By Anjuli Niyogi, Editor-in-Chief

On Wednesday, November 18th, the Parent Teacher Organization (PTO) held their first-ever Equality, Equity, Inclusion, & Access in Our Community event from 7:00 pm to 8:15 pm. It was led by PTO President Karen Bettucchi and had over 30 participants including Mills parents, students, teachers, and the San Mateo Union High School District’s (SMUHSD) Superintendent, Kevin Skelly. 

The agenda included a PTO welcome, a Mills administration team update, and, making up a large portion of the night, a Special Presentation on Equity, Equality, Inclusion & Access. All participants were then placed in breakout rooms to discuss what information was presented and brainstorm future ideas on how to progress our conversations on equity. 

As far as introductory announcements were concerned, the PTO presented data from this year’s rapid relief fund which collected over $50, 000 in the spring of 2020 and has since spent about $25,000 to support families (some regularly). Plans to continue this support include distributing holiday gift cards and grocery cards for families to enjoy the next couple of months during the holiday season.

The MHS annual fund that normally commences at the beginning of the fall semester will be launching online this year on November 23rd. Students and parents will be given more information on how to donate to the annual fund in the coming weeks. The PTO is also currently planning a live Mills Mania event in February; they are aiming to create a physical, in-person event to raise school spirit and support for the MHS annual fund, possibly through a drive-in movie.

Mills Principal Pamela Duszynski then introduced some of Mills’ recent updates for the school year. She reported that students and teachers are currently putting in great effort to create and participate in rigorous, thoughtful learning. She continued to discuss the upcoming spring semester plans; “as we gather more directions about school reopening, we will do our part in keeping the safety of our students and our staff and our Mills families at the forefront of all the plans and efforts.” She concluded with a final reminder for all students to complete the district-wide Panorama Survey as a means of addressing the recent Grand Jury Report regarding hate in SMUHSD schools (the access code is your student ID). Families and parents of Mills students are being asked to fill out a similar Panorama Survey.

Vice Principal Jose Gomez then went into detail on the efforts of the Mills school counselors on ensuring students, especially first-generation seniors, are getting the proper tools and resources needed to apply to four-year or community colleges. Vice Principal Lyndsey Schlax reiterated the importance of filling out the Panorama Survey and reminded participants of the upcoming school distribution and makeup picture day on Friday, November 20th. Ms. Schlax also introduced the second annual United Against Hate Week that will be hosted on November 30th through December 4th and will likely include a movie screening and class discussions on anti-hate.

The presentation on Equity, Equality, Access & Inclusion presentation then began, introducing what equity means, and how and when it should be established.

We can’t achieve that equality without first providing equity, without first identifying what different students need to be successful, and then providing them those resources”. She then emphasized that equity, inclusion, and access are not checklist items or set of initiatives, but “a lens and a framework that deeply shapes the work that we do and our school system”.

– Principal Pamela Duszynski

One of the major three areas that Mills has been working to establish this lens is through the curriculum. Vice Principal Schlax introduced that over the last few years Mills has been brainstorming answers to big questions around inclusion; “how can we make sure that your students, their families, their backgrounds, their histories are represented when they’re in their classes? It’s really important for students to see themselves reflected, to see people who look like them or who share an identity with them as part of the powerpoints that a teacher presents or as characters in the novels that they read.” This led to the implementation of the freshman Ethnic Studies class in the fall of 2019. It is currently being taught by history teachers Alexandra Dove and Angela Zink. 

“I’m now able to reflect and refer to things that have been discussed in Ethnic Studies and bring it into that world history curriculum. And I’m expecting my students to challenge me if I’m not doing it well enough, because that’s one of the things we really want our students to do, to be calling things out, to be saying that they deserve to see themselves reflected in their curriculum at all levels and to be able to identify that, because through that identification, is how we started addressing these harms that have occurred.”

– Alexandra Dove, Ethnic Studies and World History TEacher

Ms. Zink and Ms. Dove detailed that the curriculum of the semester-long class is roughly divided into four different units. Unit one highlights each student’s own story and personal identity. Unit two surrounds race, ethnicity, gender, class, and various other groups that society uses to divide people. Unit three consists of class discussions surrounding power and privilege. To finish off the semester, unit four has students focus on actions they can take towards achieving self-determination and ways to prevent ethnic segregation. 

Another area that Mills has allowed students to look through the equity, equality, access & inclusion lens has been through student culture and climate. Many cultural clubs were discussed by Vice Principal Gomez, who notes that they “give students a safe space to highlight and address and feel comfortable with their own identity.”

The final area discussed was the Professional Development (PD) work being done with teachers. Culturally responsive teaching has been advised on PD days, using books like Culturally Responsive Teaching and The Brain to teach faculty the importance of looking at stereotypes, founding growth mindsets in students, and being knowledgeable about white fragility. Principal Dusyznski defined culturally responsive teaching as a “teacher’s ability to recognize cultural displays of learning by different students, sometimes that are tied closely to their cultural norms, and to be able to respond to that engagement that they’re exhibiting around learning constructively, with teaching moves that really use their cultural knowledge as a scaffold to connect with what students know.”

Moving on, former MHS PTO President, Current Millbrae Education Foundation President, and Millbrae Anti-Racism Coalition Leader, Joy Pasamonte Henry discussed efforts being made in the Millbrae community concerning equity, equality, access, and inclusion. She discussed the Millbrae Anti-Racist Coalition (ARC) which was founded after the murder of George Flloyd when community members began communicating about the recent event on Nextdoor. In the summer of 2020, they planned a protest with over 200 Millbrae residents gathered in support of black lives. 

Overall, the ARC stands by the acronym RAISE: Raise anti-racist awareness and understanding, Abolish racism and intolerance, Inspire united community action, Strengthen community through art, education, and collective experience, and Empower our diverse Millbrae community to create enduring anti-racist policies and practices. They have been accomplishing their goals with an Art in Action project, which included two chalk out sessions and a newly implemented wishing wall at the Millbrae Community Center. Town halls have also been held about anti-racism, and more events like the Lights of Hope on December 5th and celebration of Black History Month in February will be held by the ARC.  

To conclude the night, all participants engaged in breakout discussions with 3-5 people in each room. Community members were able to discuss what stood out to them from the entire presentation and what they felt could use more work to achieve equitable policies and practices in Millbrae.

This online event was a successful way to share existing efforts being made by Mills faculty and initiatives being pursued in the Millbrae community to achieve equity. All in all, these sorts of conversations will continue to be held in the coming years and more reforms will push students and adults alike to broaden their ideas of equity, equality, inclusion, and access.