These are personal experiences we are having with individuals every single day that are really impactful, so that means having to do the work of changing the hearts and the minds and the priorities of all the people who sit between us and all the people in this room and the child who is sitting in the school right now,” she said. “This is not a factory in which we are creating a product. They’re things we heard in surveys, in focus groups, so these are things that people are calling for,” MAEC Senior Education Equity Specialist Jenny Portillo said. “Many of these recommendations are not coming from us. The recommendations included collecting data more frequently and being more transparent with it, encouraging “meaningful two-way communication” with families “in languages they can understand and access,” strengthening the pipeline for staff hiring and recruitment, and “creating clear, mandated pathways for professional learning opportunities regarding racial equity with a special focus on cultural competence.” According to MCPS, antiracism is defined as “actively working to ensure racial justice by identifying, interrupting, and dismantling racist practices, policies and attitudes that disproportionately harm communities of color.” The audit report presented to the school board Tuesday calls for MCPS to adopt a clear, coherent and comprehensive systemwide approach to antiracism and lists 23 recommendations for action. Silvestre, Rivera-Oven and Yang poised to win school board seats For example, students and family members reported that staff are not trained to teach different racial groups’ histories with nuance and cultural sensitivity, according to the audit. The audit by the Mid-Atlantic Equity Consortium, an education nonprofit based in Bethesda, also found that while MCPS follows best practices and has put in place policies to achieve racial equity, many had been implemented unevenly throughout the district’s schools, leading to a fragmented system. The audit, which cost roughly $455,000 and elicited survey responses from 126,000 community members, confirmed what the district expected to learn: Students, staff and families of color have a less satisfactory experience than others in the school community. Families of color in Montgomery County public schools report incidents of bullying and racial harassment, and Spanish-speaking families say they face bias from staff and the district fails to address their needs, according to a two-year antiracism audit commissioned by MCPS.
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