S11E2 – Deny, Defund, Divert: Janel George on Race and Justice in Education

S11E2 - Deny, Defund, Divert: Janel George on Race and Justice in Education

Andrew: Welcome to the Integrated Schools Podcast. I'm Andrew, a White dad from Denver.

Val: And I'm Val, a Black mom from North Carolina.

Andrew: And this is Deny Defund Divert: Janel George on Race and Justice in Education.

Val: Now, we often have many boss guests on the show

Andrew: Yup.

Val: And we are graced once again with a brilliant and remarkable guest this time as well.

Andrew: Absolutely. Janel George. I've been a huge fan of her writing, of her work, for a long time. And one of my favorite moments from our live show in DC back in May, she was there in the audience and I went up to talk to her afterwards and I was like, “I just have to tell you what a huge fan I am.”

And she was like, “No, no! I have to tell you what a huge fan I am of the podcast.” I was like, wait, wait, no, no. I get to be the fan here! She's like, no, I get to be the fan. It was this really lovely interaction and so, um, I asked her to come on the podcast and she said she would!

Val: I can confirm that prior to our live broadcast, you had a list of people that you wanted to meet who were going to be there.

Andrew: That's right.

Val: And Janel George was on that list at the very top. So I am thankful that she was not freaked out by your approach [Val and Andrew laugh] and that we were, we were able to–

Andrew: I didn't come on too strong.

Val: That’s right! That worked out. That worked out for everybody.

Andrew: Absolutely. Yeah. So, Ms. George is a lawyer, she's a professor at Georgetown Law School. She's been working in the public policy space and around issues regarding education and education justice for a long time. And she recently wrote an article called “Deny, Defund, Divert: The Law and American Miseducation” in the Georgetown Law Journal. And I read it and was really moved by it. Thought it was, like, this incredible explanation of our current educational climate told through a historical lens.

Val: What specifically about the article were you really captivated by?

Andrew: I think these buckets of deny/defund/divert she kind of tells the story in historical context, going all the way back to the period of enslavement, the Antebellum period, Jim Crow, kind of walks through, all the ways in which Black people were denied education. All the ways in which Black education was defunded, and then all the ways in which, Black educators were diverted from the field of education.

And, you know, we talked to Leslie Fenwick last season about “Jim Crow's Pink Slip” and all the Black educators lost in the wake of desegregation, but she does a really great job of connecting the kind of historical threads to the things that we see going on today.

Val: Yeah. And I, I think that's something that, just as a general public, we don't often do or know to do. Right? To connect those threads to historical things that have happened. We assume that this might be the first time we're experiencing this as a community or a country. But if we look back, even just a short amount of time, we can see that generations before us have fought these battles repeatedly, and that we as a generation have a chance to make progress in a new and different way each time we are faced with a problem like this.

Andrew: Yeah, and I think, you know, one, one thing she points out is that to do that we have to understand that historic context. We have to know the history so we can think about new ways to move forward.

Val: I wanna bring up one other thing and, and she writes this in the article: “The deny, defund and divert framework also demonstrates the adaptive nature of White supremacy, particularly the forms that education laws can take to advance racial inequality.”

And so, I, that to me, emphasizes the importance of understanding the ways in which White supremacy can operate against what we believe to be a more just educational system. And so, we have to know this so that we can respond in kind.

Andrew: She does a really great job of laying out that history, but then also kind of, why does it matter what's relevant today?

And I think part of the reason she's able to do that so well is, is her background as not just a lawyer, but has this kind of specific public policy focus in the way she practices law that I think really helps her, kind of, bridge the gap between the intellectual/legal world and the real world.

Val: Absolutely. And so, the, the first part of the conversation will really talk about this idea of legislative lawyering, which is not something that I thought a whole lot about prior to our conversation. That we have trained attorneys who are also gifted in speaking to and connecting to the public to understand how they are impacted by public policy and how they can inform public policy to make their lives better.

Andrew: So the conversation starts out there and then gets into the education piece of it.

All right. Should we take a listen?

Val: I am looking forward to it.

[Theme Music]

Dr. Janel George: I'm Janel George. I'm an associate professor of Law, Georgetown Law, and the founding director of the Racial Equity and Education Law and Policy Clinic.

Andrew: Amazing. And you have worked in educational equity, in education through the law for a long time. Why? How did you come to care about that? How'd you find yourself as a lawyer focusing on education in particular?

Dr. Janel George: That's a great question. So when I was in law school, I wasn't sure what type of law I wanted to practice. Right? I knew I wanted to do something in, in the public interest. And I actually had a property law professor, Lawrence Church, always focused on policy. And that really intrigued me and piqued my interest in, in this thing called public policy.

The second summer of law school, I interned out in Washington DC with the Children's Defense Fund, and I focused on issues relating to child welfare and mental health. And I, I think I started to realize then, it's like the seeds were planted. This is something I wanna do. Something I wanna explore this, this thing called public policy. Because basically as a, a public policy lawyer, you're a problem solver. You're leveraging your knowledge of the law, the details of the law, uh, to make it more accessible to people who are directly impacted by a range of different issues. And when I started out my legal career in public policy, with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, that really crystallized my interest at the intersection of race and educational equity. I began to really focus on those issues because I realized you can't really have racial equality without educational equity, right? Access to quality education. Those two were so deeply intertwined.

