Equity, Inclusion, Antiracism

Brian Scott is chairperson.

2024-2025 Minutes

2020/2024 Minutes

Goal: To move HCIS/district 4085 to a strong, active anti racist and equity focused position in its policies and practices.

Definitions: Antiracism is the practice of opposing racism. An antiracist backs up their beliefs with action and policy (Ibram X. Kendi).

Rationale: Often without meaning to do so, institutions uphold and propagate the dominant and often oppressive beliefs of a culture or society. Schools are not immune, and in fact have a great responsibility to continuously assess, train, and hold themselves accountable in terms of improving equity and inclusion in education. Without doing this work, education will never be the great leveling force that society depends on it to be and often claims that it is.

A quick visit to https://www.ed.gov/equity shows a program page that has not been updated since the Obama Administration. Leadership at the federal level is not leading; directives and guidance are not coming, and yet the work to be done remains. The state has added a cultural competency requirement to teacher (re)licensure requirements, but hasn’t been exactly prolific in defining what that means or providing for that training.

Unfunded priorities and platitudes do little to help teachers and schools liberate themselves from the history and traditions of white supremacy nor the classist, sexist, ableist values and beliefs ingrained in education. Teachers should not be left to address another systemic and societal problem that they have little if any power to overcome on their own. These efforts merit more than a piecemeal patchwork bandaid black history month and women in science week approach realized out of the bit of extra energy individual educators have at the end of the day to try to integrate meaningful changes to the what, how, and why of their teaching based on their own, sometimes partial understanding of many complex and interlocking pieces.

Our BOD and school can and should work to address systemic racism and other inequities within education. Many schools and/or districts have offices of diversity and inclusion, directors of educational equity, centers for equitable education, etc. A committee focused on equity could share the work in initial research, evaluation, and goal setting in order to guide these efforts.

These efforts could look like many different things:

Revisiting the Mission and Vision to ensure they include equity and anti racist values

Identifying issues and supporting/lobbying for change where the changes need to be made

Adopting anti racist, equity focused guiding questions/principles (see example below) and using them to assess/review/improve:

Results, goals, priorities

Policy

Curriculum and instruction (reviewing, adding, changing courses, materials, training)

Resource allocation

Staff training

Investigating student achievement and racially predictable (and other) disparities

Diversity and/or lack thereof in student body and staff

I don’t have many answers or a solution to prescribe, but we cannot continue to do little to nothing as an organization and depend on the individual efforts of teachers with little to no funding or direction to be enough because we aren’t sure what needs to be done, how to do it, or what every step will look like along the way.

The committee should engage a variety of perspectives and prioritize the needs and voices of those who have been most marginalized within the systems we are trying to change, and should include students, parents, staff, and tap experts as needed.

Examples from other schools:

White Bear Lake 4-Way Equity Decision Making Protocol

Action Plan for Educational Inclusivity