School board split on proposed equity policy revisions

Vote on May 23

BY MCKENNA HARFORD MHARFORD@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM

e Douglas County school board will vote on changes to the equity policy at the May 23 meeting following a tense work session where revisions were made and discussed.

JUN-JUL 23-16

2:00 & 7:30 PM

Pace Center

BUY

School board members spent almost two hours on May 8 going over changes largely suggested by members Mike Peterson and Christy Williams.

Peterson, president of the board, previously drafted modi cations to the policy that would expand the de nition of diversity, add metrics for success and allow the superintendent to seek resources beyond the Equity Advisory Council to implement the policy.

During the workshop, Peterson reiterated that his goals with the revisions are to clear up ambiguity, de ne educational equity in Douglas County and provide speci c goals.

“I tried to make it easy to get right and di cult or impossible to get wrong,” Peterson said.

Board members Elizabeth Hanson, Susan Meek and David Ray echoed past comments about not wanting to change the policy and repeated concerns about making changes to it without the input of those who created it and district experts, such as the director of equity.

“When I initially voted for this policy, it was absolutely about a culture within our district and I feel like a lot of the changes that have been made narrowed that focus more to addressing access and access is something that’s required by law,” Hanson said. “I feel like narrowing it waters down what my initial hopes for the policy were.”

Ray added that he thinks trying to edit the policy so that no one can misinterpret it is a lost cause.

However, other board members insisted change is needed to address ambiguity and make the whole community feel included. Peterson said the group of experts who wrote the original policy “lacked diversity.” e three said it minimized the importance of identity and the seriousness of discrimination.

When discussing speci c policy suggestions, Hanson, Meek and Ray had the biggest concerns with expanding the de nition of diversity to include personality, thought and instrumental diversity on top of identity diversity.

“For us to dilute that and say there’s all di erent kinds of diversity, for me, just takes away the impact of what this policy was intended to do,” Ray said. “ e intent of the policy is to deal with the illness in our system, which is that we have people who are being marginalized and we have to be intentional about to make sure that goes away.”

Peterson, who posed the change, said it didn’t diminish identity, but built on it. He said he took the de nitions from books written by Scott Page, such as “ e Diversity Bonus,” and other business industry practices.

“If we respect (other kinds of) diversity, of course we can continue to respect diversity of identity,” Peterson said.

Board member Becky Myers agreed with Peterson, saying she liked the expanded diversity de nition because she feels like students will be able to identify with it better.

“It gives them all of the kinds of diversity that they could be thinking about or relate too,” she said.

Williams also suggested multiple additions and changes.

One revision subs language in the rst paragraph about the district implementing an “unbiased, culturally relevant, responsive, and sustaining learning environment” with “empowered learning environment.”

“I just think putting empowered e morning of the election, the district sent out a blast email to a majority of the impacted residents, left voicemails for speci c groups of customers and spoke with the Lincoln Creek Village HOA, according to Redd.

On April 11, noti cations from the district were posted to LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Nextdoor notifying customers ballots were in the mail.

Once the district became aware of the issue, Redd said they did the best they could to get information out to the public. e district posted an important notice to Lincoln Creek Village on the district website on May 1.

Special districts follow the Colorado Local Government Election Code, according to Joe McConnell, a local government elections and nancial analyst for the Colorado Department of Local A airs.

Nonpartisan elections not coordinated by county clerks and recorders, according to code 1-13.5-102.