People who gave input in the search for a new Barrington Area Unit District 220 superintendent want someone who can tackle the aftermath of COVID-19 as well as equity, diversity and inclusion.
Those were major themes from 14 focus groups attended by 89 stakeholders — school board members, staff members, students, parents, and community and business leaders — and an online questionnaire answered by 838 people, consultants from School Exec Connect told the school board Tuesday night.
School Exec Connect was hired to search for a replacement for Superintendent Brian Harris, who’s “retiring” June 30. The board will have a first round of interviews with candidates in closed session Dec. 1, followed by second-round interviews later in December.
The next superintendent will have to deal with how to move forward from COVID-19, Shimp said. “Every focus group talked about it. What does post-COVID look like in Barrington? What is the learning loss? What’s the morale? What’s the climate?”
The district this year hired Nate Rouse as its first director of equity, race and cultural diversity initiatives. The school board on Tuesday approved an equity statement that will support its plans to create a more equitable and inclusive school system.
According to the feedback, the district’s top educational challenge is understanding and support of diversity, followed by having instructional methods that engage all students and closing the achievement gap among subgroups of students.
Read more here.
Editorial note: We’d have thought “the district’s top educational challenge” would be getting all 220 students back to the educational levels they would have been at were it not for current circumstances, but that’s just us.
Equity more Equitable education opportunities? What does that mean?
We weren’t “equitable” over all these prior years? Who decided we needed a “diversity counselor”. What the hell kind of gobbledygook title is that?
What are we paying this person for and how much? Have there been race riots in Barrington school system that I have been unaware of over the past 20 years?
Are these people serious? I hope that a new board of education gets elected and throws all these clowns out on their asses. Whoever made these moronic decisions should be thrown out at the same time to make sure their dismissals were “equitable”.
Good grief.
Guessing you have not noticed the different scores of sunny hill students or learned about that struggles of minority groups in the school district? The fact that a problem doesn’t affect you doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
Are you saying that the school district has done something to cause the scores of sunny hill students to be “different” as you say? What exactly? Please elaborate how the school district has caused this discrepancy in scores.