This story by Briana Brady was first published in The Citizen on April 17.
Bageshree Blasius and Christina Daudelin, staff members at Champlain Valley School District, only recently had their titles changed.
While they might be currently known as student and community engagement learning facilitators, for the last few years, the pair have been diversity equity and inclusion coaches. However, although their titles might be changing, according to the two women, the work will largely stay the same — work they say a lot of people misunderstand.
“We’re basically making sure that every student feels safe and like they belong, they feel included, they feel safe, and that their achievements are not limited by any identity” said Blasius, who is also the Title IX coordinator for the district. “That goes for disability, it goes for race, it goes for socio-economic status. It’s every kid, and that’s what I think people don’t understand about DEI.”
On Monday, after having initially asked superintendents throughout the state to sign on to letters certifying compliance with President Trump’s April 3 order to remove DEI programs in order to receive federal funding in K-12 schools, Secretary of Education Zoie Saunders instead sent a letter to the federal Department of Education that offered a rebuttal.
“No federal or state law prohibits diversity, equity, or inclusion. The Request references ‘certain DEI practices’ and ‘illegal DEI,’ but neither term is defined in the Request, and no definition has been provided,” the letter read. “In Vermont, diversity, equity and inclusion practices are supportive of all students, and aim to create and sustain positive, welcoming learning environments.”
The work
According to Blasius and Daudelin, every day in their job is a little different. They run professional development for faculty and help shape inclusive curriculum. They also spend quite a bit of their time supporting faculty, staff, and students through restorative justice practices.
“Bageshree and I see every terrible thing that happens in our schools,” Daudelin said.
For example, if a child uses a slur at school, even if they don’t know what it means, Daudelin, Blasius or another coordinator is involved in resolving the issue, and helping the kids learn and heal from the situation.
“One of our things that we always say to students is it is never our job to get you in trouble, and so if you are saying these things because you have heard them, but you really don’t know what they mean, you can ask us. You can ask us the most ridiculous, inappropriate questions, because it’s our job to help you figure it out, not to punish you,” Daudelin said.
Blasius, as the Title IX coordinator, is also involved in mediating sexual harassment issues or cases of gender discrimination that arise.
According to the pair, at the core of what they do, however, is connecting with students. Every week at Shelburne Community School, Daudelin takes a group of boys who are struggling to connect in the classroom, and who are marginalized in some way, out to play basketball together. She said it’s helping them know that there’s an adult they can trust in the building.
“And I’m getting really, really good at schooling middle school boys in H-O-R-S-E and P-I-G,” she said.
The students
Hailley Hem, a Champlain Valley Union High School sophomore, said when she first moved to Vermont from California in the second grade, the school put her in programming through its Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Center, which provides classes and support for students who speak another language. Hem’s parents are Chinese Cambodian, and she speaks Khmer at home.
Hem said the transition from California to Vermont was hard. She had previously been in a classroom full of Asian, Black and Latino students. Now, there was hardly anyone else that looked like her.
“I see why they thought this program would benefit me, and it really did, since I got to be in a group with a lot of multicultural students and I’m pretty sure that would be under that category of DEI,” she said.
Now, Hem is a member of the high school’s Racial Alliance Committee. Both she and another member, Olivia Cieri, said they see how diversity and inclusion inform some of the things they’re learning in class, such as reading discussions of “The Color Purple” or “The Underground Railroad.”
“Having the space to talk about the history of America, and then also connect it to some of the things we see today, and some of the systemic issues that come from that, is important,” Cieri said.
Hem agreed, adding that talking about painful parts of history and the fiction that explores it teaches them how to have difficult discussions with each other – something she said is often missing from political conversations today.
“When we have stuff like this in our curriculum, it teaches us how to do it, and it helps encourage more open conversations in the future and hopefully helps us actually have open conversations with each other,” she said.
The district
According to superintendent Adam Bunting, the reason the school district is dropping the term “DEI” from its titles is not because it plans to change its values or programming. Instead, he said, it’s a necessary broadening of scope. Due to budget constraints this year, the district is cutting their director of student wellness. Asma Abunaib, who has been the director of diversity and inclusion, is going to take on those duties as well, and become Director of Student and Community Engagement.
Additionally, DEI, he said, has become such a politicized term that no one knows what it means anymore. He prefers engagement.
“When I talk about student engagement, I am talking about inclusion, I’m talking about diversity, we’re talking about equity. It’s all of those things. How do we make our curriculum more accessible? How do people see themselves in the curricula?” Bunting said.
Although the district may be supporting diversity, equity, and inclusion programming, according to Daudelin, there’s still room for improvement. Daudelin emphasized that the greatest diversity in the district comes from differences in socio-economic backgrounds among its students and communities, and that comes with built in inequities across the schools.
While some community schools’ PTOs can fundraise tens of thousands of dollars, she said, others can’t, which makes a difference when it comes to what teachers might be able to buy for their classrooms or the kinds of field trips students can take.
Hinesburg Community School, she said, doesn’t have an accessible playground, meaning that paraeducators are often shoveling snow away from the tennis courts because it’s the only place for students with wheelchairs to go.
“You talk about getting rid of DEI, you’re not allowed to talk about DEI, you can’t be elevating anyone over another group. I think we would say no one is elevating anyone over anyone. We’re struggling to even level playing fields,” she said.