What is the Black Education Strategy Roundtable ?
The BESR is a volunteer-led coalition of African American individuals, groups, organizations and other committed individuals that have been actively advocating for and providing information to policy makers at all levels about the disparate conditions of educational achievement for Black students in the state of Washington, which impacts all facets of life and our communities. The BESR is currently engaged in Capacity Building and Strategic Planning with the support of a Gates Foundation grant. We have successfully incorporated in the State of Washington as a Non-Profit organization and have been granted Tax-Exempt Status by the Internal Revenue Service.

The organization is strengthening its ability to more effectively realize our vision and mission of advocating for systemic change in public education that closes the achievement and opportunity gaps for Black students at all levels. The newly constituted BESR has developed an infrastructure, converted to a Board of Directors governance model, hired staff and embarked upon the development of an ambitious 3-5 year strategic plan. We are pursuing additional funds to carry out the plan, which will clearly describe the future work of the organization and how we will accomplish our goals. The BESR is building a sustainable state-wide organization that is inclusive, utilizes collective decision making, engages in a significant effort of advocacy, information gathering and sharing, consciousness raising and awareness, and community outreach throughout the state for the improvement of educational outcomes.

Strong Schools Under-gird Strong Communities.

The inequities and shortcomings of public education contribute to every negative condition in the Black community. We are organizing people to act on education policy change because:
1) Rigorous, caring, culturally relevant education of Black students will improve health, wealth, and happiness of the students, our community, and our state.
2) Public education takes the largest slice of state government’s operating budget; yet Black community demands for “equitable spending” rarely address education inequities.
3) The majority of Black school-age children attend public schools and, sadly, too many are on the ‘School-to-Prison Pipeline’ from the day they start Kindergarten.