“We pride ourselves in excellence and innovation,” says Violet Nichols, Superintendent of the SBSD, pointing to the District’s Ends policy which defines the intended outcomes, benefits, recipients, and costs of its methodology and practices. “The Ends policy is the goal for our students,” Nichols states.“It’s embedded in our policy and is part of our governance model. It’s a disposition for life-long learning, academic proficiency, personal development, and citizenship. All of our work to support students is directly tied to it.” “We are moving to a focus on ‘excellence’ and ‘innovative’,” Nichols continues. “And we’re doing that through some pretty cutting-edge curricula developments and offering a broad variety of student-centered programming opportunities for students. We’re also making incremental gains in the development of social and emotional, cultural, and anti-racism learning. We are trying to develop a culture to support equity and anti-racism to best support our students and staff.” MAKING STRIDES TO SUPPORT STUDENTS AND STAFF “With the increased social/emotional learning needs that we’ve been seeing off the back of the pandemic and the closure of therapeutic supports state-wide, we opened SouthPoint last year, and expanded it to cover the middle school, this year,” Nichols shares. (SouthPoint is an alternative therapeutic program that was created to take the place of Centerpoint, a regional program previously run through the Howard Center, Northeastern Family Institute, and Matrix Health systems that had ceased operations.) The District also participates in Project Search, which serves young people with significant intellectual and developmental disabilities. “It connects graduates with internships in the community,” Nichols adds “It’s a special education initiative that bridges that time between high school and early adulthood and entrance into the community.” Like SouthPoint, we partner with neighboring districts to offer this program. In the SBSD, working to better support teachers and staff is a goal of ours. Last year, the District implemented the Panorama Education Company’s survey platform for students as a way of assessing and screening them in areas of belonging, relationships and social and emotional well-being. Monica Desrochers, Director of Diversity, Inclusion, Antiracism, and Emotional and Social Learning, reports that the District also issued a version of the survey to teachers, staff, and parents/guardians. “The feedback indicated a desire for more explicit learning and conversations about race,” Desrochers notes.“Also, to better understand ourselves, our own power, our own privilege, and how that shows up 275 CIVIL AND MUNICIPAL VOLUME 05, ISSUE 12 SOUTH BURLINGTON SCHOOL DISTRICT
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