Addressing Exclusionary Discipline in Midwest and Plains Schools: Strategies for Equity Beyond Compliance

Dr. Ruthie Payno-Simmons: 

Hello, and welcome to Integration Now, where we explore how history continues to shape today's integration challenges...and what we can do to advance more equitable outcomes for our students. I am Dr. Ruthie Payno-Simmons, Project Director for the Center for Education Equity, Region III at the Mid Atlantic Equity Consortium. We work alongside schools, districts, and state agencies to face the legacy of segregation head-on and turn the promise of integrated public schools into a reality students experience every day.   

Racial disparities in school discipline remain a significant civil rights concern, but recognizing that disparities exist is only the beginning. Understanding what they reveal requires examining not only the data, but also the histories, assumptions, and practices that shape how students are perceived, supported, and disciplined. How can school and district leaders interrogate the conditions contributing to disparate outcomes and create meaningful change for students?  

Integration Now is hosted by my colleague Dr. Kathleen King Thorius, a leading scholar whose work focuses on dismantling systemic barriers and advancing culturally responsive practices for historically underserved students. She is a professor and has led major equity-focused initiatives, including founding the Great Lakes Equity Center. She's joined in this episode by Dr. Amanda Sullivan, an expert on culturally responsive school discipline and evidence-based interventions and supports. Together, Dr. King Thorius and Dr. Sullivan explore strategies to create inclusive school climates while meeting civil rights responsibilities.  

Let’s get started. 

 

Dr. Kathleen King Thorius:  

I'm here today with Dr. Amanda Sullivan, who is Professor in the Werkland School of Education at the University of Calgary. There, you also serve as director of the Center for Wellbeing and Education, I understand that's a new role, congratulations. From 2011 to 2025, Dr. Sullivan was a Professor of School Psychology at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities. And while you were there, Amanda, thank you so much for your service as an Equity Fellow for the Region III Equity Assistance Center when it was housed at Indiana University, Indianapolis. I'm so glad to have you here and to continue our long working and professional relationship, as well as just hanging out with one of my good colleagues and friends, so thank you. 

 

Dr. Amanda Sullivan:  

Thank you for having me. I always appreciate the opportunity to contribute to the important work of the Equity Assistance Centers. 

 

Dr. Kathleen King Thorius:  

Yes, thank you! All right, well, we're going to jump right in with a big question and one that has sort of haunted us for a very long time, really, since before public schools, but certainly over the last several decades, and that has to do with racial disparities in exclusionary discipline. And I know the Equity Assistance Centers do quite a bit of work around that area with school districts, particularly as it relates to students of color. We know that racial disproportionality remains a major civil rights concern. And I also know that you have done lots of research, particularly sustained research and research using larger scale data sets within Minnesota and in the broader Midwest region. I know you also are familiar with national patterns over time. Let's kick off with you getting us up to speed on some of the common patterns of racial disproportionality and discipline that you've seen in your research and how that can inform districts', districts' work. 

 

Dr. Amanda Sullivan:  

There are common patterns that we see, whether we look at nationally, state level, district level, whatnot, that historically, are most pronounced for Black students, Indigenous students, students with disabilities, and particularly, emotional and behavioral disabilities. Minnesota is an interesting case, because on one hand, it's a very affluent space, very well resourced, strong outcomes overall. But that masks some really deep and persistent disparities. And one of my former colleagues at the University of Minnesota, Dr. Samuel Myers, kind of coined it the "Minnesota Paradox," where we see really positive outcomes in a lot of spaces, but once we disaggregate, what we see are oftentimes inequities that are even more substantial than in a lot of other spaces, and so people forget about Minnesota in that, that regard. But we can connect a lot of these disparities to systemic racism, anti-indigeneity, ableism throughout society and institutions, from housing to healthcare to labor to the carceral system. 

Like, in my work, we've looked at everything from early childhood programs and access and outcomes through special education and K-12 to the connections of disability to differential treatment within housing and who deals with homelessness and access to services in that space, access to different kinds of mental health supports and resources across sectors of care, as well as the intersections of disability and involvement with the juvenile justice system. And so, we can think of this all in terms of kind of this interconnected web of inequities that can't really be understood in isolation, because exclusion and marginalization in one begets exclusion and marginalization in another. 

