Soulful, Authentic Community Building to Support ALL Students
Equity-Centering Resources
Created by a Black, Educator, and Mom.
BEE – Beyond Equity in Education™ exists to fill the gap between what is and what is attainable when we shift from blaming individuals to emphasizing “system changes.” Beyond blame lies profound potential in hope, inclusion, and courageous ancestors for future generations.
Equity Rooted in Empathy
Bay Jones understands that an educator’s perceptions alter the learning environment for all students. Her work has impacted schools across the country as well as graduate students eager to become teachers themselves.
An educator with experience spanning the full range of K-12 and higher education teaching, Dr. Bay Jones has worked as a classroom teacher and administrator with students at all levels of their educational journey. She began her career in California, teaching young children of migrant farmworkers, and later offered guidance to affluent independent schools seeking classroom diversity. She further expanded her teaching skills and insights through work in rural Alabama, where talented, low-income students lacked access to advanced classes, and dedicated teachers lacked resources. Later, she taught Sociology courses to community college students, developed and delivered equity courses to graduate students, and supervised student-teacher interns.
Her work with the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Learning for Justice division enabled her to create curriculum, present at national conferences, and collaborate with educators nationwide on issues of equity and social justice.
During her time in Alabama, Dr. Jones served as a community organizer, assisting eligible Black farmers in the Pigford v Glickman class action lawsuit against the USDA to secure benefits they were denied based on their race. She also conducted door-to-door campaigning for voting rights, contributing to the election of Selma, Alabama’s first Black mayor in 2000.
Dr. Jones has dedicated her career to equity, community, and social justice. She has spearheaded district-wide system changes to ensure equity is integrated into every action, decision, and resource allocation. Known as a nationally recognized public speaker and motivator, her sharp analytical skills in both numbers and language enable her to ask the right questions at the right time, leading to precise interventions and accurate connections that address the learning, social, and cultural needs of students across the K-16 continuum pipeline.
With graduate degrees from Harvard, the country’s oldest private university, and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, the oldest public university, Dr. Jones combines her extensive grassroots experiences with academic knowledge to analyze the impact of systems on students’ education and lives.
At every level of education, equity must be thought of as an initial step. For our young people to soar and reach their fullest potential, we can and will remove systemic barriers because we are weakened by the silencing of Brown and Black students, and the omission of their ideas, thoughts and experiences hurts ALL of us.
Would you like to support our mission to bring equity to all communities? You can by supporting an educator, student, or community organization to do this work. Please reach out to us to discuss how.
Land Acknowledgement
BEE – Beyond Equity in Education™ was launched and operates within the occupied territories of the Miwok, Pomo and Wappo peoples (who are recognized today as the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria). We commit to this work while honoring our indigenous brothers and sisters whose ancestral land, now known as Sonoma County, provides us with beauty, nourishment and refuge.