Rani Dasi - On what she's most proud of during her school board tenure (clip)

Rani Dasi: I think that the thing that I’m most proud of is we definitely think about all students in a different way now. So we, as we make major decisions, we use a tool called “Racial Equity Decision Making Analysis” and it’s not just that we’re based on race but we’re considering questions like, “Who is harmed by this decision?”, “How do we understand the long term consequences for various groups of this decision?” and so I think this builds toward structural change in a way that has not been true historically where we might have made a decision that was best for most of the kids. The other thing that I’m really proud of is when I joined the Board, I did not know that teachers did not have maternity/paternity/family leave when they had children, and for an industry that is 80+% female I felt like that was a travesty. So we took the lead in Chapel Hill/Carrboro of implementing that policy. We were the first in the state. Maybe even in the country although I’ve heard that there was maybe a couple of other districts in the country who’d done it. And then after some time, the state eventually followed us and now there is paid parental leave for teachers. And that’s, you know we talked about giving teachers what they need to do their jobs. That’s just basic. One, two, three. Of course, you … And so that I’m really excited about. And then I think also focusing on bringing in more teachers of color. We talked about the importance of that and that’s something that continues to be really important to our Board and Administration.