The Burlington School District admits that its latest annual equity report is more like a “disparities report.”
While the district has made progress in some areas of equity — based on a list of six goals established last summer — disparities persist. While there was some improvement in adopting restorative practices and increasing math course completion rates, there were also widening learning gaps — specifically for marginalized students — likely exacerbated by the pandemic.
“We weren’t going to meet all of the goals. That was not the intent,” said Sparks, the district’s equity director who uses only that name. “The intent was to really highlight and to really put out in a very public way some of the disparities and some of the inequities that we need to address as a system,” he told VTDigger in an interview Wednesday.
The report’s findings were also affected by the loss of the high school building, which was closed in the fall after unsafe levels of carcinogenic chemicals were found in the building and its grounds. In March, BHS found a home in the former Macy’s department store on Church Street, which the district had converted into a temporary high school for the next three years. In the meantime, Burlington needs to find a new location for the high school and then build it.
The equity report shows a big achievement gap between students of color and white students for the 2019-20 school year.
According to the report, published this week, students of color make up 41% of the high school enrollment but only 20% of the students in advanced placement classes. More than half of AP classes in the high school have fewer than three students of color.
Honors classes have similar disparities. Students of color make up only 19% of students in those courses.
While suspensions decreased considerably in the 2020-21 academic year because students have been learning remotely, the suspension rate for African American students had increased in 2019-20. Students who receive free and reduced lunch and those on individualized learning programs have also been suspended at a disproportionate rate.
In 2018-19, African American students made up 16% of the enrollment but accounted for 19% of suspensions. In 2019-20, African American students made up 15% of the enrollment and accounted for 25% of suspensions.
The report also includes anonymous, anecdotal perceptions from students about the diversity within Burlington High. One student wrote that, while BHS is one of the most diverse schools in the state, students often don’t interact.
“I find that in many of my classes, there are little to no people of color sitting beside me,” the student said. “I see many BIPOC students walking through the halls but I seldom get the chance to know them and hear their perspective in the classroom.”
Data also shows that some of the district’s schools still aren’t meeting the goal that all third-graders perform at or above grade level in math and reading. Students who are not at grade level by third grade are more likely to struggle academically in the years ahead, according to the report.
CP Smith Elementary School had the greatest decline in the reading goal for third-graders from 2018-19 to 2019-20. The year prior, 91% of Smith students met the goal. This past academic year, 70% of students were at or above proficiency in reading.
But other schools, including the Sustainability Academy, increased their proficiency in reading during a year shaken partially by the pandemic. In 2018-19, 60% of students were proficient in reading. In 2019-20, 77% were proficient.
The report also found that students who qualify for free and reduced-price lunch are continuing to fall behind their peers in reading and math proficiency.
Only 30% of students who qualify for free and reduced-price lunch in grade three were proficient in reading in 2019-20, compared to 70% of their peers. In math, 49% who qualify for free and reduced-price lunch were proficient, compared to 78% of their peers.
The report primarily includes data on learning outcomes for a school year only partially affected by the pandemic in 2019-20. Instruction was interrupted in March 2020, which affected about three months of school. But the district did gather some data on learning outcomes for 2020-21 in its middle schools, which showed more of a regression.
In the 2019-20 academic year, both Burlington middle schools displayed about 93% proficiency in math. In the 2020-21 academic year, proficiency dropped to 78% at Edmunds Middle School and to 73% at Hunt Middle School.
Burlington Superintendent Tom Flanagan said the district is seeing the impact of the pandemic in its academic performance data. He said the drop at the middle school level might be caused by a lack of in-person learning. Elementary students were able to return to classroom learning much sooner than middle schoolers, who had to adhere to stricter social-distancing guidelines.
In its rebound from the pandemic, Flanagan said, the district isn’t going to be as concerned about going back to curriculum that was already covered — a strategy that he said studies have shown won’t work as well for students coming out of the pandemic.
“We really need to think about … bringing students back and providing them really good grade-level instruction,” Flanagan said. “And their brains are elastic, right, so they are going to catch up if we have that expectation for them.”
The district is meeting its goal in increasing the number of students who complete Algebra II — a course that is seen as a prerequisite for college. In 2018-19, 57% completed the course; in 2019-20, 59% completed the course.
The district is falling short of its goal to create a faculty and staff that reflects the diversity of the student body. About 6% of teachers identify as BIPOC in the district — up from 4% last year — while 40% of students identify as BIPOC.
Sparks said his newly formed Equity Office will draft recommendations for Flanagan on how the district can interrupt the disparate data trends. He said Burlington schools will also offer summer courses to help address learning disparities among marginalized students.
He said he also wants to eradicate the practices of school suspensions and offer more restorative options for students. The district has received a $140,000 grant from the state Department for Children and Families over two years to aid this work.
The district has also taken steps this school year to address opportunity gaps for marginalized students, such as training administrators in racialized trauma and creating the Equity Webinar series for members of the Burlington school community.
Flanagan said the district also needs to focus on regaining community after a year that has been traumatizing for many.
“Making sure that students feel safe and valued and that they belong, that’s important for all of our students,” Flanagan said. “But in a white supremacy culture, which is the culture we live in, it’s more important that we do that for our BIPOC students.”
Clarification: This story was updated to indicate that the school district’s equity director goes by only the name Sparks.