And so, after the killing of George Floyd, um, I, I just said I have to do something. Get back in advocacy in some way and, uh, someone asked me, you love teaching, you always talk about teaching. Have you thought about doing that full time? And I thought, this sounds pretty interesting.

And, I was using this thing called critical race theory that was starting to become under scrutiny. But the reason why I was using it is because it was such a useful tool to me to teach law students and public policy students about how even well-intended laws can nevertheless deepen or entrench racial inequality. And I thought critical race theory is such a valuable teaching tool.

It's important for law students to understand, unfortunately, how the law can reify racial inequality, but then also to understand the liberatory potential of the law too.

And so that's what I did, and I joined Georgetown in, in the fall of 2021, and it really was kind of the culmination of so much of the work that I, that I've been doing.

Andrew: You've founded this Racial Equity in Education Law and Policy Clinic, the REEL Policy Clinic, centering work at the intersection of education law, racial equity, legislative advocacy. You talk about what you call legislative lawyering. Tell us a bit about what legislative lawyering is and why it's important.

Dr. Janel George: So, Chai Feldblum coined this term legislative lawyer. And the legislative lawyer I think is really, and, and Chai Feldblum says this, is a conduit between politicians, the public, and technical lawyers (right?) who are writing some of these laws and regulations.

But as a legislative lawyer, you've got to be able to move in all of these spaces. You've gotta be able to speak the technical lawyer language. You've gotta understand the politics, you've gotta understand the community and community stakeholders.

The NAACP Legal Defense Fund that litigated the Brown v Board case and a lot of other, significant education cases. They, they've always had an organizing arm at LDF, right? And I think that's important because having an ear to the community, listening to how people's lives are directly impacted (right?) by a lot of the laws and policies is really critical.

One of the, uh, I would say high points of being a legislative lawyer is what I, I talk to my students about is democratizing knowledge, right?

You don't go to law school to hoard the knowledge to yourself or to sound fancy. I always tell them, when you go to these coalition meetings and you're working with community members, don't assume you're the smartest person in the room ('cause first of all, you're probably not), but, but, but also [everyone laughs] because you have so much to learn, right? But it's also important to share the knowledge that you're gaining, with other people. And, and I, when I think of legislative lawyering and what that means, you're translating. You're translating knowledge. I'm, I'm telling, committee members, this is what people who are impacted by this are saying. Right?

This is what they would like to see reflected in this legislation. But then I'm also understanding. This is where this legislation is in the legislative process.

So I teach my students about substantive education law, but then also teach them about being, responsive to and mindful of people's everyday lives. Right?

Talk to people in the language that they understand. Do you want a public education system? Do you think it's important for this country? Why do you think it's important? Do you think teachers should be paid living wages? Breaking it down for people in, in ways that are meaningful, I think is important. And I teach my students about the importance of communication.

Andrew: I love the, like, the two-way nature of that. It's not just about, like, taking these sort of highfalutin, lawyerly things and, and quote unquote, like dumbing it down or something.

Dr. Janel George: Right, no.

Andrew: It’s really about providing a bridge between community expertise and legal expertise between–

Dr. Janel George: Absolutely.

Andrew: –people's lived experiences and the policy and the way that gets, that gets made. I love that.

Dr. Janel George: This is not about dumbing down, this is about making accessible and breaking down some of those intentional silos that have been built, that divide us, and also undermine our effectiveness. Right?

Andrew: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Janel George: I mentioned how the legal defense fund always had an organizing arm. They needed it because you couldn't get plaintiffs who are gonna have their lives threatened and their livelihood threatened if they didn't have any trust in you.

So when people say, for example, that Rosa Parks was a secretary for the NAACP, she was actually an investigator. And she would go out into these communities and build relationships with people. They knew her and trusted her, and then they would say, “By the way, do you wanna be a plaintiff in our case?” Well, by then people knew you and trusted you. So yes, they would be a plaintiff in your case. Right?

But I believe your effectiveness as a lawyer can be limited in and undermined by your connection to, or your lack of connection to community.

Dr. Val: I really appreciate knowing that there are legislative lawyers out there who are seeking the input of the public. I think oftentimes it is assumed that our voices are not informing some of these decisions. And so, if you all can wear a special button or a hat [everyone laughs] so we can find y'all and, like, say, “Hey, I know you'll listen to me!” Um, that would be awesome.

Dr. Janel George: Absolutely. And I even tell students to think about the language you use. Like, it's not, you're not giving voice to the voiceless. You may be elevating the voice of the unheard or the ignored. Because again, I think sometimes the exclusion in certain spaces, particularly in public policy, is intentional.

I've been in coalition meetings before where I'm the only Black person in the coalition meeting, and that's not how you shape effective public policy.

Dr. Val: I, I love that. My in-laws are visiting and, uh, my mother-in-law is a super fan of the Integrated Schools podcast and a super-fan of Andrew’s, and she always asks about him. So, she's really excited about meeting him.

