PHOTOS FROM THE 2022 CUBE CONFERENCE, COURTESY OF LIFETOUCH

Supporting student emotional health and wellness, successfully recruiting and retaining high-quality educators, expanding opportunities for postsecondary success, and strengthening equity, diversity, and inclusion efforts are among the critical themes to be addressed in sessions during the NSBA’s Council of Urban Boards of Education (CUBE) 2023 Conference, Sept. 14 to 16, in Chicago. 

For the past 55 years, CUBE has convened educational leaders from across the nation to exchange ideas, hear from renowned speakers, and network with peers who share similar goals and challenges of ensuring equitable outcomes for historically underserved, underrepresented, and economically disadvantaged children.

A highlight of the CUBE Conference is the steering committee chair’s address on the State of Urban Education and the presentation of the annual CUBE Awards—the Benjamin Elijah Mays Lifetime Achievement Award and the CUBE Annual Award for Urban School Board Excellence. The Mays Award recognizes an individual who has demonstrated a long-standing commitment to the educational needs of urban schoolchildren through their service as a local school board member. CUBE’s Urban School Board Excellence Award focuses on governance, honoring school boards that show growth, innovation through policy, and an eagerness to be exemplars to other urban boards.

The awards and the State of Urban Education Address will be presented during the CUBE Awards Luncheon, sponsored by the U.S. Army, on Sept. 15.

Here is a preview of some of the educational sessions at this year’s conference. There is still time to register at https://nsba.org/Events/CUBE-2023-Annual-Conference.

Strengthening Student Well-Being

From school avoidance to disruptive classroom behavior, from adverse childhood experiences to daily stressors, schools nationwide report surging mental health needs among their students. Although the conditions existed pre-COVID, they intensified due to the pandemic, say experts. U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy has called the increase in youth mental health—impacted by the growing use of social media— “the defining public health crisis of our time.”

Earlier this year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said that more than 40% of teens were persistently sad or hopeless, and almost 1 in 3 high school girls had considered suicide. Rates of suicide among Black youth have risen faster than in any other racial/ethnic group in the past two decades, with suicide rates for Black males 10-19 years old increasing by 60%. In 2022, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommended for the first time that doctors screen children aged 8 and older for anxiety.

In North Carolina’s Durham Public Schools, district data reflects the increasing need for mental health supports, and the school system has developed an extensive, integrated approach to target that need, says LaVerne Mattocks-Perry, senior executive director for student support services.

The district’s CUBE Conference session, Programming and Promise: Building Healthy School Environments That Strengthens Student Well-Being, will highlight its work incorporating community partnerships, strategic resource allocation, relationship building, differentiated professional learning for staff, and social-emotional learning as a tenet of core instruction.

“Prior to COVID, there was more stigma” associated with social-emotional wellness discussions. Mattocks-Perry says. Even if students were referred for mental health services located in schools, “we had more families declining the referrals,” she says. In other cases, referrals were not made because staff, families, caregivers, and students “didn’t either see the value or they did not want it shared in the school setting,” she adds.

Since the end of COVID closures, however, the number of declines has gone down, and there’s greater interest in the services available. “Our number of actual referrals, people saying, ‘Yes, this kid needs this,’ or ‘Yes, my kid needs this,’ or ‘Yes, I need this’ has risen, and I would say by the hundreds,” Mattocks-Perry explains.

As a member of her district’s academic services team, she notes that she and her co-presenters could have chosen to discuss other important aspects of Durham Public School’s work at this year’s CUBE Conference. However, they could not overlook the opportunity to be part of a conversation about student mental health at this national equity conference “because it is a critically important equity issue.” Says Mattox-Perry: “We want more people in decision-making positions to have this conversation when it comes to Black and brown kids and focus on how we are engaging with students of color.”

The session, This Is a Lot!: How Humanistic Psychology Answers Today’s Problems, will examine student engagement in the post-pandemic world. Presenter and clinical psychologist Kenya Coleman will build upon psychologist Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory to show why intentionally addressing students’ various needs, and not solely focusing on academics, is essential to addressing current crises, including violence, absenteeism, and academic achievement. Students cannot remember, concentrate, focus, attend, or learn when they are hungry, fearful, unsure, or otherwise preoccupied, explains Coleman, founder of Kaleidoscope Wellness and Education Group. (Read more about humanistic psychology and its role in addressing students’ mental health needs of students in Coleman’s August ASBJ Equity Column.)

