Officials from the Monroe County Community School Corporation are engaging with the community on ways to improve equity and access for more students.
In the two-part series, MCCSC leaders discussed ways on Wednesday to prioritize inclusion, both through leadership and classroom curriculum.
Rafi Hasan is the corporation’s Equity and Inclusion Coordinator. He says since taking on the role he’s worked to bring a greater awareness to the complex issue.
“So much of my work has been focused on acknowledging the school corporation’s commitment and our work through our structure which is an equity team," says Hasan.
Hasan says he works alongside equity leadership teams and committees for each school to work toward defining and intersectionality and facilitate implicit bias trainings.
Parents had the chance to give feedback and ask questions about the corporation’s strengths and gaps in working toward their goals.
Topics ranged from recruitment of faculty and staff of color to discipline disparities among black and white students.
The talk also explored the importance of diverse representation in children’s literature. Presenters from Summit Elementary school discussed the corporations push to diversify their reading options with books where children see themselves and those different from them.
Hasan says this is one step teachers and parents can take to communicate messages of diversity and inclusion to their students.
"This commitment toward culturally responsive and sustaining practices through what you’re seeing thorough children’s literature is getting them more engages, is getting young people identifying themselves within literature," says Hasan.
MCCSC Superintendent Judy DeMuth says the corporation will be launching a pilot system for students to anonymously report incidents of bias and bullying online this spring.
