Kansas City

In the early part of 2006, Roundtable staff began working intensively with the Greater Kansas City Community Foundation (GKCCF) to create The Kansas City Roundtable on Access and Opportunity (KCRT). The GKCCF had commissioned a report entitled Time to Get It Right: A Strategy for Higher Education in Kansas City. The Time to Get It Right report focused on Kansas City's potential to stay competitive in the global economy, and was very pointed in its recommendation that in order to compete and grow, Kansas City's leadership must address the city's legacy of racism and its manifestations in current racial disparities, especially in education and employment outcomes.

Kansas City has a long, dismal history of lack of opportunity for its African-American citizens, most of whom are stuck in the blighted urban core. The same lack of educational opportunity and isolation are spreading to Kansas City's Latino population. Together these groups are one-third of the city, and they are growing faster than other groups. Kansas City will not be a great city for anyone if the city continues to fail its African-American and Latino populations. The only way to address this problem is by providing educational opportunity. This is Kansas City's—and America's—greatest challenge. Time to Get It Right: A Strategy for Higher Education in Kansas City, page 3.

GKCCF's then-Vice President for Community Investment, Larry Jacob, attended our January 2005 seminar and was eager to capitalize on the release of the report and its race-specific recommendations. He invited the Roundtable to partner with the GKCCF in convening the Kansas City Roundtable on Access and Opportunity. The KCRT's first event was a two-day mini-seminar and planning session.

In order to prepare for this Kansas City-specific seminar, Roundtable staff assisted the GKCCF in identifying a KCRT Planning Group. The purpose of forming the Planning Group, which consisted of approximately thirty people, was to develop a group of local champions likely to stay with the work over the long-term. Those invited to be part of the Planning Group were thought to have strong commitments to, as well as significant experience in, working towards racial equity. Planning Group designees consisted of key education, government, business and civic leaders, including the chancellor of University of Missouri, the Mayor of Kansas City (Missouri), CEO of the Kansas City Power and Light Corporation, the President of the Urban League, and so on. The members of the Planning Group were then interviewed by Roundtable staff. Based on the interviews a meeting agenda was prepared for the first Planning Group meeting, which was held on April 23, 2006. The meeting consisted of an introduction to structural racism, and provided a venue to discuss the preliminary design for the KCRT. The Roundtable staff prepared a report on these interviews, which served as the touchstone for the Planning Group's first meeting. Planning Group members then assisted the Roundtable and the GKCCF in identifying the most strategic participants for an expanded group.

All of the preparatory work culminated in a two-day inaugural meeting of the KCRT on June 22^nd and 23^rd, 2006. The overall KCRT was comprised of nearly eighty stakeholders who worked over two days to contribute ideas to a strong urban education strategy that directly addressed racial disparities in education and employment outcomes. The KCRT inaugural meeting also included Professor Clarence Stone, Research Professor of Public Policy and Political Science at George Washington University and Professor Emeritus at the University of Maryland, as a keynote speaker. Professor Stone attended and observed the two-day meeting of the Kansas City Roundtable on Access & Opportunity and presented a talk on his extensive experience with urban school reform efforts.

The product of this two-day session was a report by Roundtable staff entitled, Why Not?: An Action Plan for the Kansas City Roundtable on Access & Opportunity. A summary booklet based on the report was then prepared by the GKCCF and distributed to all KCRT participants, as well as to a larger group of relevant Kansas Citians. The GKCCF had to do an additional print-run of the booklets since they continued to receive requests for additional copies from a wide range of community members.

The Why Not? report includes two extensive sets of recommendations for promoting racial equity. The first is a general set focusing on how to implement a community-wide racial equity initiative in the Kansas City context, and the second set is a specific checklist for each of the desired outcomes that KCRT participants identified as necessary for improving urban education in Kansas City. For example, the participants in the Kansas City meeting were asked to identify the range of pre-conditions for eliminating racial disparities in education in Kansas City. One of the many pre-conditions that they put forth was that “all parents have access to high quality parenting supports.” Roundtable staff collected all of the pre-conditions that the group identified, provided a list of possible actions that might be undertaken, a list of who should be at the table in order to appropriately strategize, a list of questions for reconnaissance for planning, and most importantly to this project, a racial equity checklist.

The work of KCRT has continued since the initial meeting. The group was reconvened in February, 2007 and the most direct outcome of the initiative has been a collaborative formed between the Kansas City, Missouri school district and the community colleges in the Kansas City metropolitan region. Roundtable staff is in the process conducting a case study of the work in Kansas City in order to learn more about the impact that the KCRT effort may or may not have had. We are particularly interested in better understanding how the structural racism analysis translated into the everyday work of KCRT participants and their associates, whether or not any other new efforts were undertaken as a result of the convening, or if existing efforts were either renewed or enhanced, as well as what additional components KCRT participants might believe to be necessary to generate further momentum.

In addition to the KCRT report, a number of tools were produced for the KCRT initiative, each of which can be accessed via the links below:

Introductory presentation prepared by the Greater Kansas City Community Foundation: This PowerPoint presentation presents an overview of the GKCCF, its mission, geographic focus, population statistics, and its rationale for embarking on a racial equity-oriented initiative.

Tensions in Managing Community Change Initiatives: This PowerPoint presentation, prepared for the KCRT by Anne Kubisch, the Aspen Institute Roundtable's Co-Director, presents lessons and principles for guiding community change work through its inevitable challenges.

The "Keep-in-Mind Sheet": This checklist was prepared by Aspen Roundtable staff for KCRT participants to help them keep the elements most relevant to dismantling structural racism in the forefront of the minds of participants as they went through the process of devising strategies for improving urban education in Kansas City.

Strategy Development Sheet: Large-scale versions of these charts were used by KCRT participants as they made recommendations and devised strategies.

Racial Equity Work in Kansas City: This section provides links to the racial-equity oriented work of KCRT participants.