Equity Statement
The Burlington Area School District rejects all forms of racism, discrimination, and harassment of students, families, staff members, and/or visitors in school or within the community. Such behaviors will be treated as being destructive to the District's mission, vision, values, and goals. The District pledges and is committed to providing a physically and psychologically safe, secure, and respectful environment, free from discrimination and harassment on the basis of race, color, religion, and national origin.
The Burlington Area School District invites the community to attend a free, live presentation titled, Unconscious Bias: Can We See Our Own Blind Spots? Link for event details. All BASD staff attended the presentation by Nurturing Diversity Partners at the February Inservice. To share what we are learning and to offer a chance for our community to learn alongside us, the same presentation will be offered on Tuesday, March 2 from 6:00-8:30 p.m. Learn more and register.
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Support to Promote Racial Equity
BASD recognizes it needs the expertise of others in order to make effective change. We have found value in listening to others and engaging with diverse organizations to broaden our understanding. Here are some of the organizations that BASD is working with to create a more equitable school environment.
Payne and Frazier - Consultants based in Racine will provide Diversity Equity and Inclusion Training for staff. Two cohorts of 25 staff/board members interact in a five-part training series that includes group discussions, hands-on activities, videos, articles, assessments, and discussion.
National Equity Project (NEP) - Leading Equity Redesign Network (LERN)
LERN Network Goals:
- Learn about and make progress on equity-focused change efforts.
- Learn, apply, and reflect on the skills, mindsets, and tools necessary to guide leadership, team development, and professional learning.
- Review broad quantitative and qualitative data to identify and prioritize student-centered equity challenges in your system.
- Utilize the skills, mindsets, and modes to learn about equity challenges by listening to students and families, observing, conducting surveys, utilizing student feedback data, and reflecting with colleagues across districts and within the team.
- Partner with students and families to reimagine policies, practices, and ways of working to increase student belonging, engagement, and learning.
- Demonstrate learning and strategic leadership development to address equity challenges, while making measurable progress and documenting and sharing learning that contributed to improved outcomes.
- Training Modules (Diversity 101, Who Am I, Who Am I Serving, Working Through Cultural Disconnects, and Diversity and Inclusion by Design)
Learning for Justice - Fall 2020 in-service included conversations around equity.
Hours Against Hate - A program of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation
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The practice of identifying, challenging, and changing the values, structures, and behaviors that perpetuate systemic racism.
Pre-judgment, bias, or discrimination by an individual based on race. Individual racism includes both privately held beliefs, conscious and unconscious, and external behaviors and actions towards others.
Occurs within institutions and organizations, such as schools, that adopt and maintain policies, practices, and procedures that often unintentionally produce inequitable outcomes for people of color and advantages for white people.
Encompasses the history and current reality of institutional racism across all institutions and society. It refers to the history, culture, ideology, and interactions of institutions and policies that perpetuate a system of inequity that is detrimental to communities of color.
Unwanted aggressive behavior(s) by a Burlington Area School District student or group of students, which involves an observed or perceived power imbalance and may be repeated multiple times or is highly likely to be repeated and includes, but is not limited to activities, actions or attempted acts, speech and / or threats intended to cause physical injury, emotional suffering or property damage through intimidation, hazing, harassment, stress, bigoted epithets and / or vandalism. The behavior may be motivated by an actual or perceived distinguishing characteristic, such as, but not limited to: age, sex, ancestry, creed, pregnancy, marital status, parental status, race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, physical attributes, appearance, physical or mental ability or disability, and social, economic or family status.
Prejudice in favor of or against one thing, person, or group compared with another, usually in a way considered to be unfair.
A statement, action, or incident regarded as an instance of indirect, subtle, or unintentional discrimination against members of a marginalized group such as a racial or ethnic minority.
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