Positively Transforming Educational Conditions with The Puget Sound Transformational Collaborative (PSTC)
Did you know?
The Puget Sound region reflects the national trends of racism endemic in our education system. Educators of Color are underrepresented and leaving the profession at higher rates than their White peers (Community Center for Education Results).
Launched in June 2020 in response to the dual pandemics of COVID-19 and magnified institutional racism, The Puget Sound Transformational Collaborative (PSTC) was created to positively transform educational conditions for Black and Brown students and families, as well as educators. The PSTC, hosted by Puget Sound Educational Service District (PSESD), works to advance opportunities for improving their wellbeing and educational experiences.
Through October 2020, our collaborative established foundations for inclusivity, health, and sustainability, and collectively identified opportunity areas for supporting Black and Brown youth, families, and educators. Through March 2021, the Collaborative continued to strengthen relationships, identified and discussed regional bright spots in key opportunity areas, and created a PSTC Playbook of collaborative recommendations.
Through June 2022, the PSTC continues to build our collaborative community and partner with district teams to achieve Playbook-related district goals. This phase is building on its new foundation by directly supporting four district teams – Shoreline Public Schools, Franklin Pierce School District, Riverview School District, and Sumner-Bonney Lake School District – in Playbook aligned goals. Together, district teams share progress, learning, and action planning. The Collaborative offers thought partnership, consultation, and learning with community leaders, students and families, district teams, and other educational experts in pursuit of these goals.
The Collaborative continues to hold space for building trust and developing relationships. Collaborative members are interrogating and transforming the ways they are each showing up in partnership for this work, building from PSESD’s Transformational Relationship & Partnership Framework. Finally, district teams will develop measures of progress. Teams will focus on increasing youth and parental participation in progress monitoring efforts, while continuing to identify, interrogate, and disrupt White Supremacy culture characteristics in personal and professional spaces wherever possible.
Going forward, PSTC efforts will continue a conscious drive to increase transparency and visibility of district action, learning, and progress towards our goals, which will expand to include such tasks as implementation of an amplified communication plan to distribute the Playbook, sharing of progress and lessons, and highlighting of regional potential of a transformational collaborative to support systems change. Ambassadors will share updates and opportunities from PSTC across additional PSESD networks, supported by Superintendent John Welch across the regional superintendent network.
Ultimately, our goal is to build capacity and resources and to lead collective reflection, support, and learning to sustain and improve our collaborative and maximize impact. We will continue to provide resources, professional development, and capacity-building opportunities to support participants in their goals, with the ultimate objective always fixed on helping Black and Brown youth, families, and educators to thrive within a safe space.