Dr. Janel George: Ah! I love it.

Dr. Val: And so, she's not an educator and she no longer has a, a child in the school system. Why should the public care about public policy?

Dr. Janel George: Oh, because public policy is about the public, right? And so, by that I mean that what do we deem important? Is public education important to us or not? How do we talk about it (right?) in the public or the public consciousness?

I, I mentioned how after 2020 and the killing of George Floyd, that was so pivotal because it was such a brief period, but there was this awareness of racial inequality. There was an interest in exploring it. Right? Unfortunately, we didn't see a lot of that translated into public policy. What we saw were, were a lot of performative gestures.

Right? Um. Actually uh, article I wrote talked about performative school desegregation, right? We talk about, we care about school integration, we care about school diversity. But if you look at where a lot of families send their children to school, it doesn't support that, right? And it's so easy to do these performative gestures (put a black square on Instagram or repost something), it's very hard to translate that into your life. And I think it's even harder to translate it into public policy.

But public policy affects the way that we live. It affects the way that we move, affects where we live. Who we live with. And I'm getting to your mother-in-law's question, I swear! One of the things that I teach my students about is how public education is funded, right?

Uh, a lot of jurisdictions fund public education through property taxes, but if we know the history of racial inequality and discrimination in this country, we know that a lot of communities where Black people live, where Brown people live, were purposefully, intentionally segregated, including with the complicity of the federal government. So imagine if you're generating your education revenue through property value, and you've historically been ascribed lower property values, you can tax yourself at a higher rate, you're still not going to be able to generate the same kind of revenue as wealthier, Whiter districts that have historically being given higher property values are able to do.

And so, we, we can see something as seemingly benign as the way that we fund public education, but it has ripple effects that, that determines who gets access to advanced placement courses or not. Who gets to attract the, the teachers who are experienced. Who gets extracurricular activities, right? All of those things that school funding buys, that makes a difference in educational outcomes and ultimately educational equity.

So we're all impacted by public policy, whether we're aware of it or not, because we are moving in these public spheres. 90% of our nation's children attend public schools, and those children are affected by these things like resource equity and inequity in these seemingly small decisions that we make.

Dr. Val: Thank you.

Andrew: To turn our focus of the conversation a little more towards education now, I think the, you know, the intentionality piece is, is really important. You wrote, “racial inequality in public education is not inevitable. It is constructed. The law has been elemental in crafting racial inequality in public education.”

I think we often think that there is some, like, natural state of inequality and it's the law's job to fix it. But that's sort of a misreading of history, a misreading of, of how the law has functioned. To turn to your, your recent paper “Deny, Defund, Divert: The Law and American Miseducation” that you recently wrote for Georgetown Law Journal, really lays out this great, sort of, historical context of all the ways that the law has been used to deny, defund, and divert. Can you sort of take us back to the sort of historical context of that?

Dr. Janel George: Sure. And, and also, can you tell I was an English major in undergrad? I couldn't help myself with the deny/defund. I couldn't! I couldn't.

Dr. Val: Alliteration always for the win. Always! Always.

[Everyone laughs]

Andrew: It always works.

Dr. Janel George: I am trying to think of one for my next article. It's so bad! Um, I do tell students some of this is gonna feel like a history lesson, right? And I know they're rolling their eyes. All of that was so long ago. Why does it even matter? But think about when you go to the doctor's office, right? What do they ask you? They ask you your history, your medical history, your grand, did your grandfather have cataracts? Who cares!? They care because what happened before you, can actually affect and impact what you're experiencing now.

And so, I tell my students it's the same thing. We do have to understand some of the history because even though it seems so long ago, it does inform what happened today, right?

So in the article, I draw this through-line, and I go all the way back. I go, uh, Antebellum Period, right? So think about how, uh, strategic, enslavers had to be to think, “Hey, if we keep people uneducated, if we deprive them of education, we'll be able to maintain the suppressive system of slavery.” And so, education was criminalized for Black people. And I don't just say enslaved Black people, whether you were free or enslaved in some jurisdictions, it was criminalized. And not just to the Black person who learned how to read or write, but whoever taught them. Right?

So after the Stono Rebellion in South Carolina, and Nat Turner's rebellion in Virginia, the penalties were increased. In some jurisdictions, you, it was imprisonment in fines. After some other rebellions, it was even death. For learning how to read or write. And even in the face of that, Black people still sought education, right?

And so, enslavers recognize that if you deprive people of their ability to learn how to read or write, you could, you could try to at least maintain this condition of enslavement and ignorance, right? They wouldn't have access to abolitionist literature. These anti-CRT book bans are nothing new. Right? Abolitionist literature was banned from way back in the day too. Right?

And then after the Civil War (and Derek Black writes about this in his book, Schoolhouse Burning), it was Black people, former enslaved Black people, who fought for the creation of our contemporary public education system. So after the Freedman Bureaus left, uh, Black lawmakers said, “Hey, let's have a publicly funded education system.” It wasn't like that before. If you were wealthy and White, you could get education. You could get education through religious institutions, but it wasn't just widely available. Black people fought for that, and they fought for the inclusion of education provisions in state constitutions. And it became so revered at that time that it became a condition for readmission to the union.