And in Minnesota, we really see these ramifications, particularly when we think about the history there around redlining and inequitable education opportunity, and discriminatory systems that continue to shape communities and schools in a variety of ways today. And in one report, they called kind of, Minnesota kind of, the nation-leading racial disparities in education, because about 10 years ago, the Minnesota Department of Human Rights, which is charged with enforcement of civil rights within the state did a study of all of the school districts in the state and found that overall Indigenous students were 10 times as likely to be exposed to exclusionary discipline, Black students 8 times as likely, students with disabilities twice as likely, and largely for really subjective behaviors like disorder and insubordination. 

And as a result of that, 43 districts were identified for having the greatest disparity, and then 41 had settlement agreements, and it was this really substantial undertaking where resources were allocated, to help address these disparities. Unfortunately, we didn't see a lot of movement, but it got a lot of conversations going about the ways that different students are treated, the infrastructure, the ways that policies, practices, procedures can contribute. And I really appreciated that they noted that while educators care and want to do right by students generally, what we see, particularly when we look at exclusionary discipline, is the result of decades of racist, ableist practice, policies and learned biases. And that was their, their language: that that that context creates this reality for exclusionary discipline.  

And so the data can be powerful in terms of providing a window into this reality and can help to inform areas for further investigation and targeted improvement. The data themselves aren't going to drive the systemic change needed, but it provides indicators for the needs that aren't addressed well that go beyond, kind of, the typical data use, particularly if we think about being creative about how data are disaggregated and using it in the context of say, critical collaborative inquiry in partnership with students and families and community members. 

Because again, this is all tied in with these broader histories and policy context of very discriminatory resource allocation, and whether we're talking about, residential segregation, or inequities in healthcare, and carceral involvement and whatnot. And even though we had kind of that landmark investigation and all of these resources allocated, we didn't necessarily see a lot of change, and, like, when we go into the data now, the disparities aren't as severe, because at one point, I think Minnesota, like, depending on the racial group looked at, it was four or five times or more what we see nationally. It's still quite elevated. But those data were used, like I said, as a launching point to really get into trying to do sustained work and facilitate systemic change. We know that exclusionary discipline doesn't promote positive learning outcomes, it doesn't promote -  

 

Dr. Kathleen King Thorius:  

Yes.  

 

Dr. Amanda Sullivan: 

- positive behavior, it doesn't even, like, lend itself to compliance at, like, the most basic level and it shuts off opportunity for a lot of the students, so we also know that, like, the disparities that we see, whether we're talking about from the research or just the students' lived experiences, these aren't reflective of actual difference, group differences and behavior problems, but rather systemic differences in how students are perceived and treated. So whether we look at research on who adults in schools spend time just looking at to how they make sense of what they see, to their emotional responses and decisions about how to address students' behaviors and their needs, the exclusionary discipline patterns we see are a manifestation of that. 

And all the research that we have that shows that Black students, Indigenous students, students with disabilities aren't afforded the same childhood really that their White peers over non-disabled peers might have: the same assumptions of innocence, the same kind of latitude to display developmentally appropriate behavior, because often the groups we see with these elevated exclusionary discipline rates are held to different standards, subject to different consequences all rooted in this discriminatory treatment. 

 

Dr. Kathleen King Thorius:  

There are so many really important points you just made. One of which is even challenging sometimes the way that even folks who are doing work in equity and education, challenging a common sort of foundational argument. When you were talking about students of color, Black students, Indigenous students not being afforded the same childhood, you also flipped a script that sometimes we've seen in special education where the script is, well, they haven't had the access to the same resources. And rather than talking about that, you flip the script again, which is to say they're not afforded the same childhood in terms of how they're encountering adults, particularly in institutions like schools, who assume their innocence, who view them as children, and who provide the latitude and the supports to exhibit typical developmental behaviors. That is such an important point. 

Relatedly, your point about system responses to inequities really having more to do with educators and adults' perceptions and interactions with students is really, really important. Some of the more common discourse around MTSS, if we're talking about multi-tiered systems of supports, it's about getting more culturally responsive or more evidence-based interventions for students. And it's not to throw those things out the window, but it's to reorient ourselves a bit here. At the foundation, it's about what adults are thinking and doing in relation to learners in schools, and that is a shift. It has to be actually foregrounded in any of this conversation. 

 

Dr. Amanda Sullivan: 

Yeah, absolutely. Like I said, we have, there's decades of research about how educators perceive kids of different groups. And we've done work looking at bias in artificial case handling, and how just changing names can affect how students are treated when presented data.  

