Navigating District-Community Relationships to Achieve Equity: A Critical Policy Discourse Analysis

• In Event: Racializing and Spatializing Resistance: Contextual Equity Leadership and Policy

Abstract

This is a critical policy discourse analysis of a suburban school board’s ad hoc equity committee’s efforts to write a district-wide equity policy agenda. We sought to consider how a local school board navigated community relationships and tensions to repair and construct a district policy agenda to “achieve equity”. Using the first year of committee work, we reviewed board and committee transcripts, meeting artefacts, and local media coverage of the equity committee discourse to reveal four unique findings of policy discourse that emerged in its initial phase. We found that the designation of an ad-hoc committee was an ineffective leadership strategy to initiate district-wide understandings of equity and develop compelling policy recommendations to achieve equity across a rapidly changing district.

Author

• Amaarah N. DeCuir, American University