If you attended NSBA’s first-ever Equity Symposium last Saturday then you know—it was an incredible day of heartfelt, difficult conversations about some of the toughest issues in education.
The Center for Public Education recently defined equity by writing “equity is achieved when all students receive the resources they need so they graduate prepared for success after high school.” And as NSBA Executive Director Tom Gentzel noted in his opening remarks at the Equity Symposium, “every child should have access to an excellent education in the community in which they live.” Throughout the day-long event the focus was on the ever increasing diversity among our students and what that means for education in meeting those diverse needs.
Even though the event is over, you can still check out the agenda online. I was going to share some of my takeaways from the event, but instead, you can get the key takeaways from me and many of your colleagues who attended (in 140 characters or less) just by checking out the Twitter feed from the event at #NSBAequity. This will also give you a sense of how engaged everyone was in the conversations that were taking place.
NSBA recently created an equity department on staff, so expect to see more on this important topic moving forward.
Ron Skinner is the Deputy Associate Executive Director in the Member and Leadership Services department at NSBA, and in that role leads the National Connection program.