Equity Position Statement
Trumbull Public Schools (TPS) recognizes every child’s right to a free, high-quality public education and values the richness of diversity. Members of the TPS community are treated and treat others with empathy, respect, and kindness. We recognize that routinely examining outcomes and practices in order to reveal and address factors that may contribute to differential outcomes among our students is critical to ensuring that all students experience success. Creating, supporting, and sustaining a culture of access and equity requires being responsive to students' backgrounds, experiences, cultural perspectives, traditions, knowledge, interests, and abilities when designing, implementing, and assessing our programs of instruction. Therefore the TPS, consciously commits to providing learning environments and opportunities that are inclusive, student-centered, rigorous, and equitable through our beliefs, words, and actions.
TPS schools are places where students:
- Believe in themselves and their own abilities to acquire and use education towards empowerment and preparation for productive global citizenship.
- Take action as members of a diverse and cohesive learning community to sustain their personal growth and success, and contribute to community advancement.
- Have a strong sense of belonging through appreciation of their own culture and heritage as well as those of their diverse classmates.
- Engage in authentic inquiry to critically examine and better understand their knowledge of the world and of others.
- Listen, read, and collaborate to acquire the academic content, vocabulary, and skills that ignite their intellectual curiosity and broaden their perspectives.
TPS schools are places where educators:
- Believe that students bring a wide set of experiences and perspectives to the classroom and that this diversity is an asset of our learning community.
- Take action as a team to be responsible, reflective, individually and collectively, for the high achievement of each student.
- Have a strong commitment to personal self-awareness, professional learning, and the development of skills to support the learning needs of all students in order to provide equitable access to all facets of education.
- Engage in the implementation of practices and processes which ensure that all students are supported and have the resources they need to succeed.
- Provide access, experiences, and opportunities for learning that are representative of cultural diversity in our world, and vary in genre, content and perspective.
TPS schools are places where families:
- Believe in the collective responsibility of the families, schools, and communities actively taking part in building mutually respectful relationships and partnerships.
- Take action as members of the learning community and empower their children to use their histories and cultural identity as a foundation for their learning.
- Have a strong commitment to nurturing self-awareness and developing interpersonal skills that allow for meaningful dialogue and collaboration with all people.
- Engage in school activities, practices and school programs that promote high expectations for student success as well as home-to-school understanding and communication.
- Encourage the development of their children’s interests in culture and learning by speaking with them about what they are learning at school and how it relates to daily life, especially promoting reading, writing, listening, and speaking.
References:
- Policy 4111.1 Non-Discrimination in Employment
- Policy 6121 Non-Discrimination in Instruction/Classroom
- U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
- Office of Civil Rights / Commission on Human Rights & Opportunities Adopted by the Board of Education on July 12, 2022