Systems Goals

We cannot expect equitable results in Monterey County if all students do not have similar opportunities to learn. As we work to address the equity gaps in each of our goal areas, it is important that we also work to highlight disparities and change systems so that all students have the opportunity to reach their full potential.

Along with our Steering Partners and representation from other several other local organizations, we developed four criteria for selecting the most important local systemic issues in education. Those criteria include:

• Strong evidence for the importance of systemic disparity
• Metrics that can be disaggregated by race and ethnicity
• Systemic differences that impact at least five of our seven goal areas, and
• Strong momentum across multiple local organizations to address the issue.

We believe that these seven areas are the most important and actionable areas for systems change in our community:

• School funding
• Teacher retention/experience
• Teacher diversity reflective of community diversity
• School discipline
• Digital divide (computer, internet access, and technology usage support)
• Sufficient number of bilingual teachers to support a multilingual community
• Teacher credentials (education and teaching credential)

Please see this guide (linked below) that was created by several Strive Together partnerships, including Bright Futures, for more information and evidence about the importance of these systemic issues.