Emphasizing its commitment to fighting racism in Lawrence Township Public Schools, several consultants have been hired by school district officials to review the district’s practices – from staff hiring to steps that it can take to ensure equity and diversity.
Superintendent of Schools Ross Kasun outlined the steps that the district is taking at the school board’s June 30 meeting. The district had adopted a resolution at its June 10 meeting that denounced racism and also pledged to identify inequities within the district.
“As I shared at the (June 10) school board meeting, we believe Black lives matter, Black students matter, Black educators matter and Black teens matter. We denounce racism and we are committed to fighting against it,” Kasun said as he unveiled the district’s course of action.
Consultant Kenneth King, who retired from the East Orange School District as its assistant superintendent for human resource services, has been retained to review the Lawrence school district’s hiring practices, Kasun said.
King will work with the district’s leadership team in August to strengthen the district’s hiring practices and systems, Kasun said.
The district also hired consultants Val Brown and Rebekah Anne Cordova to provide professional development workshops on racial and social justice, Kasun said.
Brown and Cordova will work with administrators this month and then return in August to work with the district’s teacher leaders and the administrative team. In September, they will return to work with all of the staff, he said.
“The goal is specific professional development regarding equity, diversity and promoting anti-racism. There is time for them to design professional development (seminars) before the start of the school year to deliver to every staff member before the kickoff of the new school year,” Kasun said.
Brown is the professional development manager and facilitator for Teaching Tolerance, which is a nonprofit group that is a project of the Southern Poverty Law Center. Her role primarily includes designing, facilitating and evaluating anti-bias professional development seminars for educators, Kasun said.
Cordova teaches at the University of Florida. She is the director of the All Y’all Social Justice Collective, which provides racial justice professional development for teachers in the southern United States.
Kasun said the district will create an equity team at each school. The district also has reached out to the United States Department of Justice’s Community Relations Service for help in planning a community event that “includes an offer and opportunity to listen, share and grow,” he said.
School district officials have made arrangements with Panorama Education to help the district conduct a “climate audit” of the students in the fall. The survey will serve as a benchmark, measuring the district’s strong points and weak points.
“(The survey) will give us a baseline of whether our efforts this year will improve feelings of equity, inclusion and anti-racism. We will update the district’s website to show our efforts to fight racism,” Kasun said.
The school board came under fire at the June 10 meeting from parents who took the board to task for the treatment of Black students. Some of the critics are themselves graduates of Lawrence High School.
One parent said that she – and now, her children – have been victims of systemic racism in the Lawrence school district. Her children faced favoritism on their sports teams, and they were persuaded to drop honors courses because guidance counselors thought the courses would be too challenging for them, she said.
Another parent said she was concerned about the lack of Black teachers in the district. Given the number of colleges and universities in New Jersey, she said she could not understand why it is so difficult to find Black teachers.
