The Winooski city government has hired its first director of equity.
Yasamin Gordon will start her new job May 10, the city announced Thursday.
Gordon previously worked for the Champlain Valley School District as a lead diversity, equity and inclusion coach, and for Shelburne Community School as the planning room director.
Now, she’ll be reviewing local policies and connecting historically marginalized groups to resources and services in an effort to improve equity in Vermont’s most diverse city.
“My aim is to use the equity director position to ensure that every human within the Winooski community has what they need, to feel like they belong, and to know that their voice matters,” Gordon said in a statement.
Gordon will manage Winooski’s Working Communities Challenge grant, a $300,000 sum awarded to the city in November. Winooski was one of four Vermont communities to receive similarly sized grants last fall.
Establishing the equity director position was part of Winooski grant application, as approved by the City Council. The city also intends to establish an equity commission dedicated to “making sure diverse voices are included in community decision-making processes.”
“Winooski has the opportunity right now — and I think they’re already doing this — to really be leaders in this work throughout the state and to model what it can look like to be successful in creating more equitable systems,” Gordon said in an interview.
Gordon has 15 years of experience with the Champlain Valley School District, which will help her efforts to improve educational equity in Winooski, which has the state’s only BIPOC-majority school district.
A report issued last week by the Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission highlighted several troubling disparities, including in education, between white residents and Black, Indigenous and other people of color in the region. It found that just 14 percent of BIPOC third-graders scored proficient and above on the 2018 Smarter Balanced Language Arts Test, one of Vermont’s standardized tests, compared to 86% of white students.
Gordon said that examining data of this kind, as well as other data collected by the state to gauge student wellness, will play a central role in her work with Winooski schools.
“Our systems just might not meet the students and the families where they’re at, and that’s something that we need to really start to focus on a little bit more in order to start closing these gaps,” Gordon said.
Phoebe Townsend, Winooski’s human resource manager, said in an email that the city looks forward to “continuing our equity work as a citywide team with Yasamin’s guidance.”
“Having Yasamin’s expertise in a leadership team position that holds real power is critical to ensuring city processes and services are meeting the needs of all of our residents,” Townsend said.
Gordon likewise praised the groundwork laid by Winooski and the work to secure the Working Communities Challenge grant that enabled establishment of the equity director position.
“I’m extremely excited to work with [Townsend] and all the rest of the leadership team,” Gordon said. “They seem like they’re just full of really great people who are working hard to make sure that the community has what they need.”
