Members of the Lawrence community gather in Lawrence High School's cafeteria for a Community Conversation about racial equity in public schools, Monday, Jan. 30, 2017. Students were in attendance and participated in group talks about how to improve experiences for students of color in schools and community partnerships.

On Tuesday afternoon, the Lawrence school board was still mulling over Monday night’s Community Conversation on racial equity. But the two board members who spoke with the Journal-World a day after the event said they were pleased by the results of the district’s efforts to better include parents and the greater community in the conversation surrounding racial equity in Lawrence schools.

The Monday talks, facilitated by pastor Adrion Roberson of the Wichita-based Kansas Leadership Center, drew a large crowd — around 200 people, by school board member Jessica Beeson’s count — to the Lawrence High School cafeteria.

“I was pleased with the turnout,” Beeson told the Journal-World on Tuesday. “I think that’s really telling, that this is a really important topic in our community. So, I was happy that so many people came out and wanted to be part of the conversation and solutions moving forward.”

What’s more, she and school board Vice President Shannon Kimball said they were pleasantly surprised by the variety in that turnout, which included parents, district and building staffers, community members and even a handful of students, who spoke up at critical moments about their experiences as young people of color in Lawrence’s high schools.

Some shared stories, emotionally at times, about being subjected to racially insensitive comments in the classrooms or in the hallways. A few, including Free State High School senior Sonal Soni, even identified the teachers and staffers — by name — that she said had failed to intervene when her peers, she said, called her a “racist (expletive)” and “racist scum,” among other insults. Her transgression, she said, was simply sharing her perspective as a person of color with her fellow students.

“We can change the way that we interact with each other, and we can change the way we listen and support each other,” Soni, who is Indian-American, told the crowd Monday. “So, support me and listen to me when I say I am being harassed for the color of my skin and for my gender. Listen to me when I say, ‘Hey, I was yelled at in the hall for speaking up (for) my beliefs.'”

Hearing stories like Soni’s was “heartbreaking,” Beeson said. She recognizes that racism is complex and long-standing, and certainly not unique to Lawrence and its school system. But it exists here, she also recognizes, and if she’s learned anything from the Community Conversation, it’s that some students may not feel seen or heard by the very people charged with looking out for them.

“If we have students feeling unsafe in school — feeling like they don’t know who to report to, feeling like their reports are being ignored — then there’s clearly something broken at the building level. And that needs to be addressed,” Beeson said. “It’s not any one person’s fault. It’s just a systematic way of doing business, and we are continuing to do business that way, and it’s not working.”

The Intertribal Club of Lawrence High School on Monday night also introduced a list of demands that included, among other things, that all teachers undergo mandatory equity training. It’s one goal that the district and school board “is already moving forward on,” Kimball said.

As of November 2016, about 85 percent of the district’s certified staffers (teachers, nurses, counselors and other certified professionals working in schools) had taken part in the district’s Beyond Diversity training. The school board hopes to have nearly all its certified staff undergo the training by the end of the school year.

Another demand issued by the group also asked that resources be better publicized and accessible to students. One Intertribal Club member, speaking on behalf of her peers, said that they had only just recently been made aware of the school’s on-site psychologist, for example. “We can make progress in that area,” Kimball agreed.

“In order to make progress in the experiences these students are having in our schools, we’ve got to not just equip our staff with the tools to confront racism when it occurs,” she said, “but we also have to a do a better job of educating our students and our families in terms of how that process plays out.”

Part of that, Kimball said, is continuing to engage with parents, students and community members about how to best tackle racial inequity in schools. Their perspectives, she and Beeson agreed, are valuable.

In the meantime, school board members are giving district leaders some time to compile a summary report of Monday’s discussion. Julie Boyle, the district’s communications director, said those findings would likely be made public within a few weeks.

Several people also expressed interest in participating in the district’s new advisory committee on equity, though Beeson and Kimball both said they weren’t clear on when that group’s roster might be finalized. They hope it’s sooner rather than later.

“The school district has to have partnerships with our families and our community in order to have success at what we’re trying to do in this area. And we can’t do it by ourselves,” Kimball said. “We need those partnerships. We need that input. We need those perspectives. And I think the discussions we had (Monday) will help us move forward.”

Calls to school board members Vanessa Sanburn and President Marcel Harmon, as well as Anna Stubblefield, the district’s assistant superintendent of educational support, were not immediately returned Tuesday.