School Board Responses to a Black Community: Analysis of a Charter District's School Board Meetings

• In Event: Equity, Race, and Access Within the School Choice Landscape: The Next Wave of Research

Abstract

Objectives
Increasingly, scholars are turning their attention to the role of school boards in promoting or mitigating racial equity. A number of studies consider the representation of racially minoritized individuals on school boards (e.g. Bartanen, Grissom, Joshi, & Merdith, 2018; Benavides & Medina; 2014; Molina & Meier, 2016). However, fewer studies investigate how school boards interact with the racially minoritized communities they represent. The few studies that do exist offer mixed evidence. School boards can be spaces where racially minoritized communities are heard (Sampson & Bertrand, 2020; Sampson & Hosford, 2017; Tracey & Durfy, 2007) or spaces where the voices and wishes of dominant groups are replicated (Frankenberg & Diem 2013; Trujillo, 2012).

The New Orleans Parish School Board (OPSB) offers a unique opportunity to study the role of school boards and the advocacy of racially minoritized communities. After being disbanded in 2005 after Hurricane Katrina, the locally elected school board was reinstituted in 2018 after early passage of a state “reunification” policy. This new board has re-emerged in a district where nearly all public schools are charters and 83% of students are Black, and in a city where citizens advocated for a board that would be more responsive to the local community. In this study, we examine the relationship between OPSB and the largely Black community of New Orleans. We ask: How does the OPSB interact with the community? Do community engagement interactions mirror the local community’s framing for the purpose of the board?

Theoretical framework
We are guided by the asset-based community engagement literature (e.g. Green, 2017; Ishimaru, 2020) which considers how school leaders approach community engagement. In particular, we draw on the work of Green (2017) who places common approaches to school-community relationships along a continuum: community involvement which focuses on school metrics, community engagement which focuses on relationship building, and community partnerships that aim to address power differentials.

Methods
We designed a single case study bounded by the 2019-2020 school year (Yin, 1994). Our data consist of the video recordings of 39 OPSB board meetings (90 hours), board meeting agendas (n=39), and newspaper articles detailing board meetings (n=25). We used multiple cycles of coding, aspects of the constant comparative method (Boeije, 2002; Glaser & Strauss, 1967) and data displays (Miles & Huberman, 1994) to analyze and develop our findings.

Findings
Our findings suggest OPSB promoted community interactions that related to the needs of the board, such as having students perform the national anthem. OPSB members were less comfortable with the community's attempts to center their perspectives or discussions of race and class. Often the OPSB would employ bureaucratic mechanisms, such as relying on speaker time limits, to stem community members' attempts to advocate during board meetings.

Significance
This work illuminates the ways in which voices of Black constituents may be subdued even in spaces of public discourse and offers lessons for researchers, policymakers, and practitioners seeking to consider the role of school boards in choice settings and in advancing racial equity.

Authors

• Eupha Jeanne Daramola, University of Southern California

• Taylor Enoch-Stevens, University of Southern California

• Huriya Jabbar, The University of Texas at Austin