OUR Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Plan

After an in-depth equity audit, we identified key ways that our organization can do better to instill diversity, equity, and inclusion within our programs and team culture.

 Meet the 2023-2024 Taskforce

FROM THE TASK FORCE:

Why This Matters

Pillar 1 | Pillar 2 | Pillar 3 | Pillar 4 BACK TO TOP

Our number one role as an anti-racist and anti-discriminatory organization is to deliver an excellent program that supports the best health, academic, and social-emotional outcomes for our students and their families. To do that, we need to be able to understand how our academic program is supporting growth and learning for students with diverse backgrounds and needs. By improving how we collect and analyze our data and developing a more comprehensive instructional framework, we will be better able to track student growth and address achievement gaps.

priority 1

Make it easier to quickly uncover and address potential achievement gaps to ensure our school program is equitably supporting student growth across race, language, family income level, and special education needs.

Why This is An Equity Issue

Right now, there is a lack of year over year continuity in how we collect, analyze and present our program outcome data. Further, though we have started to analyze data with indicators like whether or not English is a student’s first language, and whether or not a student has an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) in mind, there is still room to improve our current system for collecting and analyzing our data by student demographics. We value data-driven instruction, and it is important to have a full picture of our program data, including potential achievement gaps, to ensure that we're equitably focusing our instruction and interventions in the areas that need it most.

Next Steps

We plan to take a closer look at the student data by subgroup, implement a system to manage the data, analyze the data, create structures and tools to communicate the data to stakeholders, and work with school program staff to take appropriate actions to address achievement gaps at the school, class, and individuals levels.

PRIORITY 2

Develop a stable instructional framework and decision making policy that defines our academic and soul program and names how changes may be made, including opportunities to lift teacher voice and expertise.

Why This is An Equity Issue

As a new school, we value the ability to be nimble, innovative, and iterative; since we first opened, we have learned a lot and, accordingly, made changes to our academic curriculum and assessment tools to respond to those learnings. However, along the way, we did not pause to outline a clear decision-making process for curriculum and assessment changes, nor did we turn our learnings into a fully developed instructional framework for our academic and SOUL (social-emotional learning) programs. This has contributed to instability in student achievement. 

In addition, because of the frequent adjustments to our instructional framework, teachers are being asked to invest their limited time and energy in learning new tools, which takes away from supporting individual student needs. 

Next Steps

We plan to build a more comprehensive academic instructional framework for both academics and SOUL and develop a new decision-making policy, one that re-centers teachers as the experts who should be driving decisions on our instructional framework. Our near-term goal is to make sure teachers and program staff are prepared to teach our academic and SOUL (social-emotional) instructional framework, and that they are supported in adapting the framework to achieve positive student outcomes. By 2031, our goal is to be known for our exemplary school model for both our academic and SOUL (social-emotional) outcomes.

Pillar 1 | Pillar 2 | Pillar 3 | Pillar 4 BACK TO TOP

It’s not enough to uphold anti-racist and anti-discriminatory values in our program; the same must apply within our team culture. While we are building from real strengths, we recognize that there is more that we need to do to live out our diversity, equity, and inclusion commitments internally, starting with more equitable performance evaluation practices, career advancement opportunities, and role clarity, especially for employees who identify as people of color and/or come from the communities we serve.

Priority 1

Provide more clarity on non-instructional staff roles and responsibilities to support equitable opportunities for promotions, professional development, and a clearer understanding of success.

Why This is An Equity Issue

Feedback from staff focus groups and responses from our organizational health survey (which collects input from staff on what it’s like to work at The Primary School, including satisfaction with workload and role expectations) underscored the need to make sure non-instructional staff have a clearer understanding of the scope of their roles. Unclear roles and responsibilities can perpetuate white supremacy culture characteristics, like negotiating a raise, something that is valued by white dominant spaces, and often, only acceptable for white people (particularly men) to participate in.

Lack of clarity essentially puts the burden on staff — instead of management — to navigate the unspoken rules of an organization, disproportionately impacting staff with lower socioeconomic or non-traditional professional backgrounds. This leads to unequal access to promotions, compensation, and professional development opportunities. 

Next Steps

We plan to revisit our performance evaluation system for all employees over the next three years to ensure that all staff have clear roles and responsibilities as set through individual annual goals; create a more equitable performance evaluation rubric that articulates core competencies and benchmarks for success by level; and invest in equitable management practices that support team members to have formal touch points that match workload to individual goals and identified roles and responsibilities. 

Priority 2

Create more equitable pathways for career advancement.

Why This is An Equity Issue

Our equity audit highlighted an opportunity to intentionally focus on and build more equitable career advancement pathways to increase retention and see more leaders of color advance to the highest levels of our organization. We believe career advancement is individual and context specific, and might include title changes, compensation, access to learning opportunities and coaching, deep expertise in areas of our work, and increased decision-making power. Without a clear multi-year talent map forecast and succession planning processes, it is difficult to equitably support the development of staff toward their professional goals. 

This lack of transparency has contributed to inequities among staff with different racial, socio-economic, and educational backgrounds. Staff with more privilege and power do not need to invest as much energy and effort in attaining the same career positions, education levels, citizenship status, or promotions as staff from backgrounds and experiences that historically have less privilege and power. 

