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Returning to learning: Schools take action to improve equity

Black Lives Matter protests during the summer of 2020 pushed schools in central Ohio to make changes to address those issues among students and staff.

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Black Lives Matter protests during the summer of 2020 highlighted diversity, equity and inclusion issues. They pushed schools in central Ohio to make changes to address those issues among students and staff.

Since then, both Dublin City Schools and Columbus City Schools have hired a Director of Diversity. Pickerington City Schools launched a Citizens Advisory Committee to review programs and policies.

In her first year with the district, CCS Chief Equity Officer Dr. Dionne Blue said she conducted an audit on various departments to learn more about inequities within the district.

Moving forward in the 2021-2022 school year, she’s now working on taking surveys from families addressing issues they see. Dr. Blue said she expects that survey to go out in September, followed by focus groups and another survey in the spring for employees.

“We’re going to do a separate survey that is more of an employee satisfaction survey,” Dr. Blue said. “We also want to know what our culture and climate is like for adults because we want to be able to attract and retain great folks and we want to make sure that we're supporting them and that we're being equitable about how we support them.”

This summer Dr. Blue hired two others to help with her mission to diversify the district. She began working with an organization to create an equity dashboard.

“So that we can see based off our student population, how students are faring in terms of academics, in terms of their enrollment in gifted and talented programs, AP things like that,” Dr. Blue said.

While Dr. Blue works to create change on a district level, parents at an elementary school have already taken steps within their school to help with equity.

Bertha Obayuwana and Faye Derenoncourt co-founded Ecole Kenwood Elementary’s Racial Equity Parent Advocates or REPA. The group aims to educate parents on how to have conversations with each other and their children about differences like race.

“If we have those conversations and you have them with your children, that will help at least close that barrier that is between children of other cultures that are from here originally,” Derenoncourt said.

The group formed in 2019 and quickly grew to a group of 30 parents and teachers joining the cause. In the last year, meetings moved to a virtual space, and conversations about how to help families changed.

“The shift went from focusing on what conversations parents could have with their children to how could the parents be support systems in a digital era with a digital education for the teachers and for each other,” Obayuwana said.

Their solution was Caregivers Connectors. The women describe CCs as parents or caregivers who act as virtual support for teachers and parents in the classrooms.

With CCs heading back for full in-person learning, REPA is shifting its focus back to discussing issues of equity within the school.

“Reading books together, discussing books together, how to be more active and being bystanders, calling out racism in the classroom so that the onus is not on black and brown children to be the only one in the class who identifies the racism that's happening and have to speak for themselves,” Obayuwana said.

The group is now working on expanding its reach and setting up support systems for students who experience microaggressions at other schools.

Parents who are interested in discussing forming a group like REPA at their school can contact dearrepa@gmail.com for more information.

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