Improving Diversity and Addressing Racism & Biases in BCSC
Amy Allen 0

Improving Diversity and Addressing Racism & Biases in BCSC

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As concerned parents, community members, and educators we are coming together to petition the Brownsburg Community School Corporation to engage in a comprehensive effort to address racism, diversity and cultural sensitivity among its faculty, staff, students, testing, and curriculum.

We ask that you consider our proposal to Build Awareness, Increase Knowledge & Take Action. The following steps provide an example of concrete actions in each of these categories, though we recognize that through dialogue and awareness building it may become apparent that certain steps have already been begun and/or that additional steps may be necessary:

Build Awareness:

 Create an anti-racism task force to evaluate the current policies in place and develop a comprehensive plan to rollout anti-racism policies and curriculum in BCSC.

 Hire a diversity and inclusion director as a full-time employee that will work with the task-force, as well as on a continual basis, research new materials and opportunities for improvement.

 Create anti-racism policies for students and staff; implement training resources and educational materials. Update student handbook with said policies.

Increase Knowledge:

 Implement anti-racism training and implicit bias training for ALL staff and faculty members (administrators, teachers, cafeteria workers, bus drivers, certified staff, contractual staff, volunteers etc.) and consider a school led version of this training for regular classroom volunteers and others who come into contact with students on a regular basis.

 Require a minimum of one counselor in each school to go through ASCA’s Cultural Competency Specialist Training.

 Identify diversity issues as they occur within the community with transparency, including sharing how infractions are handled.

 Create an ethics committee composed of BCSC staff and parents to review such infractions that violate anti-racism policies.

 Add a monthly segment on the school board’s agenda reporting the school system’s progress in addressing our requests.

Take Action:

 Diversify staff to include more Black teachers and staff, as well as other teachers of color.

 Promote diversity via a more inclusive curriculum, educational materials, field trips, visual materials and events for both the schools and community. (International celebrations, workshops, more diverse books, art and music).

 Support and promote the black student union (Leaders of Tomorrow) at the high school level and create, support and promote a junior black student union at the middle school level, creating opportunities for mentorship between these groups.

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