The Superintendent Perspective: Leading for Multilingual Equity

• In Event: Fighting for Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Schools Under a New Administration

Abstract

Objectives
In the chapter she wrote for our edited book, this superintendent recounted her work leading a collaborative networked improvement community in her district to improve English Language Arts outcomes for multilingual learners through culturally and linguistically responsive practices. The network focused on two strategies to meet this goal: developing principals’ instructional leadership skills around culturally and linguistically responsive practices and offering collaborative educator professional learning experiences on such practices. In this follow-up commentary, the superintendent critiques new education policies that seek to restrict discussions of race, language, and identity – all of which are central to her work leading for multilingual learner equity through culturally and linguistically responsive instruction.

Theoretical Framework & Modes of Inquiry
This superintendent grounds her research and leadership in CRSE, improvement science, and transformative instructional leadership. By integrating these lenses, she focuses on helping principals and teachers see the value of addressing systemic inequity by adopting instructional practices that reflect culturally and linguistically responsive pedagogy. In examining how her leadership approach has changed under the new presidential administration, this superintendent draws on ongoing personal reflection and collegial collaboration to consider how best to preserve her district’s financial and operational wellbeing while being true to her personal and professional values. She notes that this balance is hard to achieve at the present moment.

Evidence
In this commentary, this superintendent draws on empathy interviews with multilingual students and school leaders, which she uses as a regular facet of her leadership. She also draws on community concerns revealed during school board meetings and conversations with district and school leaders who are grappling with how to protect both the districts’ interests and those of the districts’ students whom they are committed to serving.

Arguments
This commentary insists that multilingual students are central, not peripheral, to the values and work of this superintendent’s district. The superintendent is concerned about education policies that promote a monocultural, monolingual ideal of schooling that denies the assets multilingual learners bring to classrooms and to their school communities. As a Latina superintendent, this educator is deeply committed to helping principals and teachers support multilingual students, and she refuses to alter her personal mission in light of governmental restriction. At the same time, she argues that she must currently be strategic and diplomatic in her pursuit of equity.

Significance
This commentary illustrates the challenges equity-minded systems leaders are currently facing as they navigate politically charged issues while trying to maintain ongoing, deeply personal improvement efforts centered in CRSE. While this commentary is a call to lead boldly, it is also a call to lead carefully and ethically in ways that balance the multi-faceted responsibilities of the superintendency.  

Author

• Sandra Montañez–Diodonet, Passaic Public Schools