The mission of the Frontier Regional School District and Union 38 Anti-Racism & Equity Committee is to guide the district in identifying, describing, and dismantling the systemic racism and oppression embedded within our schools and communities. Through the combined efforts of staff, students, and community members, the committee will develop steps for the work needed to transform our systems and policies. 

We commit to:

• Examining how racism exists within us as individuals, and in the fabric of our organization, its policies, culture, and traditions.

• Educating ourselves and taking action over time to grow as an anti-racist organization.

• Examining and teaching antiracist curricula that creates an inclusive school community where all people are respected, valued, and welcomed.

• Reexamining policies and procedures to ensure they support our antiracist vision.

Frontier Regional & Union #38 School District 

FOUNDATION STATEMENT ON ANTIRACISM AND EQUITY

PURPOSE

The purpose of this statement is to clearly articulate our beliefs and intentions with regard to antiracism and educational equity. This document further serves to establish a foundation on which we establish our commitment to the elimination of institutionalized racism, and cultural and other biases, which negatively impact the learning environment and the ability for students to achieve at the highest level. Our goal is to promote the creation of teaching, learning, and working environments which welcome, respect, and value our strength in diversity. Antiracism and equity in education is about inclusiveness and social justice. The principles contained within this document may be used as a blueprint by members of other marginalized groups seeking equity related to their identity.

The principal underpinnings of antiracism and educational equity form the basis for our thinking and acting which are designed to foster a teaching and learning environment where all students have the opportunity to access, and freely participate in, a quality educational experience; one that supports them in the present and prepares them for their future.

FRSU#38, in response to the ever-growing need to address the contemporary challenges facing our society, has created this statement of beliefs and intentions related to antiracism and educational equity. This foundation statement will serve to support our current policies and function as the driving force behind the procedures we follow to fulfill our policy goals.

Our greater community needs to not only have access to district policies, but they need to know the benefits and protections that these policies provide and how the district’s procedural process works to fulfill its mission and meet the district’s goals and responsibilities. 

DEFINITIONS OF RACISM AND EQUITY

By defining our terms, we bring clarity to our work while providing a platform for articulating our beliefs and intentions as a school district and promoting antiracism and equitable practices. 

First, is important to define racism and antiracism:

• Racism: is a set of institutional or organizational patterns, actions and/or policies that supports and authorizes individual bigotry toward one or more racial groups. These elements include discrimination and/or unequal treatment on the basis of membership of a particular marginalized ethnic group, arising from systems, structures, or expectations that have become established within society or an institution.

Therefore, Antiracism is a process of actively identifying and opposing racism. The goal of anti-racism is to challenge racism and actively change the systemic policies, behaviors, and beliefs that perpetuate racist ideas and actions. Antiracism is rooted in action. It is about taking steps to eliminate racism at the individual, institutional, and structural levels. Anti-racism is a dynamic process.

Similarly, in order to create a climate of full access and support for all students, we need to define equity and educational equity:

• Equity: The notion of being justly, fairly, and impartially treated as an individual engages with an organization or system, particularly systems of grievance. “Equity” is often conflated with the term “Equality” (meaning sameness).

• Therefore, Educational Equity creates an educational system that ensures that every student, across all groups, has access to the opportunities, resources and educational rigor they need throughout their educational career to maximize academic success and social emotional well-being and views each student’s individual characteristics as valuable. These characteristics include but are not limited to: ability (cognitive, social emotional and physical), ethnicity, family structure, gender identity and expression, language, race, religion, sexual orientation, and socio-economics.

OUR BELIEFS: ANTIRACISM

FRSU#38 believes that having an antiracism perspective creates a stance that actively serves to oppose racism in all its forms, the goal being to carry out policies and behaviors that support this antiracism and equity stance. Our schools are committed to the tenets of antiracism in order to identify and deconstruct all forms of structural and institutional racism. Therefore:

• We believe that our commitment to antiracism will reduce and, ultimately, eliminate institutional and structural barriers based on race and experienced by students, teachers, and members of our broader school community.

• We believe antiracism can be learned and practiced to the benefit of our entire school community. 

• We believe that by embracing an antiracism stance we acknowledge that we all hold biases, both known and intrinsic, which often serve to uphold inequities.

• We believe that well-intentioned statements and acts may be experienced by some as microaggressions which create a harmful impact on the targeted individual. 

• We believe that racism is a systemic and historically embedded part of our educational systems.

• We believe in examining, confronting and eradicating racism in all aspects of our educational system. 

• We believe an antiracism stance works to reconstruct practices, systems, and structures that create separate advantages and disadvantages for students and families.

OUR BELIEFS: EQUITY

FRSU#38 believes that each student, regardless of race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, gender identity, disability, sexual orientation, religion, or socioeconomic status will have access to the opportunities, resources, and support they need to attain their full potential. Further, FRSU#38 believes there is an urgent need to disrupt societal and historical inequities and eliminate the disparities that prohibit fair and equal access to educational opportunities and resources. Therefore:

• We believe that educational equity thrives when institutional and structural barriers are removed and historically marginalized groups are able to experience full and unfettered access to learning opportunities and resources.

• We believe that educational equity requires centering the voices of those who are most negatively impacted to enact change and that marginalized students, educators, and families should be welcomed into the process of envisioning and creating their own equitable learning conditions.

• We believe educational equity requires creativity, flexibility, empathy, and vulnerability.

• We believe that educational equity recognizes that equity intersects with race, gender identity, religion, sexual orientation, health, ability, language, immigration status, age, socio-economic status, and more.

• We believe in the importance of implementing a curriculum that is reflective of our whole society, not preferencing or privileging some knowledge over others, and striving for accuracy.

• We believe that equitable practice requires proactive and sustained investment in students, educators, families and communities of color to interrupt systemic inequities.

• We believe in focusing on the impact of programs, practices, decisions, or actions, on all students, paying particular attention to culturally marginalized students/groups.

• We believe in the importance of having accessibility, on every level and in every location, to all students in our school community for equity and inclusivity.

OUR INTENTIONS

Because our beliefs embody our values with regard to antiracism and educational equity, we commit to creating a sense of community, developing leaders from all quarters who are committed to promoting antiracism and equity, and to building and sustaining a safe and supportive learning environment. In light of that commitment, the School Committees, Central office, School Administration, and Classrooms will operationalize our beliefs and values by intentionally:

• Engaging in a sustained and dynamic process to identify practices, systems, and structures at all FRSU38 schools that are implicitly or explicitly racist and inequitable

• Continuing to learn about racism and implicit bias through individual and collective efforts

• Examining all procedures related to school functioning through an antiracism and equity lens

• Increasing our understanding of the impact of racism and bias on students and actively promoting practices that move the schools toward becoming anti-racist

• Working to recruit, hire, and retain qualified personnel from underrepresented populations

• Identifying and stopping practices within the schools that are unfriendly to marginalized individuals

• Providing antiracism and equity PD to all staff and administrators

• Creating multiple ways to celebrate the diversity in our community

• Providing and sustaining viable antiracism work through a regular review of existing and future policies to ensure they benefit the school community

• Evaluating the system’s curriculum, our individual beliefs and cultural practices, and health disparities

• Assessing the process by which the school system renews its efforts to promote equity, inclusion, safety, and social justice.

 Proposed: 4/27/22

Adopted School Committee 5/2022

In the spring of 2024, Members of the A & E Committee (with input from high school students belonging to the Gender & Sexuality Alliance) worked to bring our Nondiscrimination on the Basis of Gender policy up to date.  The next step is to bring it to School Committees in the fall for approval.  DRAFT is linked here.