Equity in Policy, Practice, & Procedure 

Students and Educators: Co-Developing a Racial Equity Policy, presented by leaders from Indiana’s Monroe County Community School Corporation (MCCSC), will highlight the process, challenges, and opportunities encountered by the district as part of its ongoing equity journey, which in March 2023 resulted in the adoption of an anti-racism policy. The policy was developed in collaboration with MCCSC’s Student Equity Ambassador program—created after students in the Bloomington school district brought concerns about experiencing racism at school to the school board—and with the assistance of the federally funded Midwest and Plains Equity Assistance Center, explains Deputy Superintendent Markay Winston.

Key to doing this work effectively, Winston says, was having “student voices at the center of the work, not on the periphery.” And despite anticipating some pushback, given today’s political climate, “We didn’t get the wholesale backlash that some other communities have experienced when it comes to talking about equity and anti-racism,” she says. 

The session Equity in Action: Strategies for Promoting Diversity, Inclusion, and Social Justice in Education also will share inspiration, practical strategies, and resources for promoting equity, diversity, inclusion, and social justice in schools and classrooms that benefit all students. Presenter Anthony Lewis, superintendent of Kansas’ Lawrence Public Schools, will discuss engaging with parents, families, and communities to promote equity. (Lawrence Public Schools earned a 2023 Magna Grand Prize for its College & Career Academy, a nontraditional high school supporting students who do not perform well in traditional classrooms. See https://tinyurl.com/5x6smszy)

In Perception Is Reality: How to Communicate Your School Improvement Initiatives and Defend Against Attacks, New York State School Boards Assocation (NYSSBA) leaders will share advice and insights for responding when attempts are made to mischaracterize a district’s school improvement efforts and board members or the superintendent “become the target of character attacks, inflammatory labels, or cancel culture.” The session also will address “preventative actions you can take to keep your board meeting on track.”  Jay Worona, NYSSBA deputy executive director and general counsel, will discuss important legal considerations, such as what constitutes defamation, whether attacks are protected by the First Amendment’s free speech clause, and when, if ever, boards have the right to restrict speech.

Tackling the Teacher Shortage

School districts nationwide struggle to fill open teaching positions and face challenges in retaining and recruiting teachers who mirror the nation’s increasingly diverse student population. In the session, Urgent Action Needed: Tackling the Teacher Crisis Head-On! school board member Zipporah Miller from Maryland’s Prince George’s County Board of Education will explore innovative strategies to address teacher recruitment and retention in the nearly 130,000-student PreK-12 district.

Advocating for Youth Mental Health Through Grow Your Own Educator Pathways, will highligh early career and aspiring educators representing the Educators Rising program who will share their journeys elevating the education profession, serving as role models in their communities, and supporting the next generation of students. Educators Rising is an initiative of PDK International, the professional association for educators.

The Power of Representation: Strategies to Retain and Empower Black Male Educators will feature a panel exploring data from the 2022 DonorsChoose survey, “Unique Impact, Unique Burdens: Insight into the Black Male Educator Experience.” Among the survey’s findings: 61% of Black male educators see teaching as social justice work. 

Statewide Initiatives

A Model for Ensuring Postsecondary Success in Communities of Color | From K-12 to K-20 will highlight a model developed to forge pathways to postsecondary opportunities for communities of color in Arizona. Arizona State University’s Access ASU partners directly with over 66 K-12 school communities in the Phoenix metro area to improve student achievement, enhance staff support, and facilitate leadership development, which increases postsecondary enrollment rates into college and enhances student persistence and graduation rates. Presenter Quinton Boyce, associate vice president for educational outreach at Arizona State University, says the ASU Access model provides the framework for a program that can and should exist in communities across the country.

Chronic absenteeism was a pre-pandemic problem that has taken on new dimensions since 2020. In response, Connecticut dedicated COVID relief money to creating a home visit model focused on getting students back to school in targeted, predominantly urban districts. In the session, Connecticut’s Learner Engagement & Attendance Program (LEAP)—A Focus on Relational Home Visits, state education officials will discuss LEAP’s cornerstones, data-driven and research-based components, and evaluation results. The session will highlight the broader complexities and intersectionality of attendance; the importance of an intentional mindset shift surrounding attendance; and the far-reaching value of purposeful data analysis. (Read about the LEAP work in Connecticut’s Bridgeport Public Schools in the ASBJ story “Missing Students.”)