Kids Voting Durham Candidate Questionnaire: Emily S. Chávez, Durham Board of Education, District 1

1. What would be your mission statement for Durham Public Schools? (maximum 30 words)

There is great power in the DPS’ current mission statement. What I think is important is how we interpret this mission statement and how we bring it to life.

2. What do you think the 3 most important issues are in DPS right now?  How will you address each? (For each priority, please provide a short title and an explanation of up to 120 words/1000 characters)

• Racial equity: This includes addressing the disparate academic outcomes for students of color; hiring of teachers of color, particularly Latinx teachers and Black male teachers; ensuring avenues of communication for parents of color, particularly low-income and working class parents; monitoring and increasing BIPOC students’ opportunities for academic and other forms of enrichment. 

• LGBTQ+ student support: Given the current attacks on LGBTQ+ students and families in other states, it is critical that our district implement policy that protects them. This includes developing policy that sets a standard for our responsibility to gender nonconforming students, LGBTQ+ students, and LGBTQ+ families. As a district, we have yet to address the needs of our LGBTQ+ students and families in a unified way.

• Improving teacher working conditions and wellness: We must build upon and develop plans to ensure adequate staffing, sufficient planning time, additional financial compensation where appropriate and possible, and opportunities for support, mentoring, and professional development for our teachers and other staff.

I believe these three issues are both timely and foundational to the success of our district in meeting its mission to embrace, educate, and empower every student to innovate, serve, and lead. We must address disparities that negatively affect Black, Latinx, LGBTQ+ students, groups which are overlapping and not mutually exclusive, and to support the educators who are on the frontlines of educating, supporting, and mentoring our students.

3. How will you address bias among teachers/staff and in what is taught in the classroom & schools? (maximum 200 words/1500 characters)

To address bias among teachers and staff, we should:

• Develop and hire more teachers of color, particularly Latinx teachers and Black male teachers, through a variety of strategies.

• Provide systematic ways for students, parents/guardians, and teachers to report bias incidents, so that we have this data on record, and statistical data on how incidents were addressed; 

• And continue to provide training for teachers and all staff on implicit bias, racial equity, microaggressions, and other topics; 

• Support the Equity Policy developed in 2021, of which one of the goals is to: “Develop systems, structures, practices, and annual plans for training with timelines for operationalizing this policy.”

We also need to create ways for teachers to further develop their curriculum to include the histories, texts, stories, knowledge and perspectives of people who are systemically marginalized, including Black, Latinx, Indigenous, Asian, LGBTQ+, neurodivergent, differently abled, undocumented, female, poor, and working class people and communities, as well as others. We can provide incentives and support for teachers to participate in professional development that would allow them to learn and deepen their curriculum in ways that dismantle bias. 

4. Do you believe youth should have a voting seat on the Durham School Board? (answer yes or no) Why or why not? In what ways will you give students a decision-making role in DPS? (maximum 200 words/1500 characters)

I do not believe youth should have a voting seat on the Durham School Board; however, I do believe that young people should have input and be able to provide feedback on key areas such as curriculum, staffing, and facilities. I also believe that we should be cultivating future board members among our current DPS students. Board members also come under criticism at times while doing what they think is in the best interests of students, families, and staff. While I think it’s important to know how to respond to criticism in a meaningful and appropriate way, I don’t believe this burden should fall to young people via a voting seat.

I do believe school board members should meet regularly with children and teenagers in DPS. We can partner with the City of Durham’s Office on Youth to do so, and specifically the Youth Ambassador Program, as well as groups like the Youth Justice Project. I believe people are the experts on their own lives, and we should be consistently and accessibly taking into consideration the consequences that district-level decisions have on young people, both intended and unintended.

5. How would you make sure there is adequate mental health supports for youth in schools?  (maximum 200 words/1500 characters)

We should seek to establish school environments that promote psychological safety for students to the greatest extent possible. During the pandemic especially, mental health concerns among students have only increased. All members of the school community are responsible for connecting students to the appropriate resources if they express extreme mental distress, signs of trauma, and/or other mental health-related issues, while reducing stigma in doing so. Students who are experiencing mental distress often cannot learn effectively, and thus, we should support students in getting access to the services they need. It is imperative that we have increased and accessible counselors and social workers, nurses in every school, and social-emotional learning training. I would support programs that allow us to partner with local universities to recruit and effectively educate diverse and culturally competent counselors and social workers, including bilingual professionals.

6. Would you eliminate or reform (SROs) in schools?  Why or how? (maximum 200 words/1500 characters)

At this current moment, I would reform SRO’s in schools. SRO’s have considerable support in Durham, and I would want to ensure that various stakeholders are moving in concert toward a new model of protection for students in Durham, if that is what, as a community, we desire. At present, reforms that could be taken include increased racial and implicit bias training; more specialized education on child and adolescent development; an MOU between the police department and the school system that gives more structure to the responsibilities and limitations of the SRO role (something that is currently being discussed in Durham); and implementation of a system for gathering regular and consistent from students, parents, and teachers regarding SRO performance. Beyond this, I am in favor of investigating possibilities for new systems of protection of students and staff that are not rooted in policing. There is a relationship between the presence of SRO’s in schools and students being referred to law enforcement, particularly Black students (Terrell and Smith, 2021), and this warrants us closely considering what methods of protection would be most effective for all students. 

7. What has the pandemic revealed about schools' roles in providing adequate access to nutrition and digital resources for students?(maximum 200 words/1500 characters)

The COVID pandemic has highlighted the significant role schools play in intervening in economic disparities, which fall along racial lines. Access to nutrition and access to digital resources are two major areas that are shaped by one’s socioeconomic status, and, thus, the pandemic made very clear how much these are affected when in-person school is not in session. DPS (and other Durham community partners) did a good job in mitigating the effects of the pandemic as much as possible by providing regular meals to students and families and by providing laptops and hotspots to all students who needed them.