New to the Table: The Chief Equity Officer

Bringing coherent district leadership to more systematically address diversity, equity and inclusion

While the 3,800-student district in Lawrenceville, N.J., has been working on equity issues for the past few years, the district recently signaled a more serious intent by hiring its first chief equity officer.

The appointment, made by the Lawrence Township board of education this past June, brought to the superintendent’s cabinet someone who had worked previously in other school communities as a principal and a consultant on diversity and inclusion.

“We needed a person to spearhead this work,” says superintendent Ross Kasun, whose district in central New Jersey is about 40 percent white and 60 percent students of color.

Clifton J. Thompson III, the chief equity officer, oversees what the district calls “equity warriors” assigned to each of Lawrenceville’s seven schools. The latter receive a modest stipend on top of their salary to work on culturally responsive curricula and professional training for staff in their respective schools. Kasun says the 17 equity warriors “continually coach and monitor to make sure everyone marches to the same drum.”

Even interscholastic sports falls under Thompson’s umbrella. “We want to offer the same rich experience for all our students,” says Kasun, as the district identifies possible economic barriers to student participation in high-level coursework and extracurricular activities.

A Heightened Priority

Schools, of course, aren’t alone in attempting to place equity at the center of their work. Corporations, local governments, cultural organizations — New York City’s Metropolitan Opera hired its first chief diversity officer earlier this year — and many higher education institutions are adding chief equity officers to their ranks too.

Over the past two years, LinkedIn’s Economic Graph research team has identified a surge in cabinet-level hiring. Their study found chief diversity and inclusion officer to be the fastest growing job title, with a 111 percent increase in its share of all hires for the period ending Aug. 31. The prior year, hiring of chief diversity officers increased 84 percent.

Dealing with institutional racism requires ongoing, high-level leadership.

It’s not new that school districts have been paying attention to issues of equity, diversity and inclusion in addressing student achievement gaps, disciplinary measures, staff hiring and curriculum that better reflect students’ experiences and identities. Usually, those responsibilities were divided among human resources staff and an array of administrators and instructional supervisors.

In recent moves that flag the intent to make diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI as it’s become quickly known, a heightened priority, school boards and superintendents are appointing chief equity officers to lead these efforts. While the titles may vary slightly from district to district — chief diversity officer being another popular variation — these newly created posts are popping up in districts large and small across the nation. Typically, the position reports directly to the superintendent.

Although there aren’t precise figures on how many school districts have added these positions, there are indications of mounting interest.

“We’ve definitely seen an increase in requests [for training] after the murder of George Floyd,” says  Mary B. Rice-Boothe, chief access and equity officer for the Leadership Academy in New York City, N.Y., that has provided training in culturally responsive leadership and equity to 200 school districts over nearly two decades. “There were districts with very few students of color who still said ‘this work is vital to us.’”

Adding a chief equity officer to the superintendent’s cabinet signals the “hard work of changing systems, policies and curriculum,” says Francisco Durán, superintendent in the 28,000-student Arlington, Va., district since June 2020. “The equity office helps all offices think that way. … It’s about creating access and opportunities for all students to feel safe and included, to have structures and policies in place.”

Yet even as school districts and other organizations focus on equity issues, there has been increasing backlash against classroom teaching that touches on anti-racism or discusses implicit bias. Disruptive protests have flared at school board meetings against critical race theory, even though it is largely an academic discipline at the university level and not a subject of instruction in public schools. Governors and legislatures in Idaho, Iowa, Oklahoma and Texas have banned references to CRT.

A Growth Phenomenon

Undeniably, there was more urgency during the past year, with the inequities revealed by both the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on communities of color and the murder of Floyd in Minneapolis and the subsequent Black Lives Matter movement.

The American Association of School Personnel Administrators, based in Overland Park, Kan., had seen an uptick in job postings relating to diversity and equity that started before the COVID-19 pandemic was declared. “The shutdown of schools revealed the bigger need for the equity field,” says Kelly Coash-Johnson, the organization’s executive director.

One of the earlier vacancies her organization listed for a chief equity officer came in September 2020 from the Round Rock Independent School District in Texas, with the express purpose to “develop and implement equity goals in a climate of racial and educational equity for all.”

In rural Salamanca, N.Y., with 1,400 students, Justin Schapp, a non-educator, was hired as chief equity and diversity officer in Au-gust 2020 in the aftermath of the Floyd killing. “Students have taken upon themselves to push for the DEI position,” says Schapp, a member of the Seneca Nation of Indians and a graduate of the Salamanca school system. “There was a groundswell after the Black Lives Matter movement, which changed how students have activated themselves.”

Other districts long have had equity positions. Jefferson County in Kentucky has employed a chief equity officer for decades. The 218,000-student Hillsborough County school system in Tampa, Fla., hired its first equity officer in 2015 in collaboration with community and advocacy groups, such as the local NAACP, says Monica Verra-Tirado, who has filled the berth since July 2020.

