Core Beliefs

Franklin Pierce Schools’ vision is to see every student thrive on their path to graduation and beyond. We seek to create a school system that focuses on every student, every day and that strengthens our community through education. These commitments require us to name, confront and disrupt the inequitable systems and practices that contribute to predictable disparate outcomes on the basis of group memberships including race, class, language, culture, religion, ability, gender, sexuality, and citizenship.

We acknowledge the historical role educational institutions have played in creating, implementing, and maintaining policies and practices that result in predictably lower academic performance and graduation rate outcomes and disproportionate disciplinary action for students of color and other marginalized identities. We recognize these disparities contradict our beliefs and values about what students can achieve, and we affirm the important role of adults in ensuring conditions for success. We are committed to removing barriers, and ensuring students access, opportunity, and inclusion throughout our system.

This policy establishes that our district shall see diversity, equity, and inclusion as connected to the district’s mission and critical to promoting the well-being of the students, staff, and the community it serves.

Strategic Priorities

Franklin Pierce Schools’ strategic plan identifies three guiding priorities: social justice and equity, family and community partnerships, and high-quality culturally responsive instruction. We believe these priorities influence each other and can be identified through institutional practices. This policy identifies three areas of focus (climate and culture, leadership and partnerships, and teaching and learning) to help our district ensure that every student experiences access, opportunity, and inclusion throughout our system.

Climate and Culture

The district understands a positive and supportive environment is a key component in fostering a setting where students, staff, families, and community partners feel safe, respected, and connected to their school community. Climate describes the shared perceptions of the people in an organization, while culture includes the beliefs, values, and assumptions that shape the organization’s identity and set the standards of behavior.

A climate and culture that advances race and equity efforts believes:

• The work and values of diversity, equity, and inclusion are the responsibility of all employees to demonstrate during workplace interactions and everyday practices;
• Every individual has inherent value and a role in our community; and
• Targeted supports and programming are necessary to create the conditions for all students and staff to experience thriving.

Leadership and Partnerships

The district recognizes the value of creating and sustaining essential partnerships with students, staff, families, and community organizations. Culturally responsive leaders work with their school community to disrupt structural inequities and historically unjust systems of power.

Leadership and partnerships that create conditions for transformative relationships include:

• Power sharing with the students, staff, families, and community members directly impacted by the decisions being made;
• Centering of the voices, perspectives, knowledges, and logics of Black, Indigenous, and other Peoples of Color in ways that expand opportunities and reduce disparities; and
• Transparent, consistent, and predictable processes, standards of conduct and practices, and communication.

Teaching and Learning

The district is committed to high-quality teaching and learning that supports each student, without exception, in reaching their highest potential. This will be achieved through curriculum, educational materials, instructional practices, and data use routines that reflect and affirm the racial and cultural experiences and identities of our students and staff.

Our efforts will:

• Embrace a holistic definition of student success that sees, affirms, and acknowledges the unique potential of each student, builds on the assets of our learners, and fosters a community where students see their own potential.
• Foster an adult learning culture rooted in a shared vision for student learning, a high degree of teacher efficacy, and effective systems and routines that empower creative thinking and problem solving.

As a district, our desire is to actualize educational justice in a collaborative, comprehensive and relentless approach toward equity and inclusion.

To that end:

The board commits to:

• Provide system-wide direction, support, oversight, and accountability for the district’s systematic approach to closing opportunity gaps, eliminating disparities, and empowering historically marginalized voices.
• Engage in ongoing board development and various community-based feedback efforts to learn about inequities and biases that impact students, staff, and families in our community and effective strategies for addressing them.
• Remove barriers and create opportunities to identify and nurture strengths in each student and to ensure our community can in turn be strengthened by each student.

The district commits to:

• Initiate a systematic and iterative process at each level of our system to pursue equity and inclusion across all aspects of the education system and close gaps, while raising achievement for all students.
• Ensure all students, regardless of race, ethnicity, or class, graduate from Franklin Pierce Schools prepared to embody the Franklin Pierce Student Portrait and contribute, collaborate, connect, learn, create, and nurture themselves and each other in a racially and culturally diverse local, national, and global community.

District office and school administrators commit to:

• Engage, elevate, and empower historically marginalized voices consisting of students, staff, families, and community members. 
• Ensure that language access, technology access, and other factors do not exclude or limit participation for students, staff, family, and community.

Departments and schools commit to execute a cohesive and systematic process to pursue equity and inclusion in specific focus areas embedded in the School Improvement Plan.

Accountability Measures

The superintendent is directed to provide at least a semi-annual report to the public and the school board on the strategic plan goals and to ensure that an equity lens is used in each report. When relevant and appropriate, reports will include evaluating our strategies and their effectiveness through providing disaggregated data, information on how funding is differentiated based on student need, and how programs or services are being implemented to ensure equitable access by students.

All staff members are charged with recognizing and speaking out when we are not meeting our vision of being an equity-focused district. Response to allegations of inequities may involve an assessment of district policies, programs, and strategies.

The superintendent or designee is authorized to develop procedures for implementing this policy.

Legal References

HB 2331: Modifying requirements for public school instructional and supplemental instructional materials.

Cross References

Franklin Pierce School District Strategic Plan 2020-2026