What is JEDI and Why It’s Important in the Poway Unified School District

By Casey Doan

May marks the second anniversary of the horrific, brutal murder of George Floyd, which occured just weeks after the murders of Ahmaud Arbery and Brionna Taylor in the early part of 2020.  Floyd’s death - just one of countless Black lives stolen in this country - broke something inside many of us. It sparked a fury that I could not let go of, and it motivated me to stand up, speak out and join efforts to demand change. 

The @BlackinPUSD Instagram account launched weeks after George Floyd’s death, detailing hundreds of cases of racism in our schools. The confluence of these events sparked real momentum, finally, in our country, and in our community. 

The Poway Unified School District (PUSD) was forced to look closely at racism in our classrooms.  They developed a Comprehensive Plan for Racial Equity and Inclusion, began holding Community Conversations, and hired a Director of Equity and Inclusion. 

At the same time, the Palomar Council PTA established a Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (JEDI) Chair position on their board. I stepped into that role a year ago. For me, becoming involved in this work has been a slow, inevitable pull, after moving to San Diego from Asia where I spent several years working with the United Nations. This work gives me purpose because it is urgent and important; my children and yours are waiting for us. 

In the year that I have been the PTA JEDI Chair, we have been focused on recruiting parents to our team, encouraging the establishment of JEDI positions on individual school boards, and sharing information, ideas and resources in our Facebook group, Instagram (@PUSDparents4JEDI) and at our monthly meetings. We’ve also been meeting regularly with PUSD officials to raise concerns and collaborate on areas for improvement. We have members on the PUSD Equity Advisory Committee. And we are working within our children’s schools to ensure an equity lens to parent-led/school board efforts on campuses. 

Although this work began as a response to racialized violence in America, the JEDI work we are doing in PUSD is not just about racial justice… it’s about equity, diversity and inclusion for all. This work aims to ensure all students feel seen, valued, respected and celebrated, no matter their race, religion, sexuality, gender, or socio-economic situation. And because, for a variety of complicated reasons, specific groups face roadblocks to equity in education, this work is about ensuring a lens is there to identify and fix inequities. 

I know from my regular conversations with district officials that a lot of work is going on at the District Office to address racial equity and inclusion for all students who have been slipping through the cracks all these years. It is a huge task, and this work takes time. But I have seen the dedication and commitment of PUSD staff in doing this work, and I am encouraged. As a parent, I am thankful and committed to supporting these efforts. 

I am motivated by these successes, but there are of course setbacks. Detractors argue Critical Race Theory is radicalizing our students. CRT is not at work in our schools. What our high school students are doing is discussing race and using a racial lens to explore ethnic literature. How is this any different from conversations around how race impacts our everyday lives, that we have at home? From my understanding, the newly implemented ethnic literature classes are well loved by students, who are saying they feel seen and represented in these class discussions. My belief is that those driving this “concern” around CRT are trying to prevent progress by distracting us around this nationally politicized conversation. 

Unfortunately detractors of this work try to paint our efforts as divisive. Our goal is anything but that. We recognize that every student (indeed every person) has multiple identities - beautiful parts of ourselves that make us unique. We want to recognize and celebrate those parts of ourselves, not use them as ways to separate and divide. For too long we’ve felt unable to be our full selves - to know how to reconcile being multifaceted Americans: what it means to be Asian American, what it means to be Muslim American, what it means to be a Black gay American. This work holds space for you to be ALL the things you are. We celebrate our diversity. We use that to bring us together. 

I call on you all to speak up in support of this urgent and important work. Like literally any change, it won’t happen unless we stand up and demand it, together. 

Casey Doan is a white Australian-American, living in Rancho Penasquitos with her Vietnamese-American husband and three children, two of whom currently attend a PUSD elementary school. Casey is the Palomar Council PTA JEDI Chair.