Equitable Practices

The 2023-2024 school year is well underway and Springfield Township is excited that our campuses are filled with student learning and activities. From our classrooms to our fields, our students are engaged in a variety of opportunities to enhance their sense of belonging. Ultimately, a sense of belonging helps to increase student achievement.

During the 2022-2023 school year, the district was pleased to administer School and Community Belonging Surveys to all students in grades 3 through 12. This information provided administrators, teachers, and other staff members with valuable insight about how students feel and act in their school and community.

While extended data reporting will be presented to the community in upcoming months, we are pleased to share some positive information with our families and students right now.

• 95% of students feel like they are a part of their school community
• 92% of students believe that there are adults in school that they can trust when they have a problem.
• 95% of students report that they feel safe at school.
• 84% of students report being involved in an afterschool program or activity---including school or community sports, activities, and clubs.

Student data from surveys and affinity groups will continue to be collected during the 2023-2024 school year and will be used to inform district practices and areas for growth.

Our staff spoke and we listened! During initial surveys for the Equity Action Plan, the Springfield Township staff indicated that they wanted training on facilitating difficult conversations in their classrooms with students. During the 2021-2022 and 2022-2023 school year, staff were provided a professional development session on how to approach and confront students who use hateful language.

This school year, staff members are receiving a follow-up professional development session using Learning for Justice resources to help staff Speak Up at School through a Facilitating Difficult Conversations: Part II training. This easy to use strategy asks staff to confront racism and bigotry by taking three steps:

1. Comitting to speaking up
2. Developing a ready response (Example: That offends me.)
3. Non-confrontational questioning of the remark (Example: What do you mean by that?)

Middle school and high school staff members were also asked to share these resources with their students.

Springfield Township students at all grade levels have opportunities for learning how to be kinder, more tolerant global citizens by participation in a wide variety of activities. All students in grades K through 8 receive weekly social skills lessons through the Second Step curriculum, Enfield students practice Responsive Classroom techniques each day, and students at our middle school and high school help plan and learn from No Place for Hate lessons. Whatever the setting or grade, students are learning to be kind to one another, respect people from a wide variety of backgrounds, and to stand up for peers in need.

Recognizing the diversity of our community, The School District of Springfield Township is committed to and accountable for advancing equity and excellence for all of our students. We, in the School District of Springfield Township, endeavor to provide equitable opportunities for high level, meaningful, and engaging learning experiences for each and every student, regardless of racial/ethnic background, economic condition or other dimension of identity or difference.

We recognize that in order to achieve Educational Equity we must apply principles of fairness and justice in the allocation of resources and work toward the elimination of institutional barriers to access and opportunity. We aim to ensure that funding, policies, practices, and initiatives will enable every student to receive what they need to maximize their success. In order to foster growth toward equity, we must engage in continuous reflection and ongoing measurement of our efforts.

Our district is a proud member of the DVCEE, Delaware Valley Consortium for Excellence and Equity, an organization sponsored by the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania. Springfield Township is proud to continue our membership and work collaboratively with the 37 other districts in the Greater Philadelphia region to enhance equitable educational practices for all students.

For more information on DVCEE, please visit their website.

• Adopt and enforce an Educational Equity Policy (Complete)
• Identify administrator responsible for conducting review and analysis of data and leadership of EAP (Complete)
• Communicate the purpose and goals of the EAP broadly and consistently (Complete)
• Support conversations in the classroom that help students to be prepared for difficult topics and conversations around equity (On-going and embedded in practices)
• Improve safety for marginalized students, including students of color and LGBTQ+ students (On-going and carried into Year 2)
• Utilize analytics to assess the impact our communication has on students and families (On-going and embedded in practices)
• Create feedback/communication system for parent teacher conferences (On-going and embedded in practices)
• Provide training for ALL district staff on equitable practices that are able to be implemented in the classroom and across district offices (On-going and embedded in practices)

• Create a system for the collection, review and dissemination of relevant data (On-Going)
• Elicit feedback from students, staff, and families using an online platform (Complete and continuing)
• Create a K-12 course overview with language accessibility (Complete)
• Simplify and focus our communication to families (Complete)
• Improve our website's accessibility and ease of use/clarity (Complete)
• Train our MTSS teams to utilize the MTSS process to improve our systems of identification/readiness (Complete)
• Continue to communicate and implement recommended strategies for recruitment and retention of a diverse, representative workforce across the district (Complete and continuing)

• Ensure that access and opportunit yield measurable outcomes
• Collaborate with parent organizations to develop a roadmap for decision-making K-12
• Explore scholarships/reduced fees, and sibling childcare to improve access to extracurriculars
• Work with our parent organizations to grow the Ambassadors Program so that families and students new to the district learn and understand how to navigate systems
• Identify, review, and report on primary indicators of growth/achievement
• Provide enrichment opportunities at the elementary level after school

• The district is using Panorama, an online platform with access to national data, to survey families on the home-school relationship to learn more information about how we can partner and support parents and families
• Student-led advocacy groups at the Middle and High School are forming to inform best practices and provide educational opportunities to their peers
• District staff at the Middle School and High School received an updated training on facilitating difficult conversations in the classroom
• Schools are scheduling their annual Trauma-Informed sessions to learn how to build and sustain trauma-sensitive classrooms.
• The High School Spartan Culture Club will continue their work with the ADL to plan activities for No Place for Hate. Last year, Springfield Township High School earned this designation through providing three whole school activities around anti-semitism and building a sense of building belonging.

The following information is shared with families to help strengthen equity conversations in the home. Please note that these resources are not shared in the schools. However, we encourage families to use these resources to engage your children in conversations around equity in the home.

Anthony Abraham Jack, Assistant Professor at the Havard Graduate School of Education, discusses that getting into college for disadvantaged students is only half the battle. Colleges need to expand programming to support low income students if they want students to exceed.