A first-time equity audit of the Champlain Valley School District indicates that students of color disproportionately have negative experiences and poorer educational outcomes compared to their white peers.
Experts contracted by the district presented an overview of the findings at last week’s school board meeting after surveying faculty, staff, students and families.
Despite the district’s recent focus on improving school culture, the Boston-based consultants from Mass Insight Education and Research Inc. wrote in the report that “there continues to be concerns from students, staff, and families around campus inclusivity.”
The audit found that historically marginalized students in the district had graduation rates of 82.6% in 2019 and 86.6% in 2021, compared to 97.2% and 98.3%, respectively, for all other students.
Data indicates students from marginalized groups disproportionately experience or witness acts of racism, bullying and other forms of discrimination in school. For instance, 60% of Black or African American students, 50% of American or Alaskan Native students, 48% of Asian students and 44% of Hispanic/Latino students experienced or witnessed acts of racism or other forms of discrimination at school, compared to 35% of white students.
The findings “make it very clear that there is work needed in CVSD to close opportunity gaps and create a more welcoming and inclusive community,” said Angela Arsenault, chair of the district’s school board. “I hope that our entire community will view the findings of the audit as a call to action.”
The audit also found that district leaders sometimes use data to inform decisions but it is rarely disaggregated to address equity, preventing them from examining trends in disciplinary referrals and outcomes.
Asma Ali Abunaib joined the district in June as the new director of DEI — short for diversity, equity and inclusion. She said an equity audit is good grounding for a district that has accepted that changes need to happen. Diversity is a process, she said, and the biggest challenge is finding the resources to teach diversity in a largely white state.
The challenge, she said, will be “to think about diversity and to work on inclusivity although they don’t see that diversity in front of their eyes.”
• Build a shared understanding of and investment in the district’s vision for equity in order to build a vision and theory of action for equity within the district.
• Conduct a review of the district’s existing data governance in order to inform both the strategic planning process and the district’s strategic priorities related to data governance.
• Prioritize the operationalization of internal district functions to effectively meet the needs of schools, students and the CVSD strategic priorities.
• Prioritize ongoing stakeholder engagement opportunities as monitoring, assessment, and accountability structures aligned with the identified strategic objectives and priorities.
Abunaib said she is already discussing the recommendations of the report with six other colleagues, looking at how it can serve as a blueprint for the schools.
Superintendent Rene Sanchez said the audit will help identify where the district should be investing money to address equity issues.
“Students really want us to make sure that we’re meeting them where they are,” he said. “But also making sure that everybody is working towards realizing that DEI work is schoolwork, that DEI is embedded in curriculum, in instruction, in budgeting, in purchasing, in policies and practices.”
Sanchez was hired in July 2021, six months after the school district created its first equity policy. The district’s focus on equity follows struggles to retain DEI staff and a student-led effort to raise Black Lives Matter flags.
Equity assessors last week acknowledged that students have been the driving force being the district’s recent efforts around diversity, equity and inclusion; faculty and administrators echoed that.
Such student activism at the Champlain Valley Union High School in Hinesburg — the most diverse of the district’s six schools — began with the raising of the Black Lives Matter flag in 2019, said Christina Deeley, a teacher, librarian and DEI coordinator at the high school. The Racial Alliance Committee, one of many subgroups within the Student Justice Alliance formed by students in 2021, has led the push for diversity and equity work.
CVU students also organized the first districtwide Pride event in 2021 after hate incidents were reported at Hinesburg Community School.
“In my opinion the students are successful in these actions because they care and are invested in social justice/equity, and because they have support from dedicated faculty members who support them in achieving their goals,” Deeley said.
CVU has made some strides by adding culturally appropriate curricula — a need articulated in Mass Insight’s equity audit. For example, Deeley is teaching a new course called Black America and librarian Peter Langella is teaching one called Social Justice Think Tank.
Deeley said her takeaway from the equity report presentation was that the district needs to fix the data reporting gaps and address the graduation rate discrepancies. She also noted the audit “did not investigate or provide info about in-district inequities that exist between the elementary schools.”
The school board approved a $67,950 contract with Mass Insight Education and Research Inc. last November. Experts from the national nonprofit have been working since January to analyze the district’s systems and data with the goal of implementing policies to help all students, particularly those who have been systematically marginalized.
The full equity report is due to be released this week. District leaders said it comes at a key time as the district kicked off a strategic planning process in August.
“We have a real opportunity to incorporate the things we’ve learned through the audit into our co-created plan for the next five years,” Arsenault said.
The district will hold the first of three diversity, equity and inclusion virtual Town Halls to discuss the results of the equity audit on Oct. 12 at 6:30 p.m.