Mankato Race Equity Framework

After the global uprisings for social justice in the summer of 2020, the Superintendent of Mankato Area Public Schools (MAPS) and school board leadership, reached out to MnEEP seeking partnership and guidance for an education equity planning process that would take place from Fall of 2020 until Fall of 2021.

The main deliverables for this process included a pre-assessment done with surveys and interviews with multiple stakeholders of MAPS, a staff grounding retreat, community visioning sessions with diverse cultural communities, guidance to the teaching and learning department, a final strategic retreat with community and staff to draft an equity framework, and guidance for a community-wide Equity Summit.

Throughout the process, MnEEP staff and consultants also worked closely with an equity committee made up of staff, community representatives, a couple of school board representatives, and leadership from the community engagement office of MAPS. The equity committee was instrumental in guiding the approach with six virtual cultural communities’ visioning sessions: a Latinx session, an African American session, an Asian session, a Sudanese session, and a Somali session.

Youth from each of these cultural groups were also interviewed as part of this process. The MAPS Race Equity framework with draft mission, vision and values, and equity lens question considerations were then presented to the school board and adopted in July 2021. A final community-wide Equity Summit was held in Mankato, MN with over 250 attendees in September of 2021.