MONTAGUE — The application for the Gill-Montague Regional School District Equity Steering Committee is due Thursday.
This committee will begin with orientation sessions in May, followed by evening meetings once a month throughout the school year. The application must be completed and submitted by tomorrow, Thursday, April 18.
The committee will be a diverse group of 10 to 15 people, including students, staff, parents, administrators and other members of the school community who will work together to transform school culture and climate at Great Falls Middle School and Turners Falls High School.
Equity Consultants Safire DeJong and Keisha Green of the Collaborative for Educational Services, who will facilitate the group said they are “looking for a diverse array of stakeholders.”
The call for an equity steering committee emerged from civil rights-focused listening sessions DeJong and Green conducted at the secondary school this winter.
In their findings, they named a need for “parents/guardians to engage with the school and with other parents; for teachers to engage with their peers/other teachers, their students’ parents, and the community; and for students to engage with their peers and with teachers” and to work together to address the themes identified in the listening sessions.
For more about the themes and what the group will be doing, see the application and the document called “Civil Rights Forums Thematic Analysis” linked to this page: www.gmrsd.org/welcome-gmrsd/about-us/superintendents-corner.
Jen Audley, manager of the Gill-Montague Community School Partnership, is coordinating the launch of the GMRSD Equity Steering Committee. If you have questions or need assistance, please reach out to her by email: jen@gmpartnership.org or by calling 413-863-3604.
Audley came to the School Committee last week to talk about the Equity Steering Committee.
“Our goals are to make the group as diverse as it can possibly be, including an ample number of students and that’s able to do at least one weekend day of orientation in May. Safire and Keisha would like to have this group work together for 12 hours in May,” Audley said. “It’s important to at least find out who’s interested, and figure out if can we get a group that meets our goals for diversity. Then we’ll look at what they can do, what they need in order to participate and we’ll make it work.”
Audley said she wanted to make a point that every person in the school community feels welcome to apply for a position on the steering committee.
School Committee member Mike Langknecht said he hopes there is going to be strong communication from the steering committee.
“We as the School Committee, as a legislative body, are coming to grips with this whole thing,” Langknecht said. “If we were excluded as a body from (the committee), that would be a big piece missing from the whole. There has to be feedback, a strong loop so that we can support the action without dominating it, that’s not our role, and without being marginalized by it.”
As a potential solution, Audley suggested the School Committee could ask for a monthly report from the steering committee or including committee updates on the agenda.
She said she is optimistic about the group’s work moving forward.
“This group is going to be learning together, it’s going to be an interesting and powerful learning experience for this group of 10 people,” Audley said “I’m expecting also administrators and staff members are going to be changed by it and perhaps will be able to make things happen in the school that they wouldn’t imagine being able to change on their own.”
Reach Melina Bourdeau at mbourdeau@recorder.com or at 413-772-0261 ext. 263.