Dear SRI Community,
As our world shifts to a new phase in pandemic life, and many of you are wrapping up a school year like no other and preparing for your next steps, so is SRI. Through SRI’s commitment to equity, we continue to work to create transformational learning communities, fiercely committed to educational equity and excellence. We work together with you to be even more intentional, grounding ourselves and our work to ensure that every child has access to a meaningful, robust, and culturally sustaining educational experience no matter their race, gender, ability, ethnicity, or past experiences. You are doing this work now – in schools and communities, with children and adults. We recognize that our world is in a time of change. People are making personal and professional changes, seizing the moment that this latest crossroads has brought us to. SRI too is at a crossroads and so is preparing for change.
SRI has had incredible success over the past eleven years. Our work inspired organizations, communities, schools, districts, educators, and students to think differently about working for equity, differently about instructional practices, differently about engaging in meaningful conversations that make a difference in our work.
SRI has also had its share of organizational obstacles over these past years. In our early years a legal challenge related to establishing ourselves and defending our intellectual property was debilitating, leaving the organization financially weakened at a time when we would have been moving towards sustainability. Covid further impacted us. Like many small nonprofits, Covid resulted in a loss of events, contracts, and ability to serve the communities who need us. While we have been successful in offering virtual programming, it has not been enough to financially stabilize the organization. Transitions of leadership also impacted our ability to move the mission and vision forward.
Like the students we serve, organizations too have their own developmental trajectories. Our SRI colleague Joe McDonald and his colleagues describe in their book American School Reform “action spaces” that form and ultimately collapse. “Such collapse is not tragic. What is tragic is a failure to learn from past experience” (2014, p.9). This includes “pull(ing) back for a wider view of the connections that we think can feed thoughtful reinvention and generate reform energy across context, sector, actor, and time.” (p.10). We believe this is a time to pull back and take a wider view.
The SRI board is working hard, alongside our intrepid staff, to keep the lights on, to keep resources such as the protocols online and available, and to engage some of our wonderful facilitators to keep offerings going into the summer so you and your colleagues can participate and learn. But this simply keeps things running by a thread. We believe, having taken stock for over a year, that this is the time for SRI to seriously consider our future, and with that, think about our legacy. What this emerging future looks like is yet to be determined, but we do know that it will be different. This will require new partnerships and alliances that have yet to be forged.
We are fortunate to have received a modest but important award from The Bay and Paul Foundations, a final grant as they are also in a transition of their own. These funds will enable us to do two things: 1) continue to be operational into late 2021, and 2) hire a consultant to shepherd us into SRI’s next phase of existence, whatever that might be. As we noted in some of our messaging in February and March, we would like to assemble a group of community members to help plan SRI’s next phase of its organizational lifespan, whether that’s establishing the legacy of SRI or dreaming up a new future. We imagine a “Phoenix Committee” to help with this process and work directly with the Board and the staff to plan for SRI’s next phase. This group would be led by a consultant with the expertise and objectivity needed to do this work. We hope to keep this group somewhat small for ease of work flow. If you feel you want to commit to working on this committee and want to hear more, please contact board chair Lisa Kuh Lisakuh@gmail.com.
In addition, we hope to continue to offer learning experiences focused on reflective learning communities throughout the summer and fall. If you are an experienced facilitator and have done work for SRI in the past related to collaborative and reflective practices, please contact Chris Jones chris@schoolreforminitiative.org.
“Hope is a way of dreaming up possible futures; an anticipatory virtue that permeates our lives and activates them” – Rosi Braidotti.
SRI was founded as a hopeful act with the dream of its possible future and that dream actualized and activated so many and so much. Thank you for being SRI’s legacy, for doing needed work in the past, present, and future, and for helping us to imagine the next chapter for our organization.
Sincerely,
SRI Board of Directors
Aaron Goodson, Angela Breidenstein, Brian Sparks, DJ Alexander, Lauren Levine, Lisa Kuh
SRI Staff
Chris Jones, National Office Manager
Patrena Wright, Operations Coordinator
Melanie Harris, Financial Coordinator