Disruptive flash points, such as the 2017 white supremacist march in Charlottesville, Va., prompted some schools to give greater attention to DEI.

A grassroots campaign by community members in Orange County, N.C., to ban the Confederate flag from local venues led the school system, a mostly white, rural district of 7,400 students, to create an equity policy. 

Dena Keeling has served as the county school district’s first and only chief equity officer since 2019, charged with creating a racially, culturally and linguistically inclusive curriculum, as well as identifying where the inequities exist.  Her duties include family engagement, recruiting and hiring a more diverse staff and even putting an equity lens on how the school district develops its annual budget.

Systemwide Scope

Placing this scope of work within a chief equity officer’s portfolio is crucial, according to those who are filling these roles.

“It puts equity at the center of strategic planning, like the score improvement plan, and institutionally, at the schools,” says Eric Moore, chief equity officer in the 36,000-student Minneapolis, Minn., district. “It’s how you make plans, form committees, do scheduling and budgeting. It’s also the social pieces of how we treat each other, which includes students.”

One of the first steps is identifying a district’s specific issues.

“In the short range, we’re doing an equity audit to see the extent to which equity and inequity occur,” says Tauheedah Baker-Jones, the chief equity and social justice officer in Atlanta. “It’s not a silo. The Atlanta Public Schools equity framework is about aligning our efforts that currently exist. … We’re looking at key performance indicators during the next two years to identify gaps and support. Our objective is to positively impact the lives of our learners.”

The process is data-driven, Baker-Jones says. Some areas include “cultural competency, not only in policy but in practice, and auditing curriculum looking at implicit bias.”

One area getting special scrutiny in Atlanta is student discipline, as the data show disproportionate suspensions and expulsions for students of color. They’re looking at the dress code and how its infractions are defined through the equity lens, Baker-Jones says. Trying to avoid subjective terms like “defiance” in the code of conduct is one approach.

Similarly, in Hillsborough County, Fla., the uneven use of disciplinary punishment is drawing attention. “Even though the overall numbers of discipline removal have gone down, there is still work to be done because the data is still disproportionate regarding Black and Brown students,” Verra-Tirado says.

A task force she oversees found the highest levels of disciplinary actions were taken in schools that “have a majority of Black and Brown students,” she says. As one response, the district removed the behavioral term “disrespectful” as a reason warranting discipline “because it was too subjective,” she says. Instead, “it’s now about what rule the student broke.”

Diversifying Staff

Increasing staff diversity is another part of the equity officer’s mandate.

In the 52,000-student Atlanta system (where 70 to 80 percent of staff are people of color), working to increase the pipeline of Black and Latinx male educators is a particular goal. “We’re also looking at paraprofessionals, substitute teachers, school clerks and some custodians” for potential career shifts into full time teaching, says superintendent Lisa Herring.

When it’s not always possible to increase the diversity of staff, there are other approaches. In the Toledo, Ohio, district, 65 percent of the 23,000 student body are students of color (mostly Black), but 90 percent of the teachers are white.

“My goal is to change the culture,” says Treva Jeffries, Toledo’s assistant transformational leader of equity, diversity and inclusion. Her initial efforts were modest — organizing neighborhood walks so “teachers could know where the kids came from. It’s to make sure the lens is equitable in everything we do.”

She has proceeded carefully, recognizing that she is in a “very conservative state.” Before embarking on major initiatives, Jeffries, whose department was launched in 2018, formed a committee that included community members as well as school district stake-holders. She started with implicit bias training and communication about what micro-aggressions would look like in a classroom or in a workplace setting.

Holding staff accountable is key. Moore, in Minneapolis, says the district assesses teachers and principals on equity outcomes, which include the recruitment and retention of teachers of color and equity competencies in teaching. The district has committed $800,000 during the next three to five years, which will support an equity and engagement team at each school. A pilot launched last year provided 400 teachers with 40 hours of professional development, with follow-up coaching and support.

Curriculum and teaching practices in the classroom are a major part of chief equity officers’ responsibilities.

In Manchester, N.H., a district of 13,500 students, which recently hired its first chief equity officer, superintendent John Goldhardt says he wants “to increase the number of students of color and students who are poor in advanced classes — 25 percent by 2023-24. Our graduation credits are the minimum for the state. We want to raise them dramatically. We’re looking at the literature kids read. As a senior year elective, why have we never offered multicultural literature?”

Resistance and Challenges

Pushback, both to open discussions of equity and employment of equity officers, was a reality even before the recent politicized discussions about critical race theory (which none of those interviewed for this story say is taught in their schools).

“Parts of the community say there’s no need, it’s a waste of money, and it’s racist itself to look at the situation,” says Goldhardt, Manchester’s superintendent of two years.

Rice-Boothe, whose New York City-based Leadership Academy runs equity training, cautions that the appointment of someone to a cabinet-level position overseeing equity and inclusion be viewed as an important early step. School districts, she adds, should not have “unrealistic expectations for a quick change. This is about slow change in the background. It’s about equity in everything, not as a side initiative.”