But we also know from, like, case law analyses we do, particularly where disability has been concerned, and particularly for kids who have behavioral and emotional needs that schools should be addressing under the law, there is a tendency that is substantiated in research across contexts that students with disabilities in particular are actually assumed to have more control and more responsibility over their behavior, and so when these cases escalate, to the point of mediation or going before a judge, the assumptions applied around culpability for behavior, like who is responsible? Again, that higher standard is applied when we're talking about students with emotional and behavioral needs, and particularly different types of diagnoses. 

 But we also know from research from psychology, education, sociology, law that there's an adultification of students from certain racial groups, particularly Black and Indigenous students. There's a level of -  

 

Dr. Kathleen King Thorius: 

Yes. Mhm. 

 

Dr. Amanda Sullivan: 

- compliance and deference and an assumption of bad faith acting that is applied to them that in particular is not applied to White students or students without disability, and so the exclusionary discipline disparities that we see are just the end result of that. The issue starts far beyond that, and it stretches into how students are treated in the classrooms, school climate or student engagement, or student-teacher relationships, or instruction and pedagogy, like, it's all part of this, like, web of inequities that we can connect back, and particularly where exclusionary discipline is. Like, these patterns parallel what we see in the carceral system, what we see in the juvenile -  

 

Dr. Kathleen King Thorius: 

Mhm. 

 

Dr. Amanda Sullivan: 

- justice system. Like, we know empirically that it's not actually differences in problem behavior, as people call it, or criminal behaviors that drive racialized patterns or the over-representation of individuals with disabilities within carceral settings, so much as how the groups are surveilled, perceived, and applied consequences to. And so again, we can like treat them as this endpoint, but then we want to go back to the roots of really like how are adults perceiving these different groups, treating the different groups, and how does it show up in all spaces? 

 

Dr. Kathleen King Thorius: 

And before, you talked about the complexity of factors that really collude in a lot of ways to create these conditions and that certainly socialize adults and particularly when we look at the demographics of most adults in schools in the Midwest, we're talking about primarily White, but maybe a little bit of an increase in Latine educators. But you know, all of these factors collude, and then we have these socializations of bias that are happening both in and out of the, you know, the schooling setting, the education setting.  

One of the things you mentioned earlier was what some of these factors were. You talked about, for example, segregated housing patterns, which we know, and you mentioned redlining. We can look back at how cities were planned, how mortgages were afforded or constrained along racial lines with lending rules... 

 

Dr. Amanda Sullivan: 

And the racial covenants about who could even own those are still -  

 

Dr. Kathleen King Thorius: 

Absolutely, absolutely. Yes. 

 

Dr. Amanda Sullivan:  

- here. Those are still here. Like, I know people who have, who own houses, who had to have those covenants removed in the last -  

 

Dr. Kathleen King Thorius:  

Yeah, and you mentioned Minnesota's maybe marginal improvement in some areas. One of the things that I'm familiar with is Minnesota's achievement and integration planning and the ways in which several districts were grouped together, like in the Twin Cities area, in order to share resource and perhaps distribute the student population across traditional district boundaries. That was written into state statute, although the allocations for doing that work, the fiscal allocations, I probably could be a little less, um, praising of. But that said, you also talked about how it's not necessarily about the data itself. It's about what kinds of questions we ask and with whom.  

I'd like to talk a little bit more about how we can leverage the data to apply it toward a process of inquiry and action within a school system. Who do we need to be talking with and about what, in order to understand those factors that are within our control as educators? 

 

Dr. Amanda Sullivan: 

One thing I think is kind of a starting point for thinking about using data anytime we're talking about these different dimensions of difference, is reframing them away from thinking about race or disability status or gender. And we also see, like we don't have as much data here and it's not like readily available from the state, for instance. But we know that LGBTQIA students are also subject to much higher rates of exclusionary discipline than their peers, and so we can reframe these characteristics as just inherent to the student, instead thinking about it in terms of proxies for exposure to biased systems and discriminatory action. 

So then it kind of flips a script around, like, "What's wrong with this group?," which is often how it gets framed. Like, when we're talking about exclusionary discipline in particular, it's like, "Oh, we have these disparities: Why? Why are these behavioral problems higher in this group?" Instead, we can frame it as, "Why is exclusionary discipline being applied to this group?" And again, if we treat race in particular, right, as a proxy for exposure to systemic racism and the manifestations there, then we can start asking, "Where is this happening? What is happening, what kinds of interpretations are resulting in these higher rates of exclusion? What happens when we look at the intersections?"  

