West Irondequoit Central School District

• Members of the Coalition were presented with a draft of the Vision statement, developed based on input from all participating stakeholders:

VISION STATEMENT:

The Coalition for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion is dedicated to creating an equitable, accepting, transparent and inclusive culture for ALL students, staff, families, and community members. Further, it is aimed at establishing a culture that embraces diversity, strengthens relationships among ALL students within our community, and adopting culturally responsive practices and curricula that promote student voice and acknowledges current issues. Lastly, this Coalition will create a framework for equity, diversity, and inclusion that will be used to evaluate current and future policies, programs, practices and procedures.

• At the meeting, Coalition members unpacked a “Building Equity Taxonomy” from the text, Fisher, D., Frey, N., Pumpian, I., & Smith, D. (2017). Building equity: Policies and practices that empower all learners. 

• Members began to investigate data sets to support the statements associated with Level 1 of the Taxonomy, Physical Integration.  A sample of the notice, wonderings and questions generated are listed below.  In addition, the data sets utilized by the Coalition are also listed.

Physical Integration Question/Statement: “Classroom placement and student schedules ensure that diversity exists in all learning environments.”

Group Notice: “We notice some of the discrepancies between subgroups in terms of graduation outcomes.”

Group Wonder: “What are the breakdowns for participation and acceleration/advancement by subgroups (e.g. gender, race/ethnicity, socio-economic status, disability, English New Language Learners, etc.)

Essential Question: “How are we using data-inquiry processes and teams to evaluate outcomes among all students and subgroups to ensure diversity exists in all learning environments?”

Sample Data Sources Investigated:

https://data.nysed.gov/essa.php?year=2019&instid=800000034077 NYS “Report Card” for each School and District; link to West Irondequoit Central School District

https://www.westirondequoit.org/district/school_based_planning West Irondequoit CSD School Website, Annual School Based Plans

• The Coalition for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion came together virtually on Zoom for the first time in order to learn about one another and to establish Coalition Working Norms.  Members also shared their hopes for the committee in order to prioritize components of the vision for the work ahead.
• The members of the Coalition spent time introducing themselves and working in small break out groups to reflect on the working norms and the context for Courageous Conversations.
• A copy of the collaborative norms can be found here.