At 7:30 p.m. on Oct. 9, District 202 held a Board of Education meeting. The main focus was the district’s four main goals for the next five years: equitable and excellent education, student wellbeing, fiscal accountability and community engagement.
Assistant Superintendent for Human Resources, Scott Bramley, and Associate Director for Human Resources, Angela Gardnerm, first presented their department’s 2023 staffing report. In an effort to align ETHS’ practices with its goals, they worked on assessing discriminatory practices, hiring staff of color, building community partnerships and providing mentoring advice.
67 percent of the new hires for the 2023-24 school year were persons of color. In all, 36 percent of all ETHS staff are staff of color.
“We want to strive to have a faculty and staff that is representative of our student population,” said Bramley.
Director of Multilingual Services Lindsey Rose then gave the Department of Multilingual Services Report. Initiated this school year in response to a growth in Emergent Multilingual Students (EM), the department has already started new programs.
Rose explained one of the new programs, a newcomer-sheltered instruction program.
“The program aims to deliver English language development and content instruction for students who are new to the country and who are in the beginning stages of English acquisition,” said Rose.
Another new program focuses on English learning in freshman humanities classes.
“For any incoming freshman with an EM designation who doesn’t fit into our newcomer program model, English learner services are integrated into their humanities courses,” said Rose.
Following Rose’s presentation, Blake Noel and Kimberly Holmes-Ross, both of Evanston Cradle to Career (EC2C), an organization focused on providing resources to Evanston’s youth, presented their current methods for meeting their goals.
“What we do is convene, facilitate and provide outreach to partners and the community to make Evanston the most equitable place it can be,” said Noel.
Holmes-Ross elaborated on Noel’s point.
“We wanted to expand our community leadership team, Advocates for Action, where we develop leaders and ensure that the most unheard voices are heard, seen, appreciated and supported,” said Holmes-Ross. “We began recruitment here with the student activity fairs and the community service fairs where we educated students about the work at EC2C.”
At ETHS, Evanston Cradle to Career has worked with Emerge, Philanthropy Club, the Youth Equity Summit and more student groups to achieve these goals.