Because Minnesota is, again, a really good example because in addition to these exclusionary discipline disparities, they've got fairly substantial disparities just in special education identification and placement, and at one point, something like a third of Black students were identified with emotional behavior disorders. And that immediately raises some really big questions about the role that racism and discrimination plays within the treatment of these kids, and so, the data, particularly when we think about looking at intersections around race and disability status in particular can be a way to kind of hone in on areas for further exploration, and again, to understand what's happening, and how students are being treated.  

Again, not so much the behaviors, because we know, again, from like decades of research, it's not so much behavioral differences these exclusionary discipline reflect as differential treatment within the system, so the data can be used to highlight specific intersections and contexts for additional investigation to begin to walk school leaders and educators through the process of understanding the differential treatment that contributes to the disparities that we see. And that's going to involve a lot of, like, really hard conversations, where niceness and avoidance of naming the role of these systems, of naming not just implicit bias, but, like, over-bias - like, we know that it's not all happening implicitly, necessarily. And so, these data can be a launching point to have some hopefully really honest reckoning about what is going on. 

 

Dr. Kathleen King Thorius: 

Yep. It reminds me of a dissertation that M. Nikki Coomer did a few years ago when she was talking with a handful of educators in the Midwest about their perspectives on children with emotional and behavioral disorders and students who they taught. She was analyzing language. She was using linguistic anthropological methodology and she was analyzing key segments in their speech, in their, their discussion and descriptions of children. And one of the things she found was that several of their biases, racial- and income-related biases, appeared to come from a place of fear, actually a fear of these children. And you know, when you talk about these children, meaning the children in their classrooms, but also when you talk back to this sort of adultification and biases, you think about the socialization of being afraid of a child of because they're, well, for example, Black and you're White. I mean, that is something that is really struck me then, but certainly comes back around now. And where's this coming from? Well, we can point to a lot of places it's coming from, but we have to name these things. But it's really challenging to do that, right? It's really challenging to do that. 

 

Dr. Amanda Sullivan: 

Far, but, like, the anger responses that we see, right? Like, there's been research just around like - 

 

Dr. Kathleen King Thorius: 

Yeah. 

 

Dr. Amanda Sullivan: 

- the emotional valence of teacher responses. Like there's the fear piece, there's the anger piece and like, what gets activated in folks, depending on a student's characteristics and also how they perceive their responsibility for different students, right? Because if they - 

 

Dr. Kathleen King Thorius: 

Yes. 

 

Dr. Amanda Sullivan: 

- if there's assumptions about how students should - particular students - should be behaving that, again, are different depending on the social identities, that also confers a different responsibility for addressing it, right? Because if the responsibility is solely placed on the student, then exclusionary discipline is easier for some folks to rationalize. Whereas, when they can take more developmentally appropriate, developmentally sensitive interpretations, or where they, there's an ownership of providing support for the kids, because that's another thing we see in the research, is, like this refusal of responsibility for providing supports for certain kids. And again, it's the kids that we see coming up when we look at the exclusionary discipline data.  

 

Dr. Kathleen King Thorius: 

Yeah. 

 

Dr. Amanda Sullivan: 

And so, yeah, it presents this whole, this complex like cognitive and emotional space that eventually manifests with them. These disparities that we see. And it comes back to just how kids and difference are understood and responded to. 

 

Dr. Kathleen King Thorius: 

Yes. Well, and you talked about like this trend or pattern that you've seen around a refusal to provide support. And something you said earlier, if I connect it is if supports are provided, it's often first with the assumption that students are being willful and that they have complete control over their learning, their behavior, the expression of their feelings, etc, etc., which we wouldn't expect necessarily from, let's say, a comparison group of non-disabled or White peers. 

 So I wonder if you'd say a bit more about what you have seen that seems more promising in your work, maybe even as you've moved into this new role. What are some of the promising discussions and alternatives that educators and educational leaders may engage? Particularly, maybe partnering with their equity assistance center for sure, but what are some of the alternatives that people may engage, either within existing systems like multi-tiered systems of support, or independent of those? 

 

Dr. Amanda Sullivan: 

Well, I mean, in Minnesota, there was a big move for non-exclusionary discipline, which I think is an, it's an improvement, but oftentimes, in the way it's framed, it's still putting the entire onus for the behavior and the need for discipline on the students, rather than looking at the adults. And so where I think the most promise is, is thinking about creating systems within school, that are actually cultivating belonging, positive relationships, inclusive learning environments, and when I say inclusive, I don't just mean for students with disabilities, but inclusive of all the members of the school community, and particularly, like, cultural differences and language differences.  

