconception that we have inequity due to personal mistakes, or just character flaws. That this is an individual issue, and there\u2019s a misunderstanding that there\u2019s not a historical basis to why there are some inequities, that some of it was done intentionally. It\u2019s really revealing to show people that I didn\u2019t make this up, I can show you a policy that happened in the 1800s that set this trajectory to why there is a divide between certain races. It was written down at one point, so that is part of it, just getting people more information and helping them to also be able to be reflective. A huge piece is helping them understand that, since this is a systemic issue, we know that you didn\u2019t make it and I didn\u2019t make it, but we can both be a part of fixing it. So, it\u2019s helping people understand that they\u2019re not under attack when someone is talking about an inequity, but it\u2019s still something that we all have the responsibility to help fix.<\/p>\n There\u2019s a stark difference in how schools are financed, depending on their zip code, because of some of the policies that we have around our funding formulas are based on housing prices, taxes. That means a child could just be born in a neighborhood that doesn\u2019t have wealthy homes, and then their school gets less resources. That\u2019s one inequity that is clear. We also see public-private, almost partnerships, in a way. It seems innocuous, like these could just be your PTA. If I go to a school, and in my neighborhood there\u2019s a lot of doctors or lawyers, my PTA is going to get a lot more contributions. It\u2019d be much more robust than a school in which there are working-class families that cannot contribute in the same way. Some of these financial inequities are built into how we fund schools, and they show up in children\u2019s realities of the resources their school has.<\/p>\n Q:\u00a0What are some potential solutions or responses to these inequities that have come up in your research?<\/p>\n A:\u00a0I think one that will definitely be discussed at the panel is related to the group that\u2019s putting on the panel. They have a something called the Equitable Schools Fund. There are families in North County who recognize that there\u2019s a clear inequity and they were like, \u2018OK, my child\u2019s school is very different than if I drive down south, so what can we do about it?\u2019 So, they donate their own money and fundraise and have a system in which community schools, specifically in southeast San Diego, can access money that would typically be funneled through a PTA. When schools want to do something like \u201cDonuts with Dads\u201d and they don\u2019t have the funding for it, they can use this Equitable Schools Fund to be able to put on those events. That\u2019s a grassroots example of how anybody can help formulate this type of response to these inequities that we\u2019re seeing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Growing up in a family that valued and prioritized education, and who loved her and constantly told her…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":32239,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[7,1919,181,23,100,592,74,84,76,75],"class_list":{"0":"post-32238","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-diego","8":"tag-california","9":"tag-columns","10":"tag-latest-headlines","11":"tag-local-news","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-people","14":"tag-san-diego","15":"tag-san-diego-county","16":"tag-san-diego-headlines","17":"tag-san-diego-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32238","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32238"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32238\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}