So those last couple outlier states had to include those education provisions in order to be let back in. And then education became more widely available, not just to Black people who had been denied it, but to a lot of White people who had been denied it as well.

There are a lot of historians who think had education been more widely available, we might not have even had a Civil War. That's how elemental education is.

And so, we had the slave codes and after, uh, the Civil War, what were called Black codes, it also, uh, limited the movements, the ability to assemble of Black people. And then we had the advent of Jim Crow with what, uh, Carter G. Woodson called slavery’s sequel, another way to maintain segregation and second class citizenship.

So Black schools were under-resourced. Often segregated, a majority Black or, or Latinx schools are also characterized by lack of resourcing.

I talked about how education revenue is generated and how these discriminatory practices deprived a lot of Black and Brown communities of ability to generate a lot of education revenue, which translates to resources, et cetera.

Again, we think, “Oh, Jim Crow, that was so long ago. And then you have Brown v Board in 1954 that ended all that.” No, there was massive resistance to school desegregation, not just in the south, all around the country. It took the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to help to bring Jim Crow to its knees. And that was through the withdrawal of federal funds. And the Johnson administration did take away federal funds from a lot of southern school districts.

So we already see the deny prong of, of this, model, right? Denial to access to quality education. Defunding, which again, for Jim Crow education, it wasn't just the separation of the races, it's what that separation implied. And I would say then as well as today, that there are social effects, right? For both Black and White people of segregation,

The divert prong is related to Black educators. Uh, when the LDF lawyers fought for school desegregation, they envisioned it would be two way. Black educators were supposed to go to White schools, along with Black kids. White educators were supposed to come to Black schools. Instead, A lot of Black schools were closed. The burden of desegregation was placed on the backs of Black children. Black educators were fired en mass. You all know this from talking to Leslie Fenwick, right? About her book, Jim Crow's Pink Slip. And so, uh, all of this again, was intentional.

It was intentional. This was embedded into law.

Andrew: Yeah. Take us through to today, because it’s easy to look at all those things and think, “Well, that was Jim Crow, that was back in the day. Things must be better today. Right? We're not still defunding, divesting, and, and diverting, are we?”

Dr. Janel George: Oh, absolutely we are. Right? So the late science fiction writer, Octavia Butler said, uh, “There's nothing new under the sun, but there are new suns.”

And so again, we're seeing these different iterations.

Andrew: That might be the first Octavia Butler quote we've had, which I'm very excited about!

Dr. Janel George: Oh really?!

Dr. Val: I know, like I am geeking out right now! I was like, Oh my gosh!

[Everyone laughs]

This is fantastic!

Dr. Janel George: So UCLA Law CRT Forward Tracking Project actually keeps track of, of local, state, and federal anti CRT-legislation. And I also have to admit my, one of my first students in this class I taught as an adjunct at Georgetown now leads that program at UCLA Law, Taifha Alexander.

Andrew: Oh, cool!

Dr. Janel George: I'm not saying that I influenced, anyways.

Andrew: Absolutely!

Dr. Janel George: But if you look, if you look at CRT Forward Tracking Project, over 800 efforts, ranging from legislation to school board policies, executive orders, letters from attorney generals or resolutions have been introduced at the state, local and federal levels aimed at critical race theory or racism. Right?

And so, first I wanna back up to the federal piece. I, I mentioned massive resistance, and I think it's interesting because we had the Southern Manifesto. So, Brown v Board, the ruling came out May 1954. Basically invalidated Plessy versus Ferguson, segregation in in public spaces. 101 Southern members of Congress signed the Southern Manifesto vowing to defy the ruling, right? That triggered massive resistance.

And we see likewise, we have former President Trump's executive order 13950. And basically he prohibited federal contractors from teaching these so-called divisive concepts, which is not clearly actually defined at all. That order was actually invalidated by a federal court, an injunction was placed on it, and then Biden rescinded it. But like the Southern Manifesto, that order triggered copycat legislation (right?) at the state and local levels.

So we go back: 1955. Alabama had a law H-296. And this is a deny law. It said, uh, any other provision of law, notwithstanding, no child shall be compelled to attend any school in which the races are co-mingled, upon a written objection from the parent.

Other states saw, the origins of exclusionary discipline where, uh, localities were allowed to suspend or expel students, for any basis, right? For example, 1964, Alabama had act #460, allowing local school boards to require students who, and I quote, create disciplinary problems to be separated from their class.

This is where we see the origins of suspensions and expulsions. Those weren't taking place in school pre-integration at the rate in which they took hold during school desegregation. And Cara McClellan, actually another former LDF attorney, who teaches now at Penn Law, has a great article in the Boston Law Review, in which she talks about this history of school desegregation, taking hold in suspensions, expulsions, and school discipline.

