Road Map Improvement Collaborative

The Road Map Improvement Collaborative (RMIC) serves as a space for collaboration, adaptive leadership, learning, & transformation to actualize, in the words of Renton Superintendent Dr. Damien Pattenaude, "a blood oath of regional commitment" to creating just and humanizing schools, together.

Our Journey

The launch of the 2020 Road Map Improvement Collaborative (RMIC) occurred during an unprecedented opportunity for transformation. The collision of pivotal events - the 2020 police killings of African Americans, recognizing racism as a public health crisis in King County, and a pandemic that’s magnified long-standing inequities and mandated the redesign of teaching and learning as we know it - offer an opportunity for Road Map districts to further galvanize emotion and action to reimagine systems for students and families furthest from educational justice.

Our Shared Vision & Action Priorities

We analyzed strategic plans and racial equity policies across our seven Road Map districts and developed a shared regional vision organized around six 'buckets' of work:

In early 2021, we collectively identified three shared priorities as Cultivating a Racially Diverse & Thriving Educator Workforce, Elevating Youth of Color Voice & Leadership, and Seeing & Feeling Progress in Our Racial Equity Work.

Later that year, we launched year-long learning & action collaboratives organized around each of the first two priorities. These collaboratives were designed so that teams could pursue share problems of practice through discussion of regional and national bright spots, thought partnership, technical assistance and coaching from regional and national experts. Superintendents assembled cross-system teams to participate in the collaboratives.

RMIC Convenings 2022-2023

Cultivating a Racially Diverse & Thriving Educator Workforce
Elevating Youth of Color Voice & Leadership

Cultivating a Racially Diverse & Thriving Educator Workforce

This learning and action series builds from the foundational belief that in order to effectively diversify our workforce, we must first create lasting environments and professional pathways for Educators of Color to thrive.

Over the last year, participating teams worked on district priorities around retention and recruitment while learning from regional and national experts. This year we will center these and other district recruitment initiatives in this convening (see also retention and elevating youth voice).

Additionally, PSESD has been named as a regional convener for the LEADER initiative, a multi-year, multi-system project to align our education system around diversifying the educator workforce. This statewide initiative will support our regional work with resources, staff, and a leadership team of local experts who represent teachers and administrators of color, higher education partners, tribal, community and student voices, who will inform and support this work.

For More Information Click Here

This learning and action series builds from the foundational belief that in order to effectively diversify our workforce, we must first create lasting environments and pathways for Educators of Color to thrive.

Over the last year, participating teams worked on district priorities around retention and recruitment while learning from regional and national experts. This year we will center these and other districts’ retention initiatives in this convening series (see also recruitment and elevating youth voice).

Our retention convenings, co-designed with district leaders, regional experts, PSESD staff, and our Youth and Community Wisdom Councils, will wrap initiative work with supportive structures of expert learning sessions, coaching, cross-district thought partnership and continuous improvement.

For More Information Click Here

Elevating Youth of Color Voice & Leadership

Last year teams worked on district initiatives while participating in convenings co-designed with our Youth Wisdom Council. Sessions included student panels, district leader panels, and discussion of bright spot practices along with team-time to plan forward. Teams developed student advisory councils and worked to build district capacity for Youth of Color leadership that directly support districts' strategic plans.

This year we will strengthen our coalition and our sessions to directly support district initiatives. We will wrap initiative work with supportive structures of expert learning sessions, coaching, cross-district thought partnership and continuous improvement.

For More Information Click Here

Community Conversations

In 2022, 120 Youth of Color engaged in conversations with other Youth of Color about supporting, retaining, and recruiting Teachers and other Educators of Color. Almost all youth attended middle schools or high schools in South King County school districts. Conversations focused on experiences with Educators of Color, what it looks like to them for Educators of Color to thrive, the importance of having a more diverse educator workforce, and youth's own interests in education and teaching careers. Click on the image to the left to access more information about Community Conversations.

Resources

RMIC Launch 2020

RMIC Overview 2021-2022

Regional Bright Spot: Auburn School District's Youth Equity Stewardship (YES!) Initiative

Questions? Contact:

Adam Kay
Director
Collaborative Improvement Networks
akay@psesd.org

Angelica Alvarez
Manager
Student, Family & Community Engagement
aalvarez@psesd.org

Brad Brown
Executive Director
Learning, Teaching & Leadership Development
bbbrown@psesd.org