A lot of my work has revolved around positive behavior supports and multi-tier system of supports, more generally, and I do think there's a lot of potential there, but at the same time, MTSS is not a band-aid that's going to fix everything. It's a framework that is inherently flexible and should be adapted to context. And where I think it holds the most prominence is when it's really addressing the whole child, very much, like, bias-aware, comprehensive, cultural responsive, culturally sustaining, that is both race ability, race, racially and disability conscious, so that it's not oriented to benefit some, but not others.  

Because one thing we found in some of the different work we've done, including like a dissertation, one of our students, Molly Weeks has done, where looking at what do we know in the research about the differential effects of MTSS? And on one hand, a lot of research doesn't even consider differential effects. But when it does consider group differences, what we see is that White students and non-disabled students tend to benefit most, and so, that begs the question of whether MTSS is being approached in a way that is designed to be supportive of all the members of the school community. 

 

Dr. Kathleen King Thorius: 

Yeah, yep. 

 

Dr. Amanda Sullivan:  

And when we go, like, dig into that a bit, we know that, like, oftentimes, disability is relegated to just the higher tiers that MTSS, even though it's intended to be about environmental arrangement, often gets operationalized in such a way that it's just about labeling students. And in some cases, adding a couple steps to that process, but it doesn't, it doesn't get away from that basic deficit orientation, and that this one size fits all thinking kind of gets applied instead of, again, thinking about: "What are the needs and the differences, and the features of our school community, and how do we orient MTSS to be responsive to all of them?" So again, not about labeling kids, but how do we structure environments in a way that the whole school or school-wide policies, procedures, practices are designed in a way to actually be supportive of everybody. And that when those supports are not addressing particular needs, that there are responsive, contextually appropriate, like community-defined systems for intensification and individuals. 

 

Dr. Kathleen King Thorius: 

Yep. 

 

Dr. Amanda Sullivan:  

And that requires really thinking about the ways that racism and ableism, anti-Indigeneity show up in policies and practices, and how they can be countered in different ways. 

 

Dr. Kathleen King Thorius: 

Yeah, and that's certainly something that the Equity Assistance Centers do with partners, but it's also something that has to be sustained over time, you know, beyond, certainly outside, that relationship.  

I know we're nearing the end of our time, but I thought maybe we could wrap up with a kind of an unplanned question, which is if you could speak a little bit about the role of school psychologists in all of this. You know, I was a school psychologist. I talked to school psychologists pretty often, particularly in districts where there may be racial disproportionality in discipline or in special education. And oftentimes they are talking about how they often feel like their role is constrained a lot in terms of the identification of students with disabilities in that special ed eligibility process, and sort of yearn for a reconfiguration of their roles within other spaces like within the design of instruction and consultation with educators. Would you say a little bit more about school psychologist roles in some of the issues that you've identified and particularly how they may be supported to grow and leverage for the knowledges that they do have, within some of the recommendations that you're providing for us?  

 

Dr. Amanda Sullivan: 

Yeah, I think school psychologists in general are an underutilized resource in this space, because in a lot of places, like you mentioned, they are still kind of tied in these more traditional service delivery models, where they're assumed to just work within special education contexts, particularly evaluation, but school psychologists, most are trained from, first off, an ecological orientation that positions them well to kind of understand the variety of systems that come into play. And so, particularly when we think about, like, again, the developmentally inappropriate assumptions that get applied to certain groups here, I think they can be of use in that space.  

But more so, like, the training around database decision-making isn't limited to special education identification, and so they can be really helpful in taking discipline data and combining it with data in different contexts, and identifying the different indicators that might suggest a need to do, like, a deeper dive into the ways that policies and practices might not be implemented as designed. Or the extent to which they're designed in ways that are not supporting positive outcomes for all kids. 

They also have training around consultation and collaboration, not just at the individual level, but group level, and so they can be really helpful in doing a lot of the group processes that are involved in these spaces, whether we're talking about leadership teams, or convening students and families to have different conversations about their experiences in these spaces. 

And then when we are crafting these different efforts to help facilitate systemic change, they've also got training in things like monitoring implementation and fidelity to implementation, because sustainability of efforts is always a concern in this space. School psychologists, because of their strong background in data and their training around consultation and -  

 

Dr. Kathleen King Thorius: 

Mhm. 

