At the Monday, June 14, 2021, meeting of the Lower Merion Board of School Directors, the Board approved District Policy 101 Equity. The full Policy, which begins with an explanation of purpose and includes multiple definitions and source citations, can be read here.
Policy 101 states, in part, “Educational equity is a shared commitment to ensure that every student gets what they need to be successful. Practicing equity in this District means understanding the needs of individuals and positioning resources – including funding, programs, policies, initiatives, and supports – to target people’s unique experiences and to provide for individual needs so that achievement and opportunity gaps are eliminated on personal and systemic levels.”
It goes on to say, “Equity is distinct from equality. While equality entitles that everyone gets the same, equity requires that individuals get what they need.”
The approval of Policy 101 is the result of a collaborative effort among the Board, Administration and community stakeholders including students, staff and residents of Lower Merion and Narberth, who contributed to the creation and refinement of the Policy through participation in meetings of CARE (Committee to Address Race in Education), the Board’s Ad-Hoc Committee on Equity and Anti-Racism, the Policy Committee and the Achievement Imperative Task Force. Students, who protested for racial justice following the death of George Floyd in the summer of 2020, provided added impetus and urgency to this effort, in alignment with “All Forward,” the District’s Strategic Plan‘s Pathway of Student-Driven Schools.
The Policy directs, “The Superintendent and/or designee to identify and remove institutional barriers that result in achievement and/or opportunity gaps for students; and implement policies, practices and procedures that ensure a student’s educational success is neither predetermined or predicated by factors such as a student’s race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, student with identified disabilities, individual learning needs, social or economic status, or other identity related factors.”
Board President Lucy Klain said, “As President of the Board of School Directors, I’m proud of our students, community, staff, and administration who came together to develop this policy following the events of the past year and the heartbreaking reminder that we must continue to work for equal justice. I especially want to acknowledge the students’ continuing fight for justice; their activism inspired us, as a Board, to convene our Ad-Hoc Committee on Equity and Anti-Racism and to work on creating this Districtwide Equity Policy. As our current students graduate and move on to serve, their impact will be felt by all of the students who follow.”
Board Director Shawn Mooring, Chair of the Ad-Hoc Committee on Equity and Anti-Racism, said, “I am extremely pleased that the Lower Merion School District has taken this step to adopt a formal Equity Policy, thereby institutionalizing our long-held commitment to Equity and Anti-Racism. I am also particularly proud of the high level of engagement with our students, teachers, administrators and community stakeholders in the drafting, vetting, and finalizing of this policy.”
In addition to approving the Equity Policy, the LMSD Board approved a proposal from Education Northwest to perform a Districtwide equity and inclusivity audit. (Agreement pending Solicitor review). Additional information about LMSD’s ongoing Equity and Anti-Racism efforts is available on the Equity page of the District website, LMSD.org.
Four of the seven pages that comprise Policy 101 are devoted to definitions, none of which are actually mentioned in the policy itself, which takes up a little more than a half page.
The Policy
Definitions and Glossary of Other Relevant Terms
Achievement gaps shall mean the academic disparities and/or differences between groups of students, as indicated through disproportionalities in academic indicators such as test scores, grade point average and graduation rates. [Source: PSBA Equity Toolkit]
Anti-Racism (also Antiracist) is the active and conscious work against racism. Since racism operates at multiple levels, being antiracist means making antiracist choices at the various levels – individual, interpersonal, and institutional – to eradicate racism from the structures and fabric of our society. [Source: National Museum of African American History & Culture, https://nmaahc.si.edu/learn/talking-about-race/topics/being-antiracist]
Cultural competency shall mean an ability to effectively interact, work, and develop meaningful relationships with people of different cultural backgrounds and demonstrate a willingness to learn from and about other cultures and people of different cultural backgrounds. [Source: PDE
Equity & Inclusion Toolkit – modified]
Cultural proficiency shall mean: (1) the level of knowledge-based skills and understanding that is required to successfully teach and interact with students and to work effectively with colleagues, families and communities from a variety of cultures by understanding and holding all forms of cultural differences in high esteem; (2) a continuing self-assessment of one’s values, beliefs and biases grounded in respect toward individuals of other cultures; (3) an ongoing vigilance toward the dynamics of diversity, difference and power; and (4) the expansion of
knowledge or cultural practices that recognize cultural bridges as going both ways. [Source:
PDE Equity & Inclusion Toolkit – modified]
Culturally responsive shall mean the inclusion of students’ cultural references in all aspects of learning, school experiences, the curriculum, and student engagement. [Source: PDE Equitable
Practices Hub
(https://www.education.pa.gov/Schools/safeschools/equityandinclusion/EPH/AcademicEquity/
Classroom/Pages/default.aspx; Center for the Collaborative Classroom “A Conversation about
Instructional Equity” (https://www.collaborativeclassroom.org/blog/a-conversation-aboutinstructional-equity-with-zaretta-hammond/) – modified]
Equitable resources shall mean funding, programs, policies, initiatives, and supports that, consistent with budgetary limits, target each student’s unique background in order to promote every student having access to what they need to access a high-quality education and achieve
success in school. [Source: Pennsylvania School Boards Association – modified]
Equity shall mean fairness achieved through the just distribution of resources based upon each individual student’s needs. [Source: Pennsylvania School Boards Association – modified]
Equity lens shall mean an intentional focus on assessing any disparate or unequal impact a program, practice, operation, decision or action may have on a student or group of students.
