Burlington Schools Posts Position Focused on Equity in Achievement

After a year and a half without a Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), Burlington Public Schools has posted a new DEI role for the 2024-25 school year. Many community members, though, feel excluded from the district’s approach to developing and posting this new role.

The job, titled Lead Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Instructional Coach, appears at first glance to be a school-level position based out of the high school. You might remember that funding for the original role, Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, was approved by Town Meeting in September of 2020. This came after a long process spearheaded by the district’s Equity Committee, a group of School Committee members, parents, BPS educators, and students that saw a need for greater cultural competency in our schools. (See the backup presented to Town Meeting, including an Action Plan created by the District Equity Committee.)

The argument in favor of the position was bolstered by students, who told stories of hearing racist slurs at school and during sports games, as well as Select Board Member Mike Espejo, who stated in a letter to the editor at Patch, “Nothing has changed since I was in school here; nothing will change here unless we take swift and decisive action.”

Following the Town Meeting approval, the job description was crafted based on input from professionals in other municipalities, said Town Meeting Member, Schiffon Wong, who was involved in the process from the beginning. The committee intentionally leveraged the expertise of DEI practitioners and the needs established by the Equity Committee, Wong says. The hiring committee, likewise, was diverse and inclusive of many different stakeholders in the community.

Long-time educator, Mr. Ray Porch, began his tenure as DEI Director in the fall of 2021, and he stayed with the district for a year. During that time, the district held regular conversations with community members in an effort to better understand each other, supported student engagement, and commissioned an equity audit from BlackPrint Education Consulting, a state-approved contractor that has worked successfully with several nearby school districts.

Prior to Porch’s departure, Memorial Elementary School’s interim principal, Tara Harris, left the district; in her farewell email to the school community, she cited race as a factor in her departure. Read more about the community response here

The school district, then, was left without two essential central office positions for the entirety of the 2022-23 school year, and the community was left wondering about the status of the district’s efforts toward equity. The topic came up periodically at School Committee meetings, and Superintendent of Schools, Dr. Eric Conti, reassured the audience that the district did plan to eventually put a DEI position in place, but that the priority was to hire an Assistant Superintendent. Some community members have argued that the “Pride incident” in June of 2023, in which some students at Marshall Simonds Middle School chose to wear red, white, and blue rather than rainbow colors and destroy LGBTQ+-related posters in response to an optional student-initiated Pride celebration, would have been more effectively handled had there been a DEI Director and a response plan in place.

The equity audit commissioned during Porch’s tenure never materialized, and the district didn’t offer much of a public explanation for the lack of progress over the better part of a year. According to communications obtained by the Buzz, Dr. Conti requested cancellation due to “lack of follow through with BlackPrint’s proposed work plan,” holding that the agency had not made contact or created the Equity Audit Committee laid out in their contract. BlackPrint’s response asserted that the Equity Audit Committee had held four meetings, two of which Dr. Conti had attended, and that the delay in BlackPrint’s work was due to losing their sole point of contact when Mr. Porch left the district.

BlackPrint’s response suggested that, in fact, the district cancelled the contract because interviews with Porch and another former district-level administrator who left under controversial terms, both “vocal advocates” of “racial equity and cultural responsiveness,” would be included in the equity audit report and the district did not want that information to be revealed.

After the contract with BlackPrint was canceled, BPS contracted with Commonwealth Consulting Agency (whose name the Buzz couldn’t find on the list of state-approved contractors). This agency presented the district with an Equity Needs Assessment in the fall of 2023. Read the full report and recommendations.

Learn more about Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Burlington, MA.

Community Information

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in Burlington

Nicci Kadilak • Mar 2, 2022

Burlington Buzz is a reader-supported daily newsletter designed to foster connection among Burlington residents. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Recently, the term Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) has become more commonly used. The events of Summer 2020 brought to a wider audience issues that …

Read full story →

Dr. Lisa Chen was hired as Assistant Superintendent in July of 2023, and since then she has been working heavily with district educators on curriculum review, using the Equity Needs Assessment to inform the guiding principles of the work as well as the specifics of how to ensure all students are able to access the curriculum.

Dr. Chen has also been working with consultant Dr. Kris Taylor from William James College to use the recommendations from the Equity Needs Assessment to craft a job description for this long-awaited DEI position, which was posted internally before February break and externally without fanfare on February 27. The posting was not mentioned at that evening’s School Committee meeting.

While the job description consists of director-level responsibilities—including interfacing with the Directors of Mental Health, Special Education, and other departments; curriculum review; and influencing district-level plans—the title, to many, suggests a downgrade.

“As someone who worked extensively with our town representatives to approve this role, title, and budget, this job posting is a slap in the face to not only our most marginalized populations but our elected officials as well,” said Martha Duffield, president of Burlington Against Racism and Global DEI Manager for an international technology firm. “It appears that our superintendent with the support of many school committee members is doing what is convenient for them rather than representing the constituents who trust them to provide a safe environment for all students to learn.”

But Dr. Chen, speaking on behalf of Dr. Conti and Burlington Public Schools, said that despite the title, “This is very much a Central Office role.” She went on to say that the new DEI Instructional Coach will be working very closely with her to ensure all teachers feel supported and empowered to do the work and that the focus is on making curriculum, instruction, and assessment more equitable and improving student achievement.

