The DEI Office serves as the bedrock for the School District’s commitment to anti-racism, providing the structure, strategic guidance, and organizational leadership needed to redesign a more equitable District.
Equity at SDP means to: Cultivate prosperity and liberation for students and staff, starting with historically marginalized populations, by removing barriers, increasing access and inclusion, building trusting relationships, and creating a shared culture of social responsibility and organizational accountability.
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The Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) office serves as the bedrock for the School District of Philadelphia’s commitment to anti-racism, providing the structure, strategic guidance, and organizational leadership needed to redesign a more equitable School District.
Steeped in a commitment toward collective action and participatory design, the DEI office ensures the implementation, evaluation and districtwide accountability measures for policies, processes, and practices within program offices and schools in support of the organizational change needed to actualize our core beliefs, equity definition, and commitments.
Cultivate prosperity and liberation for students and staff, starting with historically marginalized populations, by removing barriers, increasing access and inclusion, building trusting relationships, and creating a shared culture of social responsibility and organizational accountability.
Chief, Equity
Director, Culture and Community Engagement
Senior Project Manager
Equity Training Specialist
Equity Training Specialist
Equity Training Specialist
Equity Training Specialist
Equity Training Specialist
Program Manager
Answer
Through a series of collaborative meetings with members of the SDP Equity Coalition and SDP leadership, we have created the SDP Equity Framework – a comprehensive tool that will be used to support clear system-wide race and equity actions with measurable results. While there continues to be a commitment to addressing all dimensions of equity, we know that a focus on race by all members of the SDP community will allow us to get to the deepest layers of the disparities we see in our system, allowing us to more appropriately direct resources and target areas of action for improvement.
We recognize that every person, school, and office in our organization has different needs when it comes to equity professional learning. We are all at different places in our journey toward equity. As such, we need to approach our individual and collective learning with differentiation and scaffolding at the center. In addition to universal learning that we believe is critical for building shared understanding and commitment to equity, we also outline a set of learning pathways:
As we take District-wide action toward becoming an antiracist organization steeped in equity, holding an appreciation for diversity, and making a commitment to be more inclusive, we have developed “Cultural Awareness/Celebration planning teams.” These teams serve as ad hoc committees to the larger Equity Coalition with the responsibility of planning our District-wide recognition/celebration of pivotal cultural groups, religious holidays, and social awareness efforts/movements.
The SDP Equity Coalition is an organizational body representing every functional area of the District.
Our purpose is to provide the organizational leadership and structure needed to redesign a more equitable School District. This includes, but is not limited to, uprooting policies, deconstructing processes, and eradicating practices that create systems of privilege and power within our school communities and in our workplaces.
In this District-wide journey, we will begin with focusing our work around racial inequity and then use the developed tools, frameworks, and policies to address other forms of inequity.
On Monday, January 17, 2022, in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service, the School District of Philadelphia’s Equity Coalition hosted a virtual Social Justice Summit. Grounded in the theme “For Philly, By Philly: Leading, Teaching, and Organizing for Equity,” the core objective was to uplift and amplify the voices of individuals, program offices, and organizations throughout Philadelphia who are working to advance equity within the School District of Philadelphia.
Click here for presentation recordings and session resources
equity@philasd.org
215-400-4560