Okay, so let's go to our current time. Let's talk about the Stop WOKE Act in Florida (Stop Wrongs against Our Kids and Employees Act). Stop WOKE Act, to restrict the teaching again of divisive concepts, just pulls the language from the executive order. This law is actually, an injunction has been placed in its application to higher ed. The federal court in placing that injunction, they called the law positively dystopian. Unfortunately, it still impacts K through 12 schools. Okay, so that's past deny/modern deny.

Okay. Defund laws. They were basically any law that said, we'll withhold state funding from schools to desegregate. Right? So let's look at Virginia, where I live. Uh, the Stafford County School Board enacted a resolution denouncing the 1619 Project, that was a New York Times project led by Nikole Hannah-Jones, which recognizes 1619 when enslaved Africans were first brought to this country’s shores as the origins of this country.

So, denounces 1619 project, CRT (and student pronoun selection) and says that the school board review, and I quote, “All appropriations requests from the school board to ensure that funding is not dedicated to practices, specifically denounced in this resolution.” So there are defunding provisions in place.

Okay. Diversion. So massive resistance and, and again, you all talked to Leslie Fenwick, you talked about the retaliation actually towards Black educators for their role in school desegregation. They helped LDS find student plaintiffs, they were very active in promoting school desegregation. And so, in Louisiana there was a law that permitted the removal of public school employees of the New Orleans Parish, who are deemed members of organizations, barred from operating in the state. Read something like the NAACP, right?

So what's, what's happening now with anti-CRT? Okay. Well, uh, Tennessee, uh, their legislature enacted a law, uh, as well as the State Department of Education. They implemented regulations outlining the process for investigating, resolving complaints alleging, uh, teaching of prohibited concepts. Matthew Hawn, who is a social studies teacher, he's White. Uh, he was a 16 year veteran. He was reprimanded for discussing White privilege. He shared a poem about White privilege and assigned a Ta-Nehisi Coates essay in his contemporary issues class. He was fired. Uh, upon his appeal, the school board voted to uphold his termination.

So now we're not just seeing educators of color (right?) being targeted, but it's anyone who's teaching about race or inequality now. Anyone who is, is, is deemed as promoting, so-called “divisive concepts,” which again, are not really clearly defined.

So again, there's a through-line. A lot of the language from the civil rights movement has actually been taken and co-opted. So if you read some of these resolutions (“freedom to learn,” “freedom against discrimination,” They're almost equating efforts to be race conscious or acknowledge the very history, the memory of massive resistance with Jim Crow segregation.

Forget the historical asymmetry. They're saying it's the same thing. Right? So I think that we have to expose that and call it what it is. Racial inequality is very adaptive, right? It can fit. “Okay, we can't do dejure segregation under law. So let's be a little more covert. Let's use neutral language. Oh, let's take the language from the civil rights movement and call race consciousness racism.” And so, that's, that's what we're seeing happening. But if we peel back the layers, it's the same thing. And the goal is the same: to maintain racial stratification, to undermine racial progress.

Andrew: Mmm. Whiteness finds a way. White supremacy replicates itself and the, and the language changes and shifts. I mean, we talked a long time ago with Elizabeth McRae who wrote “Mothers of Mass Resistance.”

Dr. Janel George: Yes! Yes.

Andrew: About the, the, White women who are sort of doing the work as she calls it, like, tilling the garden of White supremacy.

Dr. Janel George: That's right.

Andrew: Maintaining it. And, “Oh, so we need to shift how we're talking about this.” But the goal is always the same. The tools shift and the limitations change based on the law, but the goal is still the same.

Dr. Janel George: Absolutely. White supremacy is very adaptive. [Val chuckles] It can morph, morph itself to fit into the environment, but I think the key is always looking at the end goal. Who is this going to harm? How is it going to further entrench inequities. And that's why I tell my students, you have to look past language, language can seem very neutral. But peel back the layers and understand the history and context. And if we're not attuned to that, then we're not aware of how inequality can be maintained, how it can be preserved.

But understanding the history, understanding the context, and also understanding how our country has, has adapted and changed in many ways. So, I don't mean in any way to say that we, we haven't advanced, that we haven't grown, or anything like that, but that inequality keeps re-rearing its head, over and over again. So progress isn't a straight line, right? It's, it's almost this back and forth and back and forth and back and forth.

Dr. Val: Yeah. I think for a lot of our listeners, and you mentioned this as well, George Floyd was a moment for them. For me, it was Trayvon Martin. But everyone, like, has unfortunately, like, their person.

Given, uh, George Floyd in 2020, what is your hope (with a lot, a lot of work from all of us) that this world and educational justice and racial justice looks like in 2030?

Dr. Janel George: Mm. Wow. That is a great question. So my person was Mike Brown. I had been at the Legal Defense Fund not even a year yet. And, uh, was still trying to shape the education portfolio that I was working on. And I remember at that point, Nikole Hannah-Jones was an education reporter. And I remember her going to Ferguson and commenting on the fact that, uh, as Mike Brown's body was still in the street because his body was left out there for hours. His mother said, “Do you know what it took to get him to graduate?” And I remember reading Nikole Hannah-Jones's words about that and that the first response out of his mother's mouth was about him graduating high school?