[Source: PSBA Equity & Inclusion Toolkit – modified]
Ethnicity refers to the social characteristics that people may have in common, such as language, religion, regional background, culture, foods, etc. Ethnicity is revealed by the traditions one follows, a person’s native language, and so on. [Source: https://www.aspeninstitute.org/blogposts/structural-racism-definition/]
Explicit bias shall mean the actions, attitudes and beliefs about a person or group on a conscious level. [Source: PDE Equity & Inclusion Toolkit – modified]
Implicit bias shall mean the actions, attitudes or stereotypes that affect our understanding, actions and decisions in a subconscious manner. [Source: PDE Equity & Inclusion Toolkit –
modified]
Inclusion shall mean engaging, valuing and respecting all groups (students, parents/guardians
and other family members, community members, administrators, instructional and support personnel and other education stakeholders) and including all groups as equal partners in the
education process. [Source: PDE Equity & Inclusion Toolkit – modified]
Institutional barriers shall mean school policies, procedures and practices that disadvantage or limit students or certain groups of students.
Institutional Racism refers to the policies and practices within and across institutions that, intentionally or not, produce outcomes that chronically favor, or put a racial group at a disadvantage. [Source: https://www.aspeninstitute.org/blog-posts/structural-racismdefinition/]
Intersectionality shall mean the complex and cumulative ways that the effects of different forms of discrimination (such as racism, sexism, classism) combine, overlap, and intersect—
especially in the experiences of marginalized people or group. [Source: PDE Equitable Practices
Hub
(https://www.education.pa.gov/Schools/safeschools/equityandinclusion/EPH/SelfAwareness/In
Microaggression means verbal, behavioral, or environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative prejudicial slights and/or
insults toward any group or member of a group, particularly culturally marginalized groups.
[Source: Derald Wing Sue, PhD, “Microaggressions: More than Just Race” (Psychology Today,
17 November 2010)].
Opportunity gaps shall mean the disparities in the delivery of educational and extracurricular opportunities, resources, and funding between and among different student groups, leading to different academic, extracurricular, social, and economic outcomes for students. [Source: PSBA
Equity Toolkit]
Prejudice means a pre-judgment or unjustifiable, and usually negative, attitude of one type of individual or groups toward another group and its members. Such negative attitudes are typically based on unsupported generalizations (or stereotypes) that deny the right of individual
members of certain groups to be recognized and treated as individuals with individual characteristics. [Source: Institute for Democratic Renewal and Project Change Anti-Racism Initiative, A Community Builder’s Tool Kit, Appendix I (2000)].
Privilege means unearned social power accorded by the formal and informal institutions of society to all members of a dominant group (for example, white privilege, male privilege, etc.).
Privilege is usually invisible to those who have it because we’re taught not to see it, but nevertheless it puts them at an advantage over those who do not have it. [Source: Colours of
Resistance Archive, “Privilege” (accessed 28 June 2013)]
Race is a socially constructed category the meaning of which varies over time, space and across cultures (https://nmaahc.si.edu/learn/talking-about-race/topics/historical-foundations-race). It
is based on the unscientific belief that humans can be grouped into “races” based on biological differences (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/race-is-a-social-construct-scientistsargue/). Race describes categories assigned to demographic groups based mostly on observable
physical characteristics, like skin color, hair texture and eye shape; refers to physical differences that groups and cultures consider socially significant. [Source: American Sociological
Association]. While the meaning of race is socially constructed, the effects of racism are real.
Racism is a system of oppression/advantage based on race. Racism is different from racial prejudice, hatred, or discrimination. Racism involves one group having the power to carry out systematic discrimination through the institutional policies and practices of the society and by
shaping the cultural beliefs and values that support those racist policies and practices.
Structural Racism means a system in which public policies, institutional practices, cultural representations, and other norms work in various, often reinforcing ways to perpetuate racial group inequity. It identifies dimensions of our history and culture that have allowed privileges
associated with “whiteness” and disadvantages associated with “color” to endure and adapt
over time. Structural racism is not something that a few people or institutions choose to
practice. Instead it has been a feature of the social, economic and political systems in which we
all exist. [Source: https://www.aspeninstitute.org/blog-posts/structural-racism-definition/]