Equity

The topic of student equity can be a challenging conversation but one that we have a responsibility to undertake.

• I support the current DEI initiatives that the school district is undertaking and look forward to helping them to keep the momentum on these efforts. There are measurable differences in performance among our students and it would be negligent of us not to do everything we can to address those disparities. And to do that, we need to understand why those disparities exist in the first place, and then understand what kind of evidence-based remediation strategies we can deploy.

  • Sometimes these efforts are mis-interpreted as "lowering expectations". In fact, the opposite is true. Studies show that schools that establish high performance expectations for all students have lower rates of disparity.1, 2

• In our curriculum, we have to do better for our students than my education did for me. Many of our students will leave our community at some point in their lives - for work, for school, for adventure. There are age-appropriate ways to teach our kids about diversity, about their fellow students, their fellow Americans, those who may not look or speak like they do. To neglect that part of a well-rounded education is wrong and puts our students at a competitive disadvantage in the future.

• See more thoughts on LGBTQ+ issues here.