“Student input is critical,” said Sandra Chafouleas, a psychology professor at the University of Connecticut’s Neag School of Education. “We can’t just assume that we know best because we are the adults.”

“I’m so thankful that when I went to UConn I had a great experience on the basketball court, I had a great experience in the classroom, I had an amazing experience creating with players who were human, who were real, who were at the forefront of these fights as you look at a lot of the WNBA teams who were kneeling and were part of those movements and who were loud about it, and who were proud about what they were fighting for, as they should,” says Batouly Camara.

“That grammatical pause helps explain how racism can grow, even thrive, generations after slavery ended. It is the jump ball where the referee throws the ball slightly to one side, sometimes intentionally. It is the fastball on the edge of the strike zone where the right call is blurred so completely that bias is all that is left to decide whether it is a ball or strike,” says Doug Glanville, a faculty member in sport management at the Neag School of Education.

Jamelle Elliott, who helped usher in the UConn women’s basketball dynasty as a member of the 1995 national championship team and later guided the Huskies to five more titles as an assistant coach, was officially appointed to the staff after serving in an interim role since February, the school announced.

Amit Savkar, who started working at UConn in 2007, was in charge of the math department’s online programs in 2013 when he was tasked with figuring out what was leading to high rates of failures and withdrawals in first-year math courses. He looked into things like how students’ math skills are assessed, and how pupils are placed in basic to advanced courses.

Cutting across all this work is equity. Connecticut, like much of the country, is more diverse than it once was. To help ensure equal educational opportunity for all its students, UCAPP hopes to train principals to spot inequities and negotiate thorny social issues to help resolve them. It has therefore worked to infuse equity into its curriculum and create space for groups education systems often overlook.

To my surprise, the tweet went viral and led to my writing an op-ed in The New York Times entitled “I Refuse
to Run a Coronavirus Home School.” Since then, in addition to trying to keep my sanity, I have appeared on shows from “Good Morning America” to “Central Time” on Wisconsin Public Radio, spreading the message to parents that all we can do right now is our best and that’s enough.

With so many interests shaping its principal preparation program, how well is UCAPP addressing the needs of its students, who many consider UCAPP’s primary stakeholders? UCAPP connected the Wallace editorial team with four members of its class of 2021, the first class to train in the current iteration of the pr​ogram, so we could seek out their views about the new program.

Because reopening public schools in the coming school year will be fraught with unprecedented challenges, experts say, and education budgets may get cut to the bone, news of charter school startups and expansions will undoubtedly spark heated opposition from public school parents and teachers, even in well-to-do suburban communities, like Wake County, that may have been insulated from the financial costs of school choice in the past.

Amanda Slavin is the founder and CEO of the brand consulting firm CatalystCreativ, which has worked with global brands like Coca-Cola and Google. In her new book, The Seventh Level, she unpacks her Seventh Level Framework, which helps companies connect more authentically and meaningfully with their employees, especially in a remote world.