Franklin Pierce Schools is deeply engaged in work around equity, race, and identity to better foster and support an environment in which our students, staff, and families grow, thrive, and succeed. This work, and the language used to describe it, is rapidly evolving. This procedure identifies current strategies to be used within each focus area to transform our system and will be reviewed at least annually to reflect current practices and language.

Climate and Culture

We must actively work to develop, implement, and demonstrate institutional practices that authenticate our beliefs that diversity is our strength and that every student and staff member deserves to thrive in our community. We must also actively work to dismantle current practices that result in inequitable or discriminatory outcomes.

To that end, we will:

• Provide differentiated professional development on equity, diversity, and inclusion as a requirement for all staff levels including certificated, classified, administrative staff and the school board that meet the Cultural Competency, Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion (CCDEI) standards developed by the Professional Educator Standard Board (PESB).
• Actively foster and sustain positive relationships and connections with students, families and staff in every school, classroom, and department across the district.
• Provide multiple and varied opportunities and resources to nurture, celebrate, and support cultural diversity.
• Nurture a culture of advocacy by centering student voice, experiences, and perspectives.
• Actively search for, recruit, and employ racially and linguistically diverse and culturally competent personnel at all levels of the organization.
• Implement and support retention strategies that allow staff of historically marginalized identities to feel seen, heard, and valued.
• Support the establishment of affinity support networks and mentorship opportunities for underrepresented groups.
• Engage all school personnel in cross-cultural reflection and dialogue to build awareness of their own identities and privileges and address the impact of biases and microaggressions in the workplace.
• Provide opportunities for staff to provide feedback safely and openly on the work environment and surface concerns.
• Develop reporting, investigation, communication, and accountability processes, particularly related to actions of racism and occurrences of racial tension or other discriminatory language and actions.
• Practice and encourage transparent communication in all interactions. 

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.

To ensure leadership practices that cultivate equity and wellness, we will:

• Engage students as partners in their own education and in the work of school and district improvement by:
  • Routinely accessing the insight and perspective of diverse student voices;
  • Ensuring students are involved in developing the district foundational plans including the student portrait and strategic plan;
  • Promoting student initiative and involvement; and
  • Providing social-emotional and enrichment opportunities that strengthen relationships between students and foster a sense of community and camaraderie within schools.
• Commit time and resources to expanding more diverse leadership within our administrative, staff, community partners, and advisory bodies.
• Focus accountability systems and metrics on racially equitable results.
• Identify and operationalize a race and equity analysis tool to be used at all levels of our system in decisions such as: staffing; budgeting; initiating, developing, or ending programs, or procedures/processes; and allocating resources and opportunities.
• Establish a regular schedule to review current district policies, procedures, programs, and professional development through the use of a racial equity analysis tool to ensure that the promotion of racial equity exists.
• Develop the personal, professional, and organizational skills and knowledge of our employees to better enable them to address the presence and impact of racism and other forms of oppression.
• Provide every student with equitable access to a high-quality curriculum, support, facilities, and other educational resources.
• Model racial equity in business practices.
• Ensure budgets prioritize initiatives that directly support historically underserved students, and
  • Regularly report on resource distribution and its impact on equity.
  • Establish standards for assessing and maintaining partnerships which includes discontinuing partnerships with organizations that are not making a priority of this work.

Teaching and Learning

Through an environment that fosters 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, we can support learners to thrive on their journey to graduation and beyond.

To provide a humanizing learning experience, we will:

• Adopt curriculum and teaching and learning strategies that leverage, reflect, and affirm the unique experiences and social, racial, cultural, linguistic, and familial backgrounds of the Franklin Pierce Schools community.
• Elevate core instructional practices that incorporate social emotional learning (SEL) values and practices to engage youth and adults cognitively, emotionally, and experientially.
• Incorporate the WIDA (formerly World-Class Instructional Design and Assessment) framework into core instruction at all grades and all content areas.
• Utilize a bias review tool within curriculum review and curriculum adoption processes.
• Align policy regarding instructional and supplemental materials with guidance set forth in House Bill 2331, which ensures books cannot be banned on the basis that they center marginalized voices or topics such as race, religion, gender identity, or sexuality.
• Provide professional development on equity, diversity, and inclusion for all classroom educators. Professional development for classroom educators will be:
  • Centered around culturally responsive and inclusionary instructional practices; 
  • Structured so that educators can take-action towards the creation of equitable classrooms for students; and
  • Focused on an instructional pedagogy that is humanizing and supports the cultural wealth of students. 
• Utilize qualitative research methods and data to deepen learning and understanding of our system outcomes, shift adult practices, and drive transformation towards educational equity.
• Reduce the over- or underrepresentation of any particular student group in intervention, enrichment, and advanced course offerings such as special education services and accelerated programs by eliminating biased practices; and
• Through the use of promising fields of study including, but not limited to, restorative and trauma-informed practices, eliminate disproportionality in the discipline practices of particular student groups.

Accountability

At least semi-annually the superintendent will issue a report updating each area of work, including progress made and areas for improvement, as well as areas that will be changing for the upcoming year. The report should include both qualitative and quantitative data and may result in recommendations to change policies, procedures, or practices throughout the district.