Equity, Diversity and Inclusion
Clover Park School District is committed to creating and fostering learning environments that support student achievement and empowerment through equity, diversity and inclusion.
Clover Park Shares District Equity Journey With State Leaders
School Board President Marty Schafer, Superintendent Ron Banner and Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Program Manager Grant Twyman shared the district’s equity journey with school board directors and school district administrators across the state on Thursday, Nov. 19. Important components of this work include having a growth mindset, ensuring efforts are strategically aligned and school boards champion equity.
“Essential in our pursuit of a district that is truly equitable is a need for us to foster true and genuine community. I emphatically hold that we need equity and we need community.” - Board of Directors President Dr. Marty Schafer.
“Our district is on an equity journey. My expectation is that everybody enter the journey and grow in their mindsets, practices, and policies to be more equitable, inclusive, and just.” - Superintendent Ron Banner.
“Clover Park School District launched our district wide equity journey with students as the central component and catalyst igniting organizational transformation. Students are our key constituent critical to ensuring our equity work is strategic and sustainable. Our asset-based approach implies we do not see students as the problem, but it demands we partner with our students, community members, and district staff as collaborative partners fostering true equity and true community.” - Equity and Inclusion Program Manager Grant Twyman.
EQUITY
As part of the district’s focus on equity, we discuss equity in terms of:
- Inquiring, affirming, and meeting diverse needs
- Identifying and removing barriers to equity that exist operationally and systemically
- Maintaining high standards, rigor and expectations
- A commitment to discover what works and for whom
INCLUSION
Inclusion is a result of equitable and inclusive practices: staff, students, families, and community members feeling seen, heard, welcomed, respected, valued, celebrated, and honored.
In our pursuit of inclusion, it is essential that we foster environments for our diverse stakeholders (students, staff, families, community members) to define “seen, heard, welcomed, respected, valued, celebrated, and honored.”
DIVERSITY
In the Clover Park School District, we define diversity broadly and see it as an overarching term encompassing the many identities of our stakeholders: race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, language, family background, body size, age, religion, and more.
We believe it is not enough to celebrate our diversities, but to fully embrace diversity by ensuring the diversity of our students are reflected in our hiring practices, curriculum, classroom environment, and leadership team.
STRATEGIC EQUITY WORK | EQUITY IN ACTION
District
District equity work is enabled specifically from the vision of the superintendent with full support of the Board of Directors to ensure equity permeates our policies, procedures and practice. Our efforts have resulted in intentional steps forward on our equity journey in every department through professional development and specific equity audits of systems and operations.
School Staff
School staff participate in professional development with an equity focus to ensure they are equipped to support the diverse needs of our students while maintaining high standards and high expectations. Administrators, teachers, paraeducators and secretaries have all participated in a progressive approach to working through the Deep Equity process.
Students
The work we are doing with students has been a monumental step in our district’s pursuit of equity. Our aim is to elevate student voice by facilitating multiple opportunities for students to share insight, perspective and feedback to administrators and staff. Subsequently, our goal is to empower student voice by collaborating with students on ways to reshape our practices, policies, procedures, teaching style and curriculum to foster a district community for each person to flourish.
Families & Community
Our equity and inclusion efforts with our families and communities has resulted in an exponential increase in new partnerships, reinvigorated relationships across our community and enhanced avenues of family support. We are learning that true equity is fostered within the context of genuine community. Our efforts to be equitable has resulted in community-wide collaboration that will ensure our students can succeed and contribute to their communities.
We emphasize our equity work is a journey, and we have not arrived at our end state. We know there are many barriers for our historically marginalized students and there are still inequities in our system. We affirm with great confidence that we are making progress. To achieve student success across the many diverse identities and backgrounds of our students, equity must be the core of everything that we do.