At Our Core: Presenting the FYI on DEI at DSST
Read about DSST’s Early Spring 2022 Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Journey
“Eliminating educational inequity and integrating schools” remains core to our mission at DSST. Essential to tackling these challenges is the internal work we do to sharpen our own equity lenses as we create more diverse, equitable and inclusive systems. In partnership with our staff, students and families, The Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) team remains dedicated to cultivating a school community that welcomes open discussion and self-reflection around these issues. This has been done in many ways, including the continuation of Affinity Groups and campus DEI Liaisons, and the launch of our Trans and NonBinary Youth Advocates. These partnerships have allowed us to reflect on where we have been, assess where we are as a network and revisit our goals for the future.
DEI Team Step Back
During the waning days of October, our DEI team began a series of Monthly Step Backs in order to think through and design a specific DEI Team Vision Statement and Mission Statement. Using a process from Cornell University, the DEI team spent hours combing over what the team’s future workstream should look like, our individual and team frustrations with our work and the present state. On Dec. 6, 2021, the DEI team landed on the following:
- DEI Service Team Vision: Center the Human Condition
- DEI Service Team Mission Statement: Foster a shared ownership and capacity to build inclusive communities and experiences among DSST staff, students and families that eliminate educational inequity.
North Star and Guiding Belief
- North Star: The DEI service team seeks to affirm staff, student and family experiences in the transformation of their world into a just and fair place.
- Guiding Belief: The universe is on a long arch of justice where the reconstruction of systems that shape our world rely on cultures of belonging, sustainability and authenticity in order to be fully anti-racist and anti-oppressive.
Therefore the DEI Service Team at DSST Public Schools’ mission is to foster shared ownership and capacity to build inclusive communities and experiences among DSST staff, students and families that eliminate educational inequity in fulfillment of our vision to center the Human Condition (Vision) in every aspect of our work.
DSST Diversity Equity and Inclusion execution
In the execution of this vision, mission and guiding belief, the DEI service team will ensure a continued DSST focus on our 8 Equity Paradigm Shifts and DSST’s Commitments to Becoming an Anti-Racist Organization as we seek to meet the expectations of the Black Excellence Resolution. To learn about how DSST is meeting the Black Excellence Resolution, click here: Black Excellence Resolution and DSST Public Schools.
DSST Commitment to Becoming an Anti-Racist Organization
This chart below represents a snapshot of how individual schools and Home Office departments are meeting the DSST commitment to becoming an Anti-Racist organization in a specified commitment area. To learn more about how your school, campus or Home Office department, reach out to your DEI liaison and leaders.
| Commitment |
Equity Paradigm Shift |
Network Examples |
| DSST commits to a collaborative partnership with minority and/or Black-owned businesses to cater and support network and school events. |
Equity is Core |
Home Office: Service teams and HO Sparkle Committee partner with Quebec St Restaurant, owned by Ralph for breakfast and lunch throughout the year, versus ordering from chain restaurants. The DEI team has partnered with Comal Family Heritage and Three Sisters for our half-day step-backs and during our Trans Youth Advocacy launch. Cole Campus has local food trucks at back-to-school night and other events, and also partners with parents who make and sell food every couple of weeks to teachers. |
| DSST commits to providing opportunities for safe space for students, families and staff as we work toward becoming an anti-racist organization. |
Space and Voice |
Byers Campus is working to make their community safe for all through a focus on trauma-informed care. Their Trans Youth Advocate team is working to build knowledge so that staff & students are able to make Byers a welcoming space for Trans/NonBinary community members. CV HS has focused its development on shifting staff culture to name and call in one another when microaggressions are happening across team members. Their goal is to build criticality and conscious awareness of how we address and disrupt interpersonal oppression to make our community inclusive Priorities
GVR HS has had multiple opportunities for students to come together and discuss pressing issues. The morning meetings also promote student engagement in identity and equity work. The staff has had multiple opportunities to engage in safe/brave spaces through their 10-part DEI/affinity group series this year. |
| DSST commits to relationship building through partnerships with the entire community to support the social, emotional, and wellness needs of staff, students and families. |
Identity |
CG MS uses the advisory program and morning meetings to provide proactive lessons on conflict resolution, kindness and empathy, in addition to restorative conversations to help resolve conflict among peers. This includes SEL learning groups with our social worker, and staff training and use of restorative practices to resolve conflict. The DEI training focuses on identity work and self-reflection. There are bi-monthly family communications to update students on progress, and professional development for staff on how to partner with families. Elevate HS is constantly looking to partner with community organizations and to give back to the community. So far this year, DSST: Elevate has attended and participated in 3 community events. Elevate has also partnered with a local organization, “Struggle of Love”, to provide a weekly music club that also focuses on students’ mental health. Elevate recently partnered with “The Righteous Project," which strives to provide financial literacy education to students for free. Elevate is actively participating and promoting the organization's fundraiser to our families. All funds go back to the organization to maintain the free programs. MTV HS is continuing the student unions they began several years ago. The school is setting youth input on policy, hiring & school culture. Through the youth voice efforts, MTV HS was one of 17 schools nationally (1 of 2 in Colorado), awarded the First Amendment Press Freedom Award for honoring free expression. |
