April 2015 Meeting Notes

Massachusetts Asian American Educator’s Association Meeting
Dorcester, MA
April 13, 2015
5:00PM - 7:00PM

Google Group: maaea@googlegroups.com

People in Attendance: Go Sasaki, Katie Li, Ann Cheng, Andrea So, Jessica Tang, Rosann Tung

Agenda:
Check-ins
Member Support Time
New Superintendent
Plan Spring and Summer Events

Minutes:
Discussion - Meeting with Superintendent
Use a Racial Justice Framework for presentation
What is working and not working in BPS?  SEI?

Something to consider -
Early Warning Implementation System
An automated system that takes info on students - suspensions, etc.
Schools with low risk students are resourced the same as schools with high risk students.
Fund schools based on these numbers, vs based on basic numbers of ELs, SpEd, etc.

Demographic information:
Office of Human Capital has contacted us - they can get us information for staffing.
Ethnic level information not available.  Language data is incomplete.
No info on students.
Ask Superintendent for info on how to get the demographic information we want.
(Use country of origin, home language, city of birth)

Ask how to get a meeting with Superintendent Chang - Jessica will look into this
Will your listening tour go through the Vietnamese and Chinese parts of Boston?  If so we’ll be there, if not, please put us on your schedule.

Roseann Tung:
Black and Latino males findings from last week:
Cultural Proficiency is super important to a quality education for students.
The only way we can implement this is if the community wants it.
Upcoming - student forum around the study.

Note: district has hired Glenn Singleton - Courageous Conversations
PD starting at the district leadership level.


What is our message?

2 buckets: ELL, Staffing
Possibly A mental health bucket?
-mental health issues
-cultural gap
-parent language issues
-parent work load
-counseling
Also:
There are Progressive APA Educators in the system
Asian students are the lowest income of the 4 racial groups in the system - high high poverty

ELL:
Loss of SEI
Family Engagement / knowledge
Advocate for Dual Language schools?
SpEd/ELL Issues

Staffing:
Low levels of staff: teachers, leaders, cabinet
Note: Chi: Principal of one of the innovation school in Dorchester
mental health professionals
language capacity
Note:
Male Asian teachers: 1.5% of all male teachers (68)
2.1% for HS
All of BPS: 5 Asian Male admin out of - 1.4%.
Paras: 11 Male Asian in all of BPS
All other support: 3
BTR: 1 or 2 Asian females, no males.

//
Other parts of presentations:

Student piece
Being an ELL student
Having an APA teacher
Mental Health Issues (Andrea’s student at BLA?)
Vietnamese Kids and Chinese kids

Parent and other stakeholders
Teachers: Teachers at Mather are good., Jessica Tsai at Quincy Upper?
Parent: Immigrant parents
Article from Elaine Ng - Helped parents advocate for their kids with special needs.

Student Resources:
Boston Student Advisory Council
Quincy Upper - Advisory Student Council

Other business:

Note:
Put Lieu Nguyen in touch with Andrea So re resources for their Vietnamese student in Quincy Upper - Go
Reach out to Suzanne Lee - Katie
Coordinate Scheduling - Katie
Make excel spreadsheet for Jon Barrows/Human Capital - Go

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