 

Dr. Amanda Sullivan: 

- implementation fidelity, can also bring that to bear at these, like, systems level as well. 

 

Dr. Kathleen King Thorius: 

Yeah. 

 

Dr. Amanda Sullivan: 

I think getting out of that, just the evaluation and headspace, and most of them want to be involved -  

 

Dr. Kathleen King Thorius: 

Yeah, totally. 

 

Dr. Amanda Sullivan: 

- in these roles too. And they've had the training, like our professional standards and domains of practice lend themselves really well to doing, whether we're talking about multi-tier systems of support, or other kind of school-wide initiatives, like, they have the training to do it. 

 

Dr. Kathleen King Thorius: 

Yeah, well, I certainly have seen that with your students, students coming out of your program at Minnesota with a lot of the products that you developed with your students for the Equity Assistance Center for the Region III Center at the time about evidence-based practices in the context of what you're talking about, like looking at research design, looking at methodologies that don't account for everyone, and certainly are leveraged to benefit some students and not other groups. So, that's great advice and it may not be how all educational leaders are oriented to the role of a school psychologist, so that's hopefully a takeaway for someone listening to this podcast today, to our discussion. So thank you so much, Amanda. As we wrap up, I want to give you the opportunity if there's anything else that you wanted to say that we didn't get to and then I'll close us out. 

 

Dr. Amanda Sullivan: 

Instead of treating the data as indicative of a problem with the students, we can reframe it as a window into what's happening within these systems and how those are manifesting in these different outcomes. And so I think as much as possible, getting away from those deficit-based explanations that oftentimes are blaming kids and communities; instead, think about, "What do they say about the adequacy of the supports being provided for the different groups?"  

And, like, really getting into routine data disaggregation, and bringing a diverse group to help make sense of it. This shouldn't just be the educational professionals, but bringing in students and bringing in families, and like - I haven't been in Calgary long, but one of the things that I absolutely loved was that, when the Calgary Board of Education was talking about how they implement MTSS and the different efforts they have around meaning-making, they pulled together huge groups of students. Like, so their focus right now is on the middle school. But they bring together hundreds of students representing the different school communities served and give them the data and health, and, like, have these students help them make sense of the data in terms of their experiences in school and their needs. And that isn't something I've encountered before, but just -  

 

Dr. Kathleen King Thorius: 

Not at that scale, not at all. Yeah. 

 

Dr. Amanda Sullivan: 

Like, it's not just one student rep on the committee -  

 

Dr. Kathleen King Thorius: 

Mhm. Right. 

 

Dr. Amanda Sullivan: 

It's just the way they think about the student ownership and leadership in the process was something that I think is really important, again, to the meaning-making and the planning that goes around it. And so, yeah, I would really emphasize that, because it's, it's an amazing way to think about it and to approach it, and to really to foster, really impactful initiatives. 

 

Dr. Kathleen King Thorius: 

Well, thanks for reminding us of the importance of students in all of this. So much we're talking about students' experiences without centering them and their perspective and their capacity to make meaning and to draw complex like inference and ask really deep and important and relevant questions that we as adults may not necessarily think about. So I appreciate that. I want to encourage listeners to check out Dr. Sullivan's work. We will share some resources with the podcast and also want to mention that the Center for Education Equity will be releasing in the next couple of months a guide for district leaders to addressing exclusionary discipline, and I am sure that some of the ideas from our conversation today will be included within that. And certainly this podcast could be partnered with that as a set of resources for educational leaders.  

Thank you, Dr. Amanda Sullivan, for joining me today. I look forward to our ongoing conversations, and thank you for your service to the Equity Assistance Center program over the past, I mean, probably 16, 17 years or so, because I know you co-directed the Region 9 Center at Arizona State University.  

 

Dr. Amanda Sullivan: 

Thank you. I appreciate, like I said, I appreciate the opportunity. This is very important work, the Equity Assistance Centers. 

 

Dr. Kathleen King Thorius: 

Thanks, Amanda. All right, we'll take care. And I know we will talk soon. Bye bye. 

 

Dr. Ruthie Payno-Simmons: 

Thank you for listening to Integration Now. 

These conversations remind us that advancing integration takes critical reflection, partnership, and action. If you’d like to continue the conversation or explore how the Region III Equity Assistance Center can support your work, we invite you to connect with us at maec.org.  

Until next time.