And you know, she said, “Okay, a lot of Black kids will not be killed the way Michael Brown was killed, but they'll probably attend a school like he attended in Ferguson.” Right? Uh, that's under-resourced (I think at that point it had been taken over by the state). And so again, that's when I began to see all these through-lines between racial inequity, segregation, under-resourcing, these interactions with law enforcement.

So, I remember just feeling very motivated to highlight those kinds of educational inequities and the real harm that they pose to students. And also the way that kids are, are policed in their communities and neighborhoods and how it's replicated in many schools. And I started to write about that and, and research that and study it. And it helped to shape the trajectory of the work that I, I now have come to do. I didn't know it then, but looking at this lens (right?) of violence and discrimination and, most of us in our lifetimes will pass through schools, but what does that mean? How does that experience shape us?

And so, when you talk about hope, another, another school orientation activity that I have the law students do (and they roll their eyes, right?), on their second day of orientation, we give them this big blank piece of paper. We give them crayons and pens and all of that, and we say, draw your vision of a racially just school. And they're like, what? Some of them are, like, in their thirties and forties and they're like, “What? First of all, we're law students. We don't draw,” and they–

Andrew: You want me to color? [Andrew laughs]

Dr. Janel George: Every semester they say, “Can we write?” And I, no, you have to draw a picture. And they, they're always like, “Why?” Because if you can't envision what you are fighting for uh, you're trying to fight for racially just schools, what does it look like? Who's in your school? Where is your school located? If you can't draw that vision, then, what are we working towards? Right?

I think adrienne maree brown said that one of the spoils of colonialism is imagination. You know, and I tell my students, a lot of the civil rights advocates grew up in the Jim Crow South. They weren't going to school with White people. They weren't working with White people. They were fighting for something that they hadn't even experienced. They had to imagine it. Right? And we're the beneficiaries of their imagination. So we have to exercise our imagination.

So when you ask, well, what is my hope in 2030, my hope is that your, your access to education isn't determined by where you live. That every student has access to an experienced educator. That every student can pursue the education portfolio, their choice. That every, every child should be able to have access to advanced placement studies. That schools are hubs of communities again, where community members can come and go. And that our teaching workforce is supported and recognized and promoted. And that teaching professionals have the institutional supports they need, the ongoing learning that they need, the mental health supports that they need. That our curriculum is truly rich, right? And it's rich with the experiences of all the people who make up our, our democracy, right? So that's, that's my hope. Um, 2030 is actually pretty soon, so I don't know!

[Laughter]

Dr. Val: It is!

Andrew: We’re coming up on it! We better get to work.

Dr. Val: We could totally do that by then! We could totally do all of that by then.

Andrew: That's beautiful. You mentioned at the beginning that, that education is sort of foundational to our democracy.

If we get to that vision of this education system that I think you described beautifully (that it certainly reflects my hopes and dreams for an education system) like, what comes from that in terms of our, our country, in terms of our society?

Dr. Janel George: Oh my gosh. I think about Brown. The State Department wrote a, a friend of the court brief on the behalf of the Brown plaintiffs because they recognized that segregation was truly undermining the democracy. It was undermining progress.

When we think about the contributions of people of color to this country, that has so often been erased. Um, from the basics, right? Stoplights were invented by Black man. To, uh, GPS (right?) which was invented by a Black woman. To the very advanced, we need the ingenuity.

We need the insight. We need the imagination. We need the thinking of all of our children, right? And I think everyone benefits from that. Our country benefits from that. And so, it is really important that we move past this hoarding mindset. Education isn't something to be hoarded or to be weaponized or to be taken away, but to be more fairly distributed to all of us. And I think we have to adopt more of a collective mindset and see that the collective benefit that we all get from expanding access to quality education.

Andrew: Yeah, that's beautiful. I mean, I think your, your work has been so focused on taking these tools of the law and looking at where it has the power to, to move things forward. And then looking at where, where it maybe is lacking the connection to real people, to real people's lives.

For our audience who is, you know, largely parents/caregivers, people who are, who are engaged in the education system, what, what role do we have to play? Those of us who are not directly involved in the law, but what role do we have to play in achieving that beautiful vision that you laid out?

Dr. Janel George: Well, I think it's part of what you all talk about in the podcast, right? What kind of decisions are you making that may seem small, right? Whether it's choosing where your children go to school, whether it's engaging on the PTA or school board governance and paying attention to who's not in the room.

All of those decisions (again, that seem very individualized and small), really do have a, a cumulative impact. So, taking a look, being aware. Who's at your child's school, right? What is the makeup here? What are you doing? Big or small ways to expand, uh, access to education. How are you broadening your own child or children's horizons? Right?

How are you investing in your school, uh, volunteering or supporting.

How are you talking about schools? How are you talking about diversity? And it's, is that something you're just, you value secretly and you hold close? Or how are you operationalizing that, right, through even those small decisions? I think all of those things, it, again, they seem small, but they can be very impactful and make a huge difference.

Andrew: Mmm! That’s beautiful. Thank you for this. I've been such a huge fan of your work for such a long time.

Dr. Janel George: Oh, thank you! Oh my gosh.

Andrew: Incredibly accessible and–

Dr. Janel George: Thank you.

