Class Acts: District creates ‘a culture of respect’ to honor diversity
"In the fall of 2004, a restive and ethnically diverse group of parents, teachers, administrators, board members, Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies and a sprinkling of Nation of Islam security personnel convened in a hurriedly arranged town hall-type meeting in the boardroom of the William S. Hart Union High School District in Santa Clarita. Emotions were running high.
“A vocal group of parents, mostly African American but bolstered by several Jewish parents and rabbis, had gathered to charge the district with ‘racial insensitivity,’ saying the district had been unresponsive to complaints from black, Latino and Jewish students and parents,” says Greg Lee. Already on the district staff at the time, Lee was eventually chosen to head up a plan to address the contentious situation and named Hart’s diversity coordinator.
Positive results came out of that tense meeting. An ad hoc committee of students, parents, business leaders, administrators, teachers and school board members researched race relations and developed recommendations that led to the creation of a Diversity Action Plan, which triggered a Diversity Initiative. The initiative, in turn, generated a districtwide plan to “establish a culture of respect, where equity and inclusion are highly valued, and where diversity is seen as an asset and not a liability.”
Fast forward more than four years to a successful program that has spread beyond Hart to other Los Angeles County districts. Formal recognition came when CSBA acknowledged the Hart District Diversity Initiative’s accomplishments with a Golden Bell award in the school safety category at its 2008 Annual Education Conference in San Diego.
“I don’t think we had a clear idea of what kind of program we were going to have” initially, Lee says now. “It was most important to show good faith to the community by having someone at the switch, at the district office, to respond to parent concerns, but also to ensure that their voices were being heard at the [school] sites. Some of our first activities included training staff about cultural proficiency, but we also realized that we needed to quickly reach out to students and begin helping them have meaningful conversations about topics like race, inclusion and an acceptance of diversity as a strength and not a liability.”
Roles for students, parents, teachers
The program consists of seven components: general recommendations; training; policies and procedures; student support; community involvement; personnel; and curriculum and instruction. As the district coordinator, Lee is responsible for identifying and designing activities that enable district personnel to better advance equity, inclusion, diversity awareness and appreciation.
Students, families and teachers all have a role to play in making the program work.
For students, two days of intensive training qualify them to take an active part in monitoring and correcting antisocial behavior through the Safe School Ambassadors program (see ”We’re Not Gonna Take It,” page 26).
“They learn to intervene in very specific types of misbehavior,” Lee says. “Students are trained by and practice with coordinators before going out to sites” to work with younger students.
“Typically, if you ask the students to step up, to set realistic parameters, they do their best to live up to your expectations.”
For parents, there are Action Team Partnerships, site-based groups that also include teachers and administrators who work to increase cooperative participation.
“The goal is to take family involvement beyond helping with bake sales and chaperoning at dances. It’s more about bringing families onto campuses by offering services and venues, such as Open Library Nights, Family Movie Nights, the Principal’s Tea, and academic refresher courses for parents, so they can help their kids with homework,” Lee says. “Some ATPs are also taking school services into the community, by holding meetings off campus and out at local venues like churches, community centers and homeowners association lounges.”
Lee praises teachers with working hard to achieve the program’s goals.
“Our student-awareness programs have all benefited from—and thrived—because of staff leadership,” he says. “When we began the Safe School Ambassadors program, we were paying the staff of SSA to train us and the students. But then we realized that we had the expertise and compassion among our own teachers to do our own training. We purchased the rights to the program and asked the company to come train our trainers. [SSA was] very supportive of us, and it has all worked out well.”
—Marsha Boutelle