Densho Digital Repository - Rev. Michael Yoshii Interview (Densho ID: ddr-ajah-1-10-15)

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PW: So I understand at this point there was even more involvement with the AUSD for changes in the school. Can you tell me some of the initiatives that started to develop between Buena Vista and...

MY: Yeah. I think it was after that citywide conference that the new superintendent, or as I mentioned, the other superintendent left the district and a new superintendent came in, Dennis Chaconas, and he came in with this mandate for a diversity plan for the district. And he immediately sat down with us at CARE and OAA, knew that we were very involved in what was happening, and said, "I'd like to work with you and see how we can generate community involvement for changes with the school district." And so his idea was for us to create a diversity audit, and we worked as community members to create something called Team Diversity. We actually had focus groups at every single school in the whole school district, from elementary to middle school to high school to talk about different issues in the district. And we invited teachers, parents and students to come to all the focus groups to compile information about issues that were going on at each school site, and then that was compiled into a report that went... I should backtrack. I think he agreed to allocate some monies to hire a consultant to lead this. And so we were, we in the community were invited to be part of that, invited people to put in their RRPs. And we hired a woman named Marlene Shigekawa as a consultant who's now very involved in, I think, in her...

PW: With Poston.

MY: Yeah, she's the head of that.

PW: The chairperson.

MY: Because I just saw her recently. But anyway, so this is way back in the '90s. She was hired to lead the consultation process with us, and so she worked with us in the community to organize all these focus groups in all the different schools, and then compile the report, brought it back to the school district and then recommended that we create a position for diversity in the administrative office. And the school board then voted unanimously to support that, and there was a position that was created. And then they created team diversity within the district, and a woman by the name of Jane Lee was hired to be the diversity officer, and she's still kind of around in the community. And so Jane and I now serve on the API roundtable for the district, and Jane kind of became the key staffperson to implement the diversity plan for the district. And Superintendent Chaconas kind of had his own vision and plan of how to implement it, including having a particular diversity plan for each administrator in the district that was part of their plan and they would be evaluated on that. And I mentioned before, Keith Nomura was the first Japanese American assigned as an Asian American administrator, and he was kind of like the shining star in terms of his diversity plan at the elementary school that he was the administrator for. Problematically, things shifted, kind of the political wind shifted over a period of time, and that didn't sustain itself. And by the time Superintendent Chaconas left, things began to kind of slide in terms of, it started to backslide in terms of the whole diversity initiative, and Jane's position got reassigned into some other, she'd probably be better to tell that story, like what happened with her position. So we saw initial gains, but then we also saw some backsliding on things as well. But in general, I think, there was this general sense of sensitivity to diversity. But I think the tools for implementation and the building blocks didn't sustain itself.