Andrew: –thoughtful and, you know, doing this important work of, kind of, bridging the gap between what we often think of as “those policy makers over there” and the people who are impacted by policy.

And I just think it's so wonderful and really glad that you were willing to come on and tell us all about it!

Dr. Janel George: Thank you! Thank you for having me. I’m such a fangirl, this is so cool!

[Theme music]

Andrew: So Val, what did you think?

Val: As always, I think that it is vital that all of us regardless of what our areas of study end up being, we should also be historians, because I think once we have that knowledge we are able to make different and more informed decisions. And, I do feel sensitive in a lot of these conversations when we talk about the intentional ways that Black youth were excluded from a fair and just education And I am grateful for all of the folks who have fought on behalf of educational justice.

You know, even though I am an educator by training, Ms. George, teaching her students and the general public about the ways in which we should be examining these laws and how they impact students, I think as a member of the coalition, I didn’t necessarily know… that I needed it! In my corner right? Like you know–

Andrew: Yeah.

Val: –having some lawyers is a good idea. But, I don’t think I was aware, truly, that lawyers were spending their time doing that in a way that impacted public policy. So, I feel hurt that we need such people and I’m grateful that we have those people.

Andrew: That idea of legislative lawyering, the idea that there are people out there who are working on bridging that gap, democratizing the knowledge and acting as that two-way street of, bringing the, kind of, legislative process to the people and then bringing the people's voice to the legislative process feels hopeful in some way.

It feels like we're not gonna arrive at helpful policy unless that's happening.

Val: Mm-Hmm.

Andrew: Policy created in a vacuum, and in some ways it's similar to the idea of getting into community before you start advocating for changes in your school. Right? Like,

Val: Mm-Hmm! Literally.

Andrew: Policy made in a vacuum is not actually gonna help all the people, whereas if you can actually bridge those gaps, find ways to bring the voice of the most impacted into the conversation, then you're gonna come up with policy that actually is helpful for everybody. And so, yeah, I'm glad that there are legislative lawyers that that's a thing.

I didn't know that, that, that that was a thing! And, it gives me hope that there are people committed to that and then it kind of becomes on us as, as non-lawyers, non-policy makers, to, to figure out how do we, how do we find those people?

How do we make sure that voices get heard? That we are, you know, part of the process, because I think the only way that works is if there is a public, if there are people who are there, who are also willing to engage in those conversations.

Val: I'm gonna pause you there and go back to something that you said, and ask for a reframe, 'cause we all play a part in our “little p” policy, and you said “It's how you show up in a school,” like a new school, right? Um, that you have–

Andrew: Mm-Hmm.

Val: –to get to know the community first. To understand the community, to understand, like, why some policies are there, why some policies are missing, so that you can advocate for the right thing.

Andrew: Yeah.

Val: And then I heard you say “We have to find those people,” but we are those people! We are those people, right? Because,

Andrew: Mm-Hmm.

Val: We have our school communities in which, you know, there will be some policies that we can possibly influence after we get to understand the community. So, yes, we need legislative lawyers but when it comes to “little p” policy, we have to count on us as community members, engaged community members to do that.

Um, the other night, uh–

Andrew: Yeah.

Val: –was curriculum night at my kids' high school. It was lovely. I had lots of one-on-one conversations with their teachers. It was just, like, a great time.

And you know why I was able to have in-depth, one-on-one conversations? Because, like, the school was basically empty. My husband and I saw just a handful of other parents. It was like a ghost town!

And, you know, as our children get older, right? You see that high levels engagement kind of fades away as the, the young people get older and, AND we also need that level of engagement at the upper levels of school as well.

Andrew: Yeah. What's the barrier? Like, why wasn't anybody there?

Val: I don't know. So, my husband's also a high school teacher and there were a few parents who attended his school’s as well. So, it's not the school. I think it’s the age.

Andrew: Yeah. Oh, for sure.

Val: I think caregivers might assume that schools don't need or want as much parental involvement outside of, like, extracurriculars?

Homecoming is coming, it's gonna be packed, right?

Andrew: Right, right.

Val: Sporting events, they're all packed, right? Band, drama, you'll see–

Andrew: The booster club. Yep.

Val: –you’ll see people there! And we also need that level of engagement, for academics as well.

And so, to connect back to what you said about, like, how do we all show up, understand the community, and recognize that even small policies, we have the ability to influence once we understand what is happening in the community and how do we use our voices in that way?

Andrew: Thinking about what it means to be an engaged parent in new ways, particularly as our kids get older, feels really, really helpful to me.

Val: So, taking us back to the conversation with Ms. George, she mentions that each semester she asks her students to essentially draw a picture of,

Andrew: Yeah.

Val: What they’re fighting for and says, “If you can't envision what you're fighting for, then that's a problem,” right?

And I'm curious, what would be on your picture?

Andrew: Yeah. I was thinking about that and, uh, I have zero, visual artistic ability, whatsoever!

Val: Yeah.

