Commentary: Is the Board of Education's proposed diversity, equity, inclusion (DEI) policy ready for prime time?

Some parents say that episodes last November in which middle school students allegedly shared swastika images were not well handled by the district.

Pierre Van Cortlandt middle school/ CHUFSD

Last week, on May 2, the Croton-Harmon Board of Education held a three hour work session on its proposed new diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policy (video of the session can be found here.) This came after many months of work by the Board’s Policy Committee on drafts of the document, in which both the wording and the basic approaches were discussed.

One major issue for the Policy Committee was how “prescriptive” the policy should be, that is, to what extent it should tell the district administration what it should be doing versus giving school officials the primary responsibility for figuring that out. In putting together a draft policy for our district, the Policy Committee borrowed liberally from policies already adopted by some other school districts in the region, including Ossining and Chappaqua.