Assessement of Burlington School District's Diversity Recruitment Efforts is Made Public

Stacey Miller and Dennis DePaul of the Consortium for Inclusion and Equity (CIE) were engaged by the District to assess and advise on teacher recruitments to help the District make progress in implementing its diversity policy. Click here to see the full report.

CIE presented their report at a recent Policy and Advocacy Committee meeting.

The report identifies the District's Equity Council as a useful tool to promote diversity hiring. The authors recommend that the Equity Council take over screening candidates from the Human Resources office. The report also underscores the need for all participants in the process to have cultural competency in order to be able to guide this process.

The role of the consulting firm Tri-Focal was discussed at the meeting, and community members noted that the District must integrate diversity goals into ALL of its decisions and hiring. This implies that any consultants hired by the District (as well as all other hires) be both culturally competent and committed to the District’s diversity goals.

Deep concerns were raised in the report and by community members about the lack of diversity knowledge and skills of Tri-Focal , which had been been engaged by the superintendent to guide principal searches at CP Smith, Hunt, and the Integrated Arts Academy.