Policy Accessibility Across the US
Since each of our group members comes from very different K-12 schooling backgrounds, we initially struggled to pick a project topic. On one hand, we wanted to use this opportunity to learn something new (we initially thought we would research Seattle since none of us are from there). We quickly realized that in a half semester course and global pandemic, we would not have time to do all of the background research that would be required. Therefore, we decided on something familiar to each of us- we each researched our own high schools.
Our findings were varied. Each of us went to very different schools, and one of us went to high school in a completely different part of the country. This meant that we had to think creatively about our approach to policy. With the exception of covid-19, we could not really identify a single area that had enough information available for each of us to contribute equally. Inspired by Paulette’s organizing work in her district, we then decided to research policy itself. We were guided by the questions how is policy made? Who is responsible for making policy? How available is this policy made to community members? How easy or difficult is it to be involved with policy making? Are the policymakers and the policy itself representative of the community?
Once we settled on our area of research, we began brainstorming different medias of presentation for our policy brief. We settled on Storymap because we felt it was the easiest way to visualize the different localities that we were each researching.
To no one’s surprise, there were major shortcomings in policy accessibility in each of these four settings. While Elizabeth’s private school seemed to have the most accessible and representative policy, it was hard to reconcile that with the inherent racism and classism that accompanies being a part of a private school network. By making these comparisons in group discussion, we were able to outline concrete proposals for improvement in policy accessibility in our communities.
