Joseph asks how schools support each other in offering Seal
Joseph asks how DOE supports schools that want to offer the Seal. Chris Kermiet-Hall describes cross-school sharing, and Superintendent Hoa Tu says Queens North doubled Seal schools year over year to 96%.
How do schools support?
Do schools support each other?
Let's say my school wants to open.
How do we support that school that want to have a SEAL, civic readiness SEAL?
I think Chris wants to take this one.
It's actually one of the most awesome parts about supporting districts and schools with SEAL work is that
Oftentimes, so we'll assemble whole districts for the start of the year orientation.
And so there's a lot of really wonderful cross-pollination and cross-school support happening.
So if my colleague at another school has a project that they've accredited that I'm really interested in using, I'll carry that over and vice versa.
And I actually think Superintendent, too, could comment more on this.
If you'd like to, yeah.
Thank you.
So what I would share is in Queens North, we have 25 high schools.
And I'll answer it in two ways.
One is setting up the expectation that the Civic Seal is an obligation of all of our schools to provide students with the opportunity to engage, to learn, not the knowledge, and then also to do the actual civic engagement work.
The second to that is once we set that expectation, now school's on the hook to develop their programs and their service learning opportunities beyond the school walls.
I know Jenna talked about we want to bring it into the schools so that all students have access.
We actually in Queens North encourage our principal to reach across their school walls into their colleagues and beyond the borough for opportunity.
So to date, I would say we have doubled the number of schools offering Civic Seal year over year to now 96% of our schools.
And not because they didn't want to, that they said this is important for us to do and we are committed to learning from each other.
And every month when we have our principal meeting, that is the forum and the venue where our principal openly share.
Because the answer is always in the room.
We don't need to go look for other people.
I think, Chair, then it was to your point, we don't have to pay.
other people for information when we have it.
But what we need to do as a system is to create the space or the stage, if you will, for us to ask the question and get the answer.