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The Lee County School Board has provided a unanimous nod of consensus for the district to move forward with an African American history initiative for exemplary school status.

Matthew Kaye, coordinator for K-12 Social Studies and advanced studies, said the Florida Commissioner of Education’s African American History Task Forces has been a collaborative effort with state Department Of Education to improve some instructional and professional development opportunities. He said it is a composite effort within the district as well, due to academic services, human resources, executive services and school sites coming together.

Rebecca Savage, coordinator of secondary English language arts, said the team is a professional learning community that focuses on multi-cultural and diversity issues. She said the task force came together earlier this year and have been meeting monthly.

“One of our goals is to achieve exemplary status for our school district in the area of African American History Task Force state designation,” Savage said.

The task force attended a digital conference hosted by the African American History Task Force at the state level, as well as multiple districts.

The districts that have already received the exemplary status include Broward County Public Schools; Duval County Public Schools; Gadsden County School District; Hillsborough County Public Schools; Leon County Schools; Miami-Dade Public Schools; Palm Beach County Schools; Pinellas County School District and St. Lucie County Schools. The schools nearing status include Alachua County Public Schools; Marion County Public Schools and Volusia County Schools.

Savage said many of their task force members have worked with some of the other districts that have achieved the status, as well as state representatives to help guide the district in its work.

The criteria for being identified as an exemplary school district includes school board approval of the African American history initiative; structured professional development; African American studies curriculum; structured teaching of the African American history curriculum; school district collaboration with a university and parent and community partnerships.

The first element is focused on structure and social development.

Diversity and Inclusion Coach Crystal Torres-Nunez said they had their social studies department heads trained by the African Network of Southwest Florida.

“Currently we are looking at growth areas to include strategies for teaching African American history trainings,” she said. “Focus on multi-cultural education and more cultural relevant training, leading and learning opportunities for high school African American courses, as well as leadership workshops for principals and assistant principals in regards to implementation of the curriculum.”

The second area includes African American studies curriculum and infusion in a cross curriculum way.

Savage said they were able to work across curriculum to identify areas where African American history is currently taught.

“We were happy to find that it did exist across our curriculum for secondary. Then we worked with elementary, as well with language arts, and we were able to identify that and map it out as an artifact to support our exemplary status as a school district,” Savage said.

Kaye said with the teaching of African American curriculum they look at more concrete and explicit instruction of the state elective course, African American history.

“It is currently taught in five of our 15 high schools,” he said, one of which is Gateway which only offers it to ninth grade students at this time.

The semester-long elective course is open to ninth through 12th grade students, based on the student’s choice of enrolling in the class.

“Our expansion for the course would be our curriculum support and professional development support,” Kaye said.

That would include quarterly leading and learning where teachers would get together for professional development; development of curriculum maps and instructional supports; weekly updates with curriculum opportunities and professional development.

Since the class is already in some of the high schools, Kaye said they have a great body of teachers who have already started working on that. He said they are working with DOE and the task force to identify some best practice resources and training specific to the course.

Jarrett Eady, also with the Diversity and Inclusion department, said over the summer a meeting was held with Florida Gulf Coast University. The conversation explored possible collaboration between the College of Education students coming in and being able to practice some of their research development, as it relates to establishing development lesson plans from the social studies level, while infusing some local level history, he explained.

Eady said to him, the great historical perspective is to ensure that the resources that are available from the local level are infused as resource development for stand- alone electives, as well as resources available for curriculum K-12. To reach that goal, he said they have to make sure local history is available, applicable and accessible to the district’s teachers and students.

“The Lee County Black History Society has been very supportive and opened up their building for resources,” he said.

The next steps include reconvening with the task force support team to address progress; continue development of African American history curriculum supports and reinforce any gaps in the application. The goal is to seek exemplary status distinction by May 2021.

Board Member Gwyn Gittens asked how the curriculum aligned with what is taught at the five high schools that are already offering the elective and how many students are enrolled.

Kaye said they want to put their weight and talent behind the course to help it grow to other schools.

Eady said the new inclusion of the course is the Florida and local history. He said it is important to understand the presence of the African experience and establishment of Florida territory, as well as understanding reconstruction from the Civil War.

“There was a Civil War battle here. The Battle of Fort Myers in 1865 that was manned and staffed by a regimen of African American soldiers. At one point the citizens’ record did designate there were slaves residing here in our local community,” he said. “It was important to note that the people that were part of the reconstruction initiative lived here.”

Eady said it is also important for the students to understand how the local history fits into America’s history.

Gittens said the recognition of a particular demographic in the schools would help to give students the pride and feeling of participation and being a part of a whole.

“That is why I think it is really wonderful,” she said.

There are currently 93 students enrolled, Kaye said, adding that he believes 150 students total are taking the class due to some schools offering it only in the fall or spring.

“By encouraging and empowering our teachers to teach this course with fidelity and wealth, we think that will generate student interest,” Kaye said. “As students see the course being taught well, they will gravitate toward it.”

Kaye said there are African American history and benchmarks within the American history courses offered, which is a required course.

“The benchmarks are identical. The benchmarks in the African American history course are the same benchmarks in the American History course. It is just presented as a more concentrated study and opportunity for enrichment and deepening of the understanding. The pace of the course can be slower,” he said.

Board member Cathleen Morgan said she believes there are a lot of conversations that need to be had in Lee County and she thinks if it is started from a point of fact it becomes much easier to have that conversation.

“I think what you are doing is terrific. I am absolutely in support of something that starts locally and builds knowledge and creates conversation and takes us where we need to go,” she said.