| DSST commits to the active recruitment and retention of staff of color in the teaching and leadership pipelines. |
Equity is Core |
Talent Acquisition focused on teacher-of-color applications and building the apprentice teacher pipeline. They achieved their goal of sourcing over 300 applicants who identify as teachers of color. Their apprentice teacher goal was that 50% of our cohort will identify as BIPOC. Currently, they are at 3 hires, and 1/3 are BIPOC. Currently, our overall staff retention is at 91.2% while the staff of color retention is sitting at 88.6%. GVR MS develops communities of students and staff. In order to truly feel a sense of safety and belonging, they need to experience our school through the lens of both unity and affinity, and the two do not live in opposition. GVR garners different value from each one and a diverse community is able to authentically offer both:
|
| DSST commits to examining curriculum, instruction, and assessments for potential bias, oppressive frameworks, and reductionist reasoning. |
Equity Mindsets |
Humanities & Spanish has been doing significant work to rework its curriculum and assessments. They realized this must be paired with inner and mindset work for their new leadership team. The team has been doing the deep inner work necessary to heal historic harm and inspire the Humanities & Spanish team to move toward a vision that centers on equity. STEM revisited its curriculum and assessments to ensure inclusivity and dismantle oppressive classroom practices and looked at gender inclusivity in bio exams - bringing in training for teachers this March. They also created example units and lesson plans around current events and justice-themed phenomena to model for teachers and school leaders how to design a more inclusive curriculum. The STEM team is conducting Equity Audits - to check for equitable access to rigorous STEM programming. They created a dashboard that looks at students’ enrollment in STEM courses by demographic data to strategically identify gaps to address for next year’s programming and enrollment into these courses. They also did a data dive into AP course enrollment and test scores to check for gaps by demographic as well as students who qualify for special services. |
| DSST commits to identify and address any racial inequities and disparities across all data points. |
Equity is Core |
AST team’s efforts to really push themselves to have a DEI-lens role in each meeting, to examine school-wide instructional, cultural and staff data from a multitude of lenses, and to address some of the incidents that have come up with regard to hate speech and discriminatory remarks or actions head-on with students. A plan to progress in these areas is ongoing, and the frequency of data examination is the first place to start in terms of having a continuous pulse on the students’ data so that leadership can work to address disparities. Home Office Data Team, along with the Polaris team, makes sure that all data reporting includes demographic factors such as race/ethnicity, ELL status, SWD status and incoming proficiency (performance band). MTV MS has implemented an SEL development strand in their advisory, and they are working on revamping their discipline process to be more trauma-informed, which has worked to reduce their volume of punitive discipline despite still seeing gaps for students of color but the overall volume across the board has gone down drastically. |
| DSST commits to providing network and school-specific Diversity, Equity and Inclusion development and resources that include culturally responsive and relevant, anti-racism, and trauma informed care. |
Intentionally Inclusive Systems |
Noel MS began the year focused on Staff Identity work as multiple staff members were new to Noel and DSST as a whole. This was followed up with a session on Culturally Responsive and Relevance to mitigate deficit thinking. CG HS developed a deliberate focus on student-led development for faculty and staff to include the Black Student Alliance providing a session on Identity and Mental Health and up next, La Raza to share second language learner experiences across intersectional identity markers. Additional professional development has focused on developing culturally sustaining lessons and integrating a more diverse curriculum. CV MS is continuing its campus-based Affinity Groups and using these spaces to unpack the way race impacts school initiatives. They are also working with their culture team to disaggregate data and ensure intervention systems are used as a learning opportunity for both staff and youth. |
DEI Service Team Commitment and Journey
The work of the DEI Service Team remains committed to building on foundations that laid in partnership with the National Equity Project from 2016 to 2020, with the main goals of:
- Authentically embracing DEI work as a cornerstone for student success
- Understanding the importance of an equity mindset in our day to day work
- Building the opportunity to participate in spaces that allow for space and voice, particularly for non-dominant populations
- Ensuring that our commitment to integrated schools is more than just an enrollment policy - it is demonstrated in all of our core practices, processes and ultimate outcomes.
If you would like to get involved in DEI work at DSST, there are many avenues! You can join an Affinity Group, or contact Aaron Griffen, Ash Gelb or Mercedes Blea-Davis to initiate a specific program within your school community. There are also many DEI resources already available at your fingertips, including tons of articles, videos, books, websites and audio to help us learn and reflect on the many aspects of identity, diversity, equity and inclusion.
This work is never complete, and there is always something new to learn, so please feel free to connect with your DEI liaison on any ideas you may have. We are all experts in this work in our own unique way. The more we can reflect upon and discuss with each other our unique viewpoints, and listen to those of our colleagues, the closer we will get to growing our equity mindsets, making our schools an even more welcoming place for our vibrantly diverse team of students and staff and eliminating educational inequity.
Yours in the work,
Aaron, Ash and Mercedes
DSST DEI Service Team
