School District of Clayton prioritizes “equity literacy” and “antiracism” and is in planning process for what questions to ask on the next ‘Panorama Education’ survey for students

  • School District of Clayton - Missouri

Incidents

Issues

The School District of Clayton promotes equity and anti-racism to educators in the district and to the students they teach in the classroom through the curriculum. On June 2, 2021, the school district approved a new policy titled “Educational Equity.”

In order to take action, we must work tirelessly to achieve equity literacy. Equity literacy is defined as having the knowledge and skills to disrupt and dismantle inequities within our spheres of influence for the betterment of our students, staff and greater community.

Taken directly from Clayton’s educational equity policy

Educational-EquityDownload

The School District of Clayton has an Office of Equity and Inclusion with a “Chief Equity and Inclusion Officer.” The school district states on its website: “We recognize those experiencing inequities as the experts of their own experiences and needs. We must listen to and validate the stories and ideas of those experiencing said inequities and take proactive steps to dismantle the inequities and systemic policies that have harmed our students.” The website also includes “The Equity Corner Blog” with an author of one blog appearing to argue in favor of teaching “Critical Race Theory” to students.

The School District of Clayton promotes “equity literacy.”

The School District of Clayton promotes a blog where an author appeared to argue in favor of teaching Critical Race Theory.

The school district offers an “Antiracist Online Resource Center and Library” where parents are provided with resources titled “How to Talk to Your Child About Race (Ages 5 – 8)” and “White Parents, Here’s How to Start Talking to Your Child About Race.” The library page also contains a list of books on “race and racism” for children, such as Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You and Anti-Racism For Kids.

The School District of Clayton offers a resource center with material to help parents teach their children to not be racist.
The resource center also contains a list of books on race and racism for children.

The School District of Clayton also has a resource page for “LGBTQIA+ Awareness.” One resource the page offers to parents is titled “Story Books and Resources to Children.” The resource links to a website that promotes books to ages as young as “Baby & Toddler (0-2).” Titles of books on the website include Middle School’s a Drag, You Better Werk! and Beyond the Gender Binary.

The School District of Clayton offers resources for parents on “LGBTQIA+ Awareness.”
The School District of Clayton’s “LGBTQIA+ Awareness” page links to a store with books aimed at children like “Middle School’s a Drag, You Better Werk!”
Another book from the store that the school district links to is titled “Beyond the Gender Binary.”

On September 29, 2021, the Board of Education for the School District of Clayton held a meeting that was published on YouTube. In the meeting, the school district’s Chief Equity and Inclusion Officer appeared to say that the school district works with Panorama Education Inc. to promote equity in education: “In our equity committee meeting today, we went through all the equity questions to look at which ones we want to use, which ones we like, what free response questions we want to use, how do we put this within our Panorama survey. Are these appropriate six through twelve? Can we moderate this to be three through five? So that’s actually what we were doing today, and we are looking to incorporate those questions in the next round of our Panorama surveys in the spring.” (Time stamp: 2:32:34) Panorama Education Inc. is a known firm that embraces ideologies inspired by Critical Race Theory that works with schools throughout the country.