Where Lehigh Valley school districts are at in their diversity and inclusion efforts
Equity — the recognition that individual students come from different circumstances and need varying levels of resources to reach equality — has been a part of schools’ conversations for years.
In 2016, leaders from about a dozen Lehigh Valley school districts joined an inaugural Greater Lehigh Valley Consortium for Excellence and Equity to exchange experiences and ideas on how to make sure kids get the same opportunities, regardless of their backgrounds.
Some schools immediately drew up action plans; others took time to self-reflecti. Still others have joined the consortium very recently, after the national racial reckoning prompted by the murder of George Floyd.
Here are summaries of where each district is at in diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.
Allentown
The school board adopted an equity policy in January 2017 that establishes a framework for measuring the district’s progress on making sure all students have equal opportunity. Rather than considering it a separate plan, the district considers the annual goals as part of its overall transformation strategy.
Every year, the district audits factors such as student achievement and enrollment at each school, broken down by race, ethnicity, socio-economic status, language and special education; and teacher turnover and experience. The district also launched a community responsive system, “Let’s Talk,” implemented a multicultural curriculum for English Language Arts in the middle schools, performed an extensive curriculum audit, and continues to hold professional development on restorative practices.
After Floyd’s murder, the district adopted an anti-racist resolution promising cultural competency training, annual climate surveys and employment of strategies to reduce the racial achievement gap that was outlined in the curriculum audit. In fall 2020, after students led a movement urging the schools to reconsider the employment of cops in schools, the school’s Safety Task Force surveyed Allentown students and community members about School Resource Officers in schools; the district then renewed its contract with the SROs, stating that they would participate in restorative practices training.
Bethlehem Area
The Bethlehem Area School District is known regionally as a leader in equity work, and Superintendent Joseph Roy helped create the Greater Lehigh Valley Consortium for Excellence and Equity. The district started to implement an “excellence through equity” plan in 2016-2017 and is working on a new plan. Roy said he’s not sure whether an anti-racist policy would fall under the equity umbrella or its own policy. In 2019, Roy challenged faculty to be anti-racist.
East Penn
The East Penn School District in January adopted an educational equity policy that called for an annual audit, the creation of an equity plan and an annual update to the board. Through the policy, the district also pledged to be “a welcoming, inclusive and bias-free culture and environment.” The policy requires the district to offer professional development.
Easton
The district’s Diversity Alliance plan ran from 2016 to 2021 and called for: developing community partnerships, voluntary cultural competency professional development, creating diversity surveys, diversifying fiction books, providing child care when parents come to school and communicating in parents’ native languages. Many of its goals were accomplished in one way or another, but most of the last few years have been spent talking about the problems. When David Piperato became the new superintendent in late 2019, he wanted to reset. The district now has six diversity alliance committees, with about 120 people actively participating.
Northampton
The district plans to wrap an equity plan in with its six-year comprehensive plan, which is due the end of next school year. It is a member of the Greater Lehigh Valley Consortium and had wanted to finalize an equity plan last year, but then the pandemic happened. The district conducted a climate survey this spring and plans to form committees in the fall to finalize the plan. A draft includes a focus on hiring practices, school culture, and increasing parent and community involvement. Professional development on topics relating to equity is being planned for the fall.
Northwestern Lehigh
All staff were trained in cultural diversity, competence and racial bias in the 2019-20 school year. This school year, the district joined Linc Lehigh Valley — a networking consortium mostly geared toward businesses which provides diversity and inclusion training and resources — in addition to the Greater Lehigh Valley consortium, which the district has participated in before.
The district has not embarked on a separate equity plan, but included a goal in its 2019-2023 comprehensive plan to identify changes it should make to district practices that create barriers for historically underperforming groups. In the latter half of this school year, district recruiters went to job fairs recommended by Linc that target teachers of color. The district is in discussions with the local Intermediate Unit to conduct an equity audit from the Mid Atlantic Equity Consortium next year, a fact-finding mission that could serve as a basis for an equity-focused plan.
Parkland
Parkland is rolling out an Equity Action Plan the school board approved in September. This school year, staff received professional development training in areas of equity and trauma; a curriculum committee recommended new social studies textbook for secondary grades that the board approved in June; an “equity cohort” of about 50 staff met monthly to discuss goals; the district held class chats on race and a student forum; a community committee met four times and held a community forum in April. Many deadlines in the plan, which were mostly May 2021, have been pushed back.
Next year, the district wants to create equity cohorts in each building, hold more discussions with students, and finish revising the social studies and English curriculums to include multiple perspectives and more modern historical events. The community committee has also discussed coming up with a common set of vocabulary to talk about equity and make sure everyone is on the same page.
Salisbury
The district is examining its practices and still figuring out opportunities for growth in terms of equity and inclusion, superintendent Lynn Fuini-Hetten said. It sent a team to the Greater Lehigh Valley Consortium this year, and the superintendent joined the inaugural CEO Action Regional Summit for Inclusive Excellence, where Lehigh Valley leaders shared best practices on hiring and retaining a diverse and more inclusive workforce.
The district rolled out professional development opportunities this year: a team of high school students and staff participated in training from the National Coalition Building Institute focusing on inclusionary practices, equity and building a safer and more caring school environment, and staff were offered a summer book study on Matthew Kay’s “Not Light, But Fire: How to Lead Meaningful Race Conversations in the Classroom.”
Saucon Valley
The school district adopted an equity plan in 2017, when the district was embroiled in allegations of racism from students and families. The plan calls for awareness-building, professional development, a review of district policies, increasing the diversity of adult role models and inclusive practices in teaching and learning. District officials finished a draft action plan around some of those goals in May, said Superintendent Craig Butler. The district also has an equity and inclusion committee that meets quarterly.
Southern Lehigh
In June 2020, Southern Lehigh school board approved hiring an independent contractor to conduct a needs assessment, professional development, and from the data, form a 3-year diversity, equity and inclusion action plan. This year, the district conducted the needs assessment, which included an analysis of discipline data, academic data and a school climate survey using a template provided by the U.S. Department of Education and NCES. The consultant will report the results to the board this summer and recommend a plan that may include professional development, student initiatives, community partnerships, and ways to narrow gaps in discipline data and academic outcomes. The superintendent meets monthly with students to talk about their experiences with bias because of their race, gender or sexual identity, which she said was part of the district’s impetus to develop an action plan.
Whitehall-Coplay
Whitehall-Coplay started a deep dive into its practices and school climate in 2018, contracting with Faces International to conduct surveys and focus groups. Tyrone Russell wrote a report summarizing issues, such as women not feeling included in decision-making processes, Arabic- and Spanish-speaking parents not feeling connected to what was going on because of language barriers, and students feeling teachers reprimanded more than they listened. A small group of stakeholders started to dive back into that report in 2019-20. This year, the district regrouped and formed an Equity Diversity and Inclusion Task Force, or EDITForce, to have conversations with staff and students, conduct professional development in the area of equity and diversity, and next year, begin forming an equity action plan with the help of a supervisor of educational equity. This summer, the board is expected to approve an equity policy committing the district to this work. After it comes up with an equity action plan, leadership wants to regularly audit the effectiveness of the plan. The district’s new superintendent signed the district up for the Greater Lehigh Valley Consortium for 2021-22.