Next Steps

We plan to take several steps to ensure BIPOC staff are equitably supported in career advancement, including beefing up talent mapping processes with multi-year projections of the roles we will need for achieving our mission and vision; investing in robust succession planning processes that prioritize a diverse slate of high-performing staff; emphasizing career development and learning for all staff in our performance management plans so more staff have the opportunity to advance; and re-evaluating our compensation strategy, including how we award cost-of-living adjustments so they are equitably distributed (instead of a percentage increase to salaries).

Pillar 1 | Pillar 2 | Pillar 3 | Pillar 4 BACK TO TOP

As a new school, we have focused on supporting our students, parents, and staff in East Palo Alto and the East Bay. However, living out a true commitment to dismantling structural racism means taking action beyond our core school communities. While there are restrictions on how much of an active role we can take in advocacy given our 501(c)3 status, we can start by making sure we partner with local, state, and national organizations that share our values and that steadfastly and uncompromisingly work toward building a more just and equitable world for children and their families.

Priority 1

Develop a tool that better assesses and measures our partners’ focus on equity. 

Why This Is an Equity Issue

We are proud to have a number of partnerships at the community, regional, and national levels. Partners provide innovative, direct service programming for our students and families; work closely with us to design new programs that can be shared with more students and families; and help us learn about, adapt to, and share best practices in the field. 

Historically, partnerships have been cultivated and managed by different staff across the organization, and there has not been a common process for vetting and evaluating partners to make sure they align with our values. Without a formal evaluation process, we risk partnering with organizations that do not place an explicit emphasis on diversity, equity, and inclusion; it also means that we could be missing the perspectives of key stakeholders.

Next Steps

Our goal is to create an organization-wide partnership selection and continuous assessment tool so we are regularly evaluating whether or not current and prospective partners uphold our antiracist values.

Pillar 1 | Pillar 2 | Pillar 3 | Pillar 4 | BACK TO TOP

DEI work requires a long-term, ongoing commitment, and it’s important that we have structures in place to hold us accountable to our priorities and action (or inaction). This starts at the top. We need to expand opportunities for parents and community members to be at the table when we are making strategic decisions and evaluating our progress.

Priority 1

Increase transparency, representation, and inclusion at the board level.

Why This is an Equity Issue

Our Boards of Directors have played a critical role in launching The Primary School, from providing strategic oversight, to investing philanthropic support, to sharing valuable insights for launching schools and navigating the complexities of the health care system. However, most individual members of our board do not bring a deep and long standing personal connection to the communities we serve. This comes with inherent limitations and underrepresentation of the voices, interests, and talents of our local communities. 

To date, we have not been transparent enough about who sits on our board, what roles they play, or how they make decisions. We have relied heavily on staff responsible for corresponding with the board (primarily staff leadership) to make these decisions with little to no direct input from other stakeholders. This is an equity concern given the blind spots staff leadership bring to these decisions, especially since the majority of those leaders do not represent the communities we serve.  

Next Steps

By 2024, our goal is to be led by parent and community perspective on our East Palo Alto board (and any future local board supporting our East Bay program). Individuals with roots or deep experience with each community will represent a majority of board seats, and board practices will align with written agreements that foster an inclusive space. We will implement explicit processes for board member nomination and selection, which includes parent voice; a formal board education process, including onboarding and direct learning opportunities with our students, families, and community stakeholders; and a formal process to publish notice of upcoming board meetings and agenda topics and share out information following board meetings.

Priority 2

Strengthen pathways for parent advocacy, engagement, and decision-making power.

Why This is an Equity Issue

When we started The Primary School in East Palo Alto, we were grateful to work very closely with volunteer parents on our Parent Advisory Group to co-design a program that would fit their needs and the needs of other families in the East Palo Alto community. However, as we grew the site, we did not invest enough time or resources in making sure there were consistent structures in place to elevate parent voice. As a result, we had drifted away from designing with parents to designing for parents, which we know must be changed.  As we launch our East Bay site, we have an opportunity and desire to intentionally elevate parent voice from the beginning and will work with the East Palo Alto site to unite and align our family partnership and engagement work

Too often, decisions are being made for the benefit of students and families without authentic input and buy-in from parents. This has led to strategic holes, misalignment, and missteps causing - understandably - families to lose trust in what we do. It is crucial that we make space to authentically share power with our community of families, which will reduce our own blindspots and avoid the unintended consequences of uninformed decisions. 

Next Steps

By 2024, our goal is to have an established framework for family engagement, grounded in families’ voices and led by them through a design process. They will have representation on our site-based Boards of Directors. This framework will articulate the types of decisions families must be invited to make and clarify how we will hold ourselves accountable to those structures. In launching our East Bay site, we have an opportunity and desire to intentionally elevate parent voice from the beginning. We look forward to taking the next steps in that process at our preschool in the East Bay.

Looking Ahead

It’s not enough to just say what we believe. This plan does not encompass all of the ways that diversity, equity, and inclusion are embedded across the organization, nor does it encompass all of the ways that we can improve. Rather, the priorities outlined above are the ambitious but achievable actions that we are determined to make real and tangible progress on, starting this year. That comes with dedicated and long-term investments of capacity, space, and financial resources into this work, something that we’ve already carved out for the coming year (2021-2022) and that will inform the development of our 2023-2025 strategic plan. 

We know that justice work is not a straight or narrow path. We will probably take some steps forward and some steps back, while regularly monitoring and evaluating our progress, revising strategies as needed, and being transparent about what we’re doing well and what ended up being harder to address than initially expected.