Falmouth School Committee Proceeds Cautiously On DEI Position
Falmouth Public Schools Superintendent Lori S. Duerr presented a draft job description for a new diversity, equity and inclusion position to the school committee. While the committee supportive of the position, it was hesitant about the proposed timeline.
The job description for the new director of equity, opportunity, and belonging position is a comprehensive one. Three pages long, it outlines the definitions of each of the major facets of the position as designated by its title, describes the qualities of an ideal candidate and provides a list of both long-term and day-to-day responsibilities.
“The qualities of the person, I think, speak for [themselves],” said Dr. Duerr. “There are a lot of responsibilities here; we recognize that. We tried to organize it, condense all the collaborative pieces to try to make it easier to read. I will say even though there’s a lot here, they’re not things that you’re going to focus on every single day… it does look [like] a lot but we wanted to make sure that everything that we think is important under this role, we did actually include it.”
One of the responsibilities listed that Dr. Duerr pointed out for the committee is to “develop a plan based on an equity audit,” which is intended to identify root causes of inequities and develop metrics to measure and report on the effectiveness of implemented initiatives. Dr. Duerr was of the position that a person should be hired for this position prior to the equity audit—which can take about six months to complete—allowing them to participate in and facilitate the process; however, some committee members were concerned with the timeline.
“I’m excited about the opportunity to have this position within the school,” said committee member Leah Palmer. “I think what I am worried about is that we just lost someone in this position and [we are] wanting to make sure that we have a system of support in place for someone coming into this position, so that they can be successful with it… This is a position that we need to support really well within our system to make it successful and I really think what I would love to see is a first-year focus on an equity audit and to develop the position from that.”
Committee member William Dorfner agreed, saying that an equity audit would be helpful to narrow down exactly what they are looking for in the position before hiring someone.
“This job description, to me, is kind of all over the place,” he said. “There are a lot of things in here that we already have people in place for in this district that should be doing these things.”
Mr. Dorfner also said that if Falmouth Public Schools is going to communicate a culture of acceptance, it should trickle from the top down, making everybody a director of equity, opportunity, and belonging.
“I think everybody involved in our schools should be champions for and leaders of a realization of this equity vision,” he said. “And if we’re not already doing it, why? What do we need to be doing? I think that equity audit is going to show us where those deficiencies are… I think having that information would be very useful before we bring somebody in and basically set them up for failure with a job description that nobody can live up to.”
Committee member Andrea Thorrold agreed, saying that some aspects of the job description were “very aspirational” versus outlining specific expectations.
“I understand what’s behind that; it’s a little bit around the visioning work we did, the core values,” she said. “I think we’re trying to get those across to a person who might be applying for it, but it kind of ends up [denser] than it needs to be and harder to understand what your responsibilities are… There might be another way to still get those ideas across without it being specifically outlined the way it is now.”
Ms. Thorrold also wondered about the order of operations for hiring and conducting an equity audit, and which order would be the more optimal and efficient for the process.
“I’m wondering...is this something that has to happen in a linear way, where [the] equity audit happens, [we] write a job description, [and] hire a person, or is there a way to run it in parallel paths? I don’t know the answer to that,” she said.
Ms. Palmer agreed, saying that it would be difficult to clarify the responsibilities of the position without an equity audit to show them the direction they need to go in.
“I don’t know if we can necessarily make this parallel,” she said. “We might have to start that audit first and have some direction, so we can develop what this position looks like before being able to have the full job description.”
Dr. Duerr said that if an equity audit was to happen first, then the position would not be filled by July 1 as she had intended.
Committee chairwoman Natalie Kanellopoulos said that she was not sure whether the committee will be ready to bring this to a vote on April 4 as planned, as more conversations need to be had.
“I think we’re all on the same page, even though we’re coming from different perspectives, that we don’t want to rush this,” she said. “Because this is the first read and usually we have the next meeting and we vote it, we need to pause and make sure we’re doing this effectively and correctly.”
The committee is scheduled to meet again on April 4.