Core Beliefs

Equity Core Beliefs

We believe….

• A Culturally Proficient workforce will strengthen our collective knowledge, attitudes, skills and practices to be an inclusive and culturally responsive organization that is equipped to meet the needs of all the students and families that we serve.
• An Equitable and Culturally Responsive Organization must be felt and experienced by all stakeholders.
• A Strategically Implemented Professional Development plan to build cultural proficiency among all staff will insure the application of equitable and culturally responsive practices for students; especially those who have been historically marginalized, invisible and forgotten.
• All Curriculum and Instructional Materials must reflect the unique cultural and linguistic diversity that is our student population.
• Equitable Resources and Scaled Supports for all students must be established within a culturally responsive and equitable school and district system, PreK-12.
• Enhancing Parent and Community Engagement with culturally and linguistically meaningful activities will lead to greater levels of participation and contributions to our schools and district, PreK-12.
• School Safety is a priority; Strengthening Social Emotional Learning (SEL) competencies will increase rapport and strengthen relationships among and between all stakeholders as well as reduce/eliminate the potential for inequitable practices in student discipline.
• Equitably Distributing Funds so that seen and unseen real and/or rumored financial barriers to student success in every academic, athletic, and/or extracurricular activity approved by School District U-46 School Board isn’t the predictor of participation and success.
• Recruiting, Hiring, and Retaining a diverse faculty and staff that reflects the cultural and linguistic experiences and worldviews of our students is essential for meeting the needs of all our students.
• We believe we must Ensure Easily Navigable Structures and Systems so that community and families interactions with School District U-46 are understandable and accessible regardless of one’s cultural and linguistic diversity.
• All School and District Processes must be accessible and understandable to all students, parents and families regardless of one’s culture or language.

Quote worth remembering:

“Culture is real and is a major element in all human interactions. Those who are blind to cultural diversity are blind to reality. Teaching power is also real. Those who are blind to that must improve their own competency. Above all, power and hegemony, the desire by some to dominate vulnerable groups, are alive and well. The ugly history of American apartheid (segregation) is but one example of how hegemony plays out in education and becomes embedded in structures of schooling, root and branch, from ideology to methodology to curriculum to assessment.”

Asa G. Hilliard, III

Georgia State University