California school district expected to rescind its diversity, equity, and inclusion statement
The Auburn Union School District Board of Trustees is scheduled to vote Wednesday evening on whether or not to rescind the district’s diversity, equity and inclusion statement.
The five-member panel leans conservative, and the rescission is likely to pass. Three new trustees have been elected since the statement was approved in August 2022. Board President Greg Holt is Deputy Director of Constituent Services for Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Elk Grove. Jayson Wedge and Renee Grigsby (formerly Dowd, when she was a candidate for her seat) were both endorsed by the Placer County Republican Party and the parents’ rights group Moms for Liberty.
The two other members, Sarah Brichler and Jamie Ross, were on the board when the statement was adopted.
“It’s been a real trend in recent years among academia and corporations to virtue signal their support for social justice causes,” Holt said during a discussion at last month’s board meeting. He also said the district’s DEI statement “mentions a whole bunch of progressive buzz words.”
His concerns, he said, were with measuring the statement’s outcomes.
“I think it takes a special kind of hubris to proclaim that any institution can provide equality and outcome,” he said. “I don’t think that that is something that the people of Auburn wanted us to support in our schools.”
“Wow, President Holt,” said Ross. “The origin of the statement was actually that people in the community asked us for it.”
The move to rescind the statement didn’t come as a surprise. Last year, just weeks before he was elected, Wedge said in an interview with Gold Country Media that the DEI statement “is an attempt to introduce partisan ideology into the schools.”
“It’s a broad brush of division based on subjective interpretations of class, race, sexual orientation and the like. ‘Equality’ celebrates all students and ‘equity’ creates bias using faulty data,” he said.
In the same interview, Grigsby said she is “not comfortable with defining and dividing students by race, gender, sexuality, and other categories as outlined in the current board’s newly adopted Equity Statement.”
“I believe that offering exceptional educational opportunities to every student in a safe, non-political environment will produce exceptional outcomes with no child left behind. That is equality, not equity.”
This is the statement in full:
“In order to develop 21st century, lifelong learners, we must remove obstacles to accessing educational opportunities. Students, staff, and stakeholders have a legitimate expectation to have a barrier-free learning environment which includes the awareness of the historical impact of bias, prejudice, and discrimination which, for generations, has produced predictability of learning outcomes based on race, class, socioeconomic, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, cognitive/physical ability, diverse language fluency, and religion.
“We will exemplify these attributes:
▪ Respect and empower students through agency and advocacy, to ensure a student-centered approach to decision-making and provide a meaningful learning experience to prepare our students to be community leaders and world influencers.
▪ Reflect on the diversity of our community and students and the varied interests of our stakeholders.
▪ Treat our students’ health, personal well-being, and sense of safety as paramount to their individual growth and success.
▪ Encourage innovative thinking to equitably eliminate opportunity gaps and distribute the public’s limited resources.
▪ Provide access to high-quality diverse teachers, rigorous coursework and instructional materials (including technology), support services, and extracurricular opportunities.”
