Chair Lee on Black Studies, Latinidad, and AAPI curriculum expansion

And then my last question is just on the Black Studies, Latinidad, and AAPI curriculum, which I know that this has been an effort.

over the last couple of years that the council has made.

So over the last three fiscal years, the council has invested a lot of money into the education equity action plan initiated in the black studies curriculum.

DOE reports this curriculum is now in over 400 schools, and the curriculum has been fully developed.

The council's funding supports work to update this living curriculum, as well as professional development for educators.

So how does DOE plan to support the expansion of the Black Studies curriculum to additional schools, and how many schools does DOE expect will be using the Black Studies curriculum next school year?

Thank you so much for this question.

We are deeply committed to the Black Studies curriculum, the Latin and DAG curriculum, AAPI curriculum, all of the Hidden Voices resources.

And what we are doing now is ensuring that at the school, at the superintendent and principal level, that there is a pathway for seamless implementation.

And the person leading that initiative is sitting right next to me, First Deputy Chancellor Danielle Gentes.

I'll leave Danielle to talk more specifically about how we're going to make sure that that happens.

Good afternoon and thank you for asking.

Since our last time here for the preliminary budget, we've made a lot of progress around the work that we're doing, getting our schools and our communities ready for a deeper implementation of these resources.

We discussed last time that we've had these resources.

We've been building these resources over time.

But we needed to get better at helping our schools, our district teams and our schools, make strong connections so that they're an embedded fabric of the Tier 1 curriculum and not just resources that were being used unevenly.

So we have spent the better part of spring.

Deeply involved in professional learning about using these resources.

We have also selected some pilot districts to learn deeper about implementation with starting with five.

They're coming to an end this month and growing to nine to launch next year.

One of the things that we've done that's really exciting, and this is more like hot off the press kind of example, is how we can use these resources against the district's chosen tier one curriculum.

So an example that came out of the work of the social studies team and the literacy teams at Central with the district teams and hitting our schools is, for example, in

in grade four of the HMH module on what makes someone a hero, they were able to bring in from our hidden voices the story of Sylvia Mendez

and her family's fight for desegregation and use that to complement the curriculum and go deeper to

help children really understand heroism, standing up for rights, and deepening their engagement in the knowledge-building curriculum with really strong historical figures.

And we've been seeing those kinds of stories, whether it's where we can literally intersect this resource right into the curriculum for ELA.

We're also doing that with our social studies curriculum.

The vast majority of that curriculum is our

in-house passport curriculum.

And so we've also, as part of some of the outgrowths of

when Chancellor Samuels came in and the transition of the cabinet really did survey and talk with our superintendents about the depth with which they were using these resources to help sort of drive these next steps that we are already seeing some outcomes from.

And just to add this idea of how do you integrate New York City Reads with the cultural responsive work that we're doing, as a part of our implementation process for New York City Reads,

We do have implementation checklists that our superintendents use, and we are infusing now

the Black Studies curriculum, the Latin and that curriculum when it comes, and Hidden Voices in that implementation checklist so that superintendents have an option to be able to see what's happening in their schools and report on that.

Okay, that's actually good to know because I know part of the challenge is that it's opt-in, and so the question is how do we get as many principals to offer this curriculum to the students as possible.

I, that's good to hear.

And just in terms of whether or not, in terms of how much money would be needed to expand the program and how can the Latinidad and AAPI studies learn lessons in terms of how to get a lot of the schools to offer this programming?

I think.

Well, in terms of the funding that would be needed, we can get back to you on that.

But the idea of how do you integrate and create an interdisciplinary approach to

learning experiences for young people and how do we put the wind beneath the wings around that happening, I think that's a systemic responsibility for us working with our superintendents, working with our principals to create those experiences for young people.

And I think there is a desire.

A desire to actually do this work on behalf of, on the part of our

superintendents and the part of our school as I think there we've heard if there's one

criticism of New York City Reads is that the tier one curriculum is really meant for vast number of people around the nation and the desire for us to get

curriculum that really connects with young people in the classroom that is culturally responsive is an area that we're really serious about working towards.

Great.

Okay.