Andrew: I've, I've got, uh, a mediocre stick figure as about as, in depth as my drawing skills go. But I love the idea of, of actually, you know, picturing it because, we can't, we can't be what we can't see. And I don't think we have a lot of examples to point to, so it's not like, “Oh, my ideal school would look like this one particular school that I know of.”

But I think like if I, if I'm, if I'm drawing and, you know, magically given some better art, artistic drawing skills, but… we've got a classroom that looks a whole lot like the city that that classroom is situated in. Racially, socioeconomically, religiously, gender, you know, kind of really represents the broad diversity of the community that that school is situated in.

We've got a classroom that's rich with resources that are also representative of those communities. We've got a teacher who looks like some of the students that are in that class, that is well trained, that is the support and time and space to do the great job of teaching that teachers want to do.

And, um, you know, often are, are held back from by the, kind of, burdens that we put on teachers to solve all of society's other problems and not compensate them enough for.

Val: Mm. That's some really good drawing skills! That's, that's, you’re an artiste!

Andrew: I can't actually draw any of that! but that's, that's what I, that's what I would want to draw.

How about you?

[Val chuckles]

Val: As I was thinking about my picture, you know, say I have this beautiful mural that is all done, that encompasses much of what you said and how there'll probably still be something missing, and I won't know that it's missing unless I'm in community with people who are different from me to help me recognize that it's missing. Right?

Andrew: Yep.

Val: And so, one thing that I would not have drawn, but I am trying to be super thoughtful about right now, because at drop off, I see lots of different kids. Okay, I, I'm a super nerd about this. When I drop off my kids, and I see like White kids going in. Young ladies with hijabs on. I'm like, “Oh my gosh! What is this wonderful place?!” Right?

Andrew: Yep.

Val: And so, what I would not have drawn, that now thinking about it intentionally, I need to draw a place where a student might need to do prayer during the day. Right? And,

Andrew: Mmm. Yep.

Val: That would be wonderful! For them to have that space where they could feel safe to do that.

Andrew: Yeah. A place where a kid in a wheelchair can, can park their wheelchair. Where a kid who needs other physical disabilities. Yeah, yeah.

Val: That’s where I was going next, right?

Andrew: Yep.

Val: So my, my initial picture, just because of my limited perspective on the human experience, right, would've missed those things. And unless I'm in community with other people to say, “Hey, you forgot this really important thing and you forgot this really important thing,” then my picture's incomplete.

And so, it's wonderful for us to create our own vision for it, but it will only be enhanced when we are doing it in community with others.

Andrew: And the way that that happens is that people feel like they belong, feel like the space is theirs as much as it is anybody else's. That their vision of what should be in that drawing is as important as anybody else's vision. And I don't know how you draw that, but that's the, the real win is the place that is adaptable.

The place that can change and can grow and can be enhanced by all the people who are in it. And I definitely don't have the drawing skills to draw that! [Laughter] But I think that's the, that's the vision. You know?

Val: I think we can collage it out. [Andrew chuckles]

Andrew: Okay.

Val: For sure.

Andrew: I'm gonna let you get started on that.

Val: Yeah, for sure.

Andrew: It was a great conversation. I'm so glad that Ms. George was willing to come on. I'm glad that she, may have been our first guest to quote Octavia Butler, which was very exciting.

Val: So cool!

Andrew: Um, and, and adrienne maree brown.

Val: I mean she had Black women on Black women on Black women to cite! I was having a good time.

Andrew: Yep. Yep. She's amazing. Listeners, what did you think? We want to hear from you.

Send us a voice memo: speakpipe.com/integratedschools. What has this episode left you thinking about? How are you getting involved? What are as, as Ms. George said, the little decisions that you're making and what impact might they be having?

We want to hear about it. Send us a voicemail. Record a voice memo on your phone and email it to us.

Val: That's right. And we also want you to listen and share this episode.

What makes our learning really stick for Andrew and I is we are in deep conversation with one another about the ideas that we're hearing. I know you, you get this podcast version, but there'll be texts throughout the week or other conversations where we’re, like–

Andrew: Yep.

Val: –wrapping up ideas and, and making sense of what we've heard and experienced. And so, that makes the learning extra meaningful. So, in addition to listening to the podcast, we encourage you to share the podcast and engage in conversation around it as well, because that matters.

Andrew: And if you have appreciated the podcast, we would appreciate your support! We've got over 130-some-odd people who have joined our Patreon–

Val: Nice!

Andrew: –who are giving every month to help support this work, and we are deeply grateful for that. And would love to add you if you are not one of those people yet to the list of supporters.

patreon.com/integratedschools. You can give us a few bucks every month. You get access to our podcast happy hours (the first one of those will be coming up here pretty soon), and facilitation guides, and show notes, and transcripts. But, most importantly, you get to show your support for the work that we are doing here, because it's important work and we need your support to keep doing it.

Val: That's right, and if, if you're running a conference or having some other kind of conversation and you want Andrew and I to come facilitate a discussion for you, we're actually really good at that.

Andrew: As it turns out! Surprisingly good at that. So yeah, definitely hit us up for that. We would love that! Well, Val, as always, it is a pleasure and an honor to be in this with you as I try to know better and do better.

Val: Until next time.