HADLEY — Reducing disparities in education in the town’s public schools, based on factors such as race, ethnicity and special needs, is an ongoing objective for school leaders, who are compiling data that looks to assess the district’s existing culture of equity.

Superintendent Anne McKenzie recently presented to the School Committee what is called the “equity dashboard project,” which details how both Hopkins Academy and the Hadley Elementary School are doing in meeting a commitment to creating access to opportunities for all students and families, and promoting an anti-racism culture.

McKenzie said the dashboard comes out of the idea of collecting data to show whether all students are experiencing an environment that appreciates and promotes diversity, and fosters equity and inclusion, all of which are part of the public schools’ vision statement.

“This is just the beginning,” McKenzie said, noting that the document, which covers topics such as student achievement and discipline, will be shared at least twice a year.

McKenzie said the dashboard can help prevent disparities and provide direction for rectifying them.

“We believe strongly that you can’t effectively solve any problem that you haven’t precisely defined, and you can’t define a problem you are unaware of,” McKenzie said.

The dashboard uses data to focus on four areas: offering deep challenging learning opportunities, providing safe and supportive learning environments, building meaningful and mutually supportive relationships, and having a highly qualified and diverse workforce.

Some of the information shows that the schools are educating people from all backgrounds, with more diversity among students than the town as a whole. In Hadley, about 89% of residents are white, but the district’s students are 75% white.

“Our schools are more diverse than the community from which they draw,” McKenzie said, noting this also indicates the effectiveness of school choice.

The dashboard includes information on how the schools are doing on the early warning indicator system created by the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, the milestones set for each grade level, and the total number of disciplinary infractions. These are all broken down into various categories. McKenzie said she will look at this information for over- and under-representation based on race, socioeconomic status and special needs data.

McKenzie said the dashboard has not yet collected survey data from families, staff and students on whether they think the schools are providing a diverse, equitable and safe space.

With information in the dashboard, Hadley Elementary School principal Jennifer Dowd said staff broke off into groups to begin examining achievement and discipline data for the whole student body, as well as individual students. “We’re going to continue to look at this information,” Dowd said.

Hopkins Principal April Camuso said Hopkins staff are also reviewing the data and information such as MCAS charts, and where discrepancies might exist, and developing intervention plans for students.

School Committee Chairwoman Humera Fasihuddin said she appreciates the exhaustive dive that the equity dashboard will provide. “It’s so nice to see it come to fruition,” Fasihuddin said.

Committee member Tara Brugger wondered about the next action steps for improvements that will be undertaken by teachers and administrators.

McKenzie said she will have a person come to the schools this month to take all district staff through cultural proficiency, and Hopkins teachers will get a first round of restorative justice training. “Those are concrete things that are coming up right now,” McKenzie said.

“I have every faith in all of you that we’ll be able to see some positive changes in our school for all these students where there are disparities and make the environment much more comfortable for all of our students to be in,” Brugger said.

Scott Merzbach can be reached at smerzbach@gazettenet.com.]]>