School Culture and Diversity
One of the district's key strategic initiatives this year is Safety, Security and School Culture. These three important elements are directly related to learning. Our goal at Pine-Richland is to continually enhance and improve each element to establish an environment of comfort, confidence, trust and safety for all.
Planned next steps include communicating with our families about topics that our principals and others are sharing with students related to school culture and diversity and asking parents to engage in those conversations with their children at home; holding student/parent/staff focus groups to talk about recommended actions and using building-level teams to implement changes; and identifying ways to engage more parents.
Action to Date
Messages to Families
Each building principal has crafted messages to families that were linked in their school's Friday Flash. These messages outline what students and staff are doing in the building related to school culture and diversity. Please refer to the Friday Flash archives linked under Resources on each school's website to view the messages from the school principal on September 15, November 3 and February 16 (for K-3) and November 10 and February 16 (for 4-12).
Focus Groups
On November 16, focus groups were held with middle school and high school students. Findings from these meetings were shared at the December 11 school board meeting.
Core Text Evaluation
The 9th grade core text review process includes researching and selecting a range of novels that meet instructional goals and that are current and diverse. Students were asked to read four of the novels under consideration and share opinions. Currently, there are three books under consideration and on public display through December 14. A recommendation for a new core text will be made at the January school board meeting. See below for the three texts available for public review. After reviewing one or more of the texts, please complete this evaluation form no later than 5:00 pm on Friday, January 5, 2024.
Core Texts Under Review
Romania, 1989. Communist regimes are crumbling across Europe. Seventeen-year-old Cristian Florescu dreams of becoming a writer, but Romanians aren’t free to dream; they are bound by rules and force. Amidst the tyrannical dictatorship of Nicolae Ceaușescu in a country governed by isolation and fear, Cristian is blackmailed by the secret police to become an informer. He’s left with only two choices: betray everyone and everything he loves—or use his position to creatively undermine the most notoriously evil dictator in Eastern Europe.
In the past, Misbah was a dreamer and storyteller, newly married to Toufiq in an arranged match in Pakistan. After their young life is shaken by tragedy, they come to the United States and open the Clouds' Rest Inn Motel, hoping for a new start. In the present, Salahudin and Noor are more than best friends; they are family. Growing up as outcasts in the small desert town of Juniper, California, they understand each other the way no one else does. Until The Fight, which destroys their bond with the
swift fury of a star exploding. From one of today’s most cherished and bestselling young adult authors comes a breathtaking novel of young love, old regrets, and forgiveness—one that’s both tragic and poignant in its tender ferocity.
Isaiah Wilson has a reputation in his community and hides the fact that he is an avid reader and poet. Angel Hill is a loner, mostly disregarded by her peers as a goody-goody. Her father is dying, and her family's financial situation is in turmoil. Though they've attended the same schools, Isaiah never noticed Angel. Then their English teacher offers them a job on her mobile library. But life changes on May 31, 1921, when a vicious mob storms the Black community of Greenwood [Greenwood
Massacre of 1921], leaving the town destroyed and thousands of residents displaced. Only then, Isaiah, Angel, and their peers realize who their real enemies are.