By:Kati Cabral, Aspiring Latino Leaders Fellow

As we celebrate Black History Month, I am reminded that my presence in education is part of a longer legacy of Black educators who fought to ensure that students like mine are seen, affirmed, and challenged to lead. Today, I serve as a Recruitment and Retention Manager at KIPP MA and as an At-Large School Committee member and Vice-Chair at Chelsea Public Schools.

Prior to my current role, I served as the only Black Latina Science teacher at my school. As I walked into the school building in my hometown of Chelsea, MA, I could see my own reflection in the window and then look through to see a line of flags, reminding me of the myriad of countries my students came from including Haiti, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. I knew then that I served as both a mirror and window for the 95% of students that identified as Black and Latinx youth, the 78% that identified as low-income, and the 90% that identified as high needs.

During my time as a Science teacher, I reflected on my own experience as a student in Chelsea Public Schools. While Chelsea taught me authenticity, self-determination and agency, the lack of diverse teacher representation in college and in my workplace drove me to offer students a counter narrative to some very important questions:

Who deserves to be in a position of power? 

Who deserves a sense of belonging in a STEM classroom? 

Everyone.

After my first year of teaching, my students’ Science MCAS scores increased from the previous school year. It reaffirmed what research consistently shows about the impact of teachers of color on student achievement and belonging. My vision for Black and Brown students to learn freely includes a diverse and culturally responsive educator workforce. The work of Black and Brown educators lays the groundwork for all students to learn freely. 

I know that I am building on the legacy of Black and Latinx educators who came before me as I represent my home community as the first Black Dominican At-Large School Committee member and Vice-Chair in the city.  I lead with empathy, with purpose, and with a deep belief in the genius of Chelsea’s students and that they are the leaders our community needs and deserves. Yet, I acknowledge what happens in classrooms are directly shaped by the policy and budget decisions made far beyond them.

There is still much work to be done when gateway cities across the Commonwealth are systematically underfunded. The intentional decisions to increase ICE presence and funding freezes by the federal government harm the students, teachers, and families that I represent and advocate for. This year, Chelsea Public Schools is facing an $11 million budget shortfall due to rising costs, the equivalent of approximately 110 positions. For a high-needs district like Chelsea, we feel that gap immediately and deeply. It means we are forced to consider cutting educators through a last-in first-out layoff policy that disproportionately affects our newest staff, who are often among our most diverse educators. It means reducing programs or increasing class sizes not because our students need less, but because of an inequitable funding system.

Chelsea is not alone in this struggle. Communities across the Commonwealth are grappling with the same fiscal crisis. To remedy this and mitigate its impact on diverse educators, I am calling on the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to hold districts accountable for implementation of the Educator Diversity Act (EDA) and the Chelsea City Manager, Fidel Maltez, to provide supplemental funding for the enrollment loss experienced in the last year. The EDA recognizes the educators who reflect and understand our students as essential to belonging, achievement, and long-term district stability, while supplemental funding for enrollment loss can help us deliver an excellent education that our students deserve.

The legislation itself lays the foundation for transformative change by addressing barriers to recruiting and retaining educators of color. Through its eight key provisions, it establishes multiple certification pathways to create accessible entry points for aspiring educators, creates a statewide data dashboard to track workforce diversity across districts, and promotes more equitable and consistent hiring practices. At a time when budget cuts threaten to disproportionately impact newer, more diverse staff, these structural protections are essential to long term district stability and student success.

Together, we can offer more than the status quo. By protecting educator diversity and investing in gateway cities like Chelsea, we can deliver a joyful, high-quality education to every student in the City of Chelsea and across the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

I invite education leaders, advocates, and community members to continue this conversation by joining Latinos for Education on March 26 for a webinar on implementing the Educator Diversity Act and advancing educator diversity across the Commonwealth.

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Kati Cabral is a proud educator, former middle school teacher and Education Policy graduate student at Boston University. She currently serves as an At-Large Member and Vice-Chair of the Chelsea School Committee, where she is dedicated to ensuring that every student is known by their name, strength, and story.

Kati is an alumna of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute (CHCI) Internship Program, Teach for America (TFA MA ‘20),  the School Board Partners (SBP) Fellowship, the Latinos for Education (L4E) Fellowship, and Bates College.