Chen also wants to reassure people that this is “not a one and done deal.” The district started with the high school because the greatest need was shown at that level, says Chen, but they say they already have a DEI-focused Instructional Coach in place at the middle school—who, according to Dr. Chen, is making “positive change”—and plan to continue this work in the elementary schools as well. She stopped short of saying these roles would form a departmental framework which would eventually report to a director, though many close to the district hold that both school-level positions and a director are necessary.

“While our high School students and alumni were courageous enough to share their traumatic experiences publicly, my child was called ‘n*****’ on two separate occasions in different grades while in elementary school here in Burlington,” says Ms. Wong. Burlington middle school students speaking with the Buzz anonymously say casual racist, ableist, and homophobic remarks are a part of their everyday experience. “Kids say racist stuff all the time,” says one seventh grader, “and kids don’t bother speaking up anymore because teachers never do anything and it makes you a target.” One eighth grader says teachers can exhibit racist behaviors but students don’t call it out, because they “don’t want it to get worse for the targeted student.”  These racist behaviors and the opportunity gap start early, Wong says, and it’s important the role encompass work for the entire district to have the most robust impact.

“This needs to be sustainable,” says Chen, “and it needs to be a coaching model,” rather than a directive from above, in order for teachers to feel comfortable receiving the professional development. Chen stresses that the Instructional Coach will be responsible for, among other things, “ensuring curriculum is reviewed with an equity lens” to ensure culturally-relevant instruction at the classroom level, where Chen says it’s most effective.

But members of the former District Equity Committee and Town Meeting Members who voted in favor of the position are not convinced. “What was the procurement process for the second equity audit?” asks Ms. Wong, “and why did the first one fall through?” Wong also notes that it seems that no one who was involved in the first equity audit was engaged for the second. “They only asked certain questions to certain people. It appears as though the district picked a consultant that would give them tacit permission to do what they have wanted to do all along, which is decrease the visibility of the DEI role, eliminate the strategic aspect of the role, and boil this complex work down to curriculum and instruction when it is so much more than that.” She went on to note that the job description doesn’t even require candidates to have experience leading Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion work.

Similarly, those who participated in the original work of creating the job description for DEI Director were not involved in creating the description for this new role. To Dr. Chen, though, the process was obvious. “We had all these professionals gather all this information,” she said, referring to the Equity Needs Assessment and the School Climate Survey administered in December 2023, “and what good is that information if we don’t use it?”

The School Climate Survey suggested a need for greater cultural acceptance; the Equity Needs Assessment emphasized the importance of community conversations and concluded, among other things, that, “While the intentions of school leadership to establish a culture where equity, diversity, and inclusivity drive the work are commendable, the impact has not been consistently felt.”

Dr. Chen worked with the aforementioned Dr. Taylor to craft a job description based on these two sources, but according to Ms. Duffield, the district missed a rich strategic opportunity. “Change is hard and new roles can generate anxiety for those impacted,” she said. “The best way to have these roles set up for success is for them to have a community of support internally and externally to build out programming collaboratively.”

The hiring committee, Chen says, is where community engagement will come in, and she expects to have representation from students.

The title “Instructional Coach” seems out of line with the scope of the work and the kind of candidates Dr. Chen says the district hopes to attract, say some who were involved in the original job description. “Downgrading the position to a coach will narrow the applicant pool and prevent Burlington from getting the best possible person for the job,” said Carl Foss, former School Committee and District Equity Committee member and educator in a nearby district. One community member noted that the role’s peers all have “Director” titles.

Dr. Chen will be driving the overall vision, says School Committee Chair Martha Simon, but Wong and others are concerned a singular focus on curriculum will result in a diversion of resources from supporting all students and staff members in feeling equally welcome in the school environment and responding to issues that come up. An incident response protocol, which was a top priority of the now-disbanded Equity Committee more than four years ago, has still not been presented to the public, or even discussed at public School Committee meetings.

The Burlington Educators Association, Burlington’s teacher union, had this to say: “The BEA stands behind a "yes, and..." vision for the Burlington Public Schools and its commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. Instructional coaches serving the middle and high school will benefit educators striving to better deliver anti-racist, culturally responsive curriculum and instructional practices. The BEA believes our elementary educators would also benefit from coaching and collaboration with roles within their buildings as well. Additionally, a director aligned with the highest levels of BPS leadership is necessary to both support systemic changes at a district level and provide coordinated support to its coaches and school community.”

They go on to charge the district with “actively recruit[ing] educators of diverse backgrounds and provid[ing] them ample support structures that help them thrive in our community,” an initiative Chen said is underway in collaboration with the state.

No matter the title, community members who want the DEI role to succeed believe it’s imperative that whoever is in the position is set up for success, something they don’t believe happened for Mr. Porch when he was in the Director role. The district “disbanded the Equity Committee,” Duffield said. Re-forming it, she says, “is the one action they could have taken” in Porch’s absence to continue work toward equity in the district. She said this to the district at a public School Committee meeting. To this point, the committee hasn’t been re-established.

When asked what the district has learned in the nearly three years since Porch came on, Dr. Chen (who came to the district after the initial development of the role and a year after it had been vacated) said the district realized they need a vision for this work. “This person will … be a part of conversations at the instructional level and in professional development,” Chen said, and “will have a mentor” to support them.

If the school district and members of the former Equity Committee agree on one thing, it’s that equity work is ongoing, and everyone in the district needs to be committed and moving in the same direction in order to best serve all Burlington’s students and staff members. Whether this new role has the visibility, authority, and purview to create real and lasting change remains to be seen.