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Report Details

Who is Mark Gooden?

In 2020, the Eanes Independent School District hired Mark Gooden to serve as the diversity, equity and inclusion consultant. 

“The racial reflection is a really impactful way to start [becoming aware of our unconscious bias],” Gooden said. “I usually coach people in doing this. I give people a space to reach back and dig into their memories and point out some things that have happened in their lives around race. What’s your earliest racial incident or racial situation? What role did you play? How did you feel? What did you do? And then from there, that’s an initial foray. That’s not the full racial autobiography. We take that and we expand it into a deeper, longer essay, if you will.”

During a February 2020 meeting, in response to a question about curriculum, Gooden indicated that no diversity, equity and inclusion “curriculum” had been selected. He did point the public to Learning for Justice, formerly Teaching Tolerance, a project of the Southern Poverty Law Center as a resource to consult.

What K-12 work has Mark Gooden done?

TEXAS

Eanes Independent School District

Eanes Independent School District signed an agreement in August 2020 to pay Mark Gooden $170,500 for a one-year contract.