Scarsdale PTA committees wade into diversity, equity and inclusion

According to Kelli Halyard, co-chair of the PT Council’s umbrella DEI committee, the group has not yet met with the DEI committees, but has plans to begin sharing ideas soon. The focus, said Halyard, will be for PTA chairs to share what they’re hearing from parents, what they’re learning about DEI, what they believe the community needs are, what resources already exist for DEI and how the committees can best serve the community.

“All of the PTAs operate independently, but we’re all super collaborative and so we sort of thread everyone together,” said Halyard about the PT Council’s role. “We’ll be bringing the schools together and we’ll discuss each school’s specific DEI plan so we can determine where there’s crossover, where we can collaborate [and] where we can combine and make something bigger or more impactful.”

Ahead of the pack, the Scarsdale Middle School DEI committee is already making headway. The group has launched a DEI committee website and is planning events to host for parents and students. In July, the committee held an event for parents to share their aspirations for the committee.

Mayra Kirkendall-Rodríguez, who co-chairs the SMS committee with Esthela Lecuona and Rachana Singh, said the group has started making heritage pages for its website, which are meant to serve as resources for parents, staff and students.

For Hispanic Heritage Month, which runs from Sept. 15 to Oct. 15, the group rolled out a Hispanic heritage page on the website and commissioned students to make art and photo collages to show their interpretation of Hispanic culture.

“It was a nice mix of students. We had some Hispanic, some whites, a couple of kids of Asian background. So it was really very heartening in that way,” said Kirkendall-Rodríguez. “Art can be really unifying.”

Kirkendall-Rodríguez said she’s already heard from parents who want to make Jewish, Asian and Muslim heritage pages.

Besides their website, the SMS DEI PTA committee is also planning events to inform parents about the specifics of how DEI will be integrated into the school environment and about diversity across the spectrum.

On Oct. 12 at 6:30 p.m., the SMS DEI PTA committee will host a presentation for parents by Assistant Superintendent Edgar McIntosh and SMS Principal Megan Troy who will address how DEI will be incorporated into the middle school program. The presentation will be followed by a question-and-answer session.

“The DEI committee is trying really hard to be very inclusive — no pun intended — of the parents; getting them involved so that they can ask the questions,” said Kirkendall-Rodríguez. “Many parents are not going to go to a board of education meeting and even people who go to board meetings — you only have three minutes to speak. We want to have an event where … there is a formality to it in that McIntosh and Troy will present, but that they are presenting knowing full well ahead of time what … questions that we as parents are interested in.”

In the spring the SMS PTA DEI committee will also hold events talking about transgender issues and neurodiversity.

Last year, Kirkendall-Rodríguez was a co-chair for Fox Meadow School PTA’s DEI committee and she will be serving this year once again on the PTA’s multicultural committee. Although also listed as the chair for Fox Meadow PTA’s diversity and inclusion committee for the 2021-22 school year, Kirkendall-Rodríguez said there had been limited discussions about a DEI committee at the Fox Meadow PTA this year. When asked about the Fox Meadow PTA DEI committee and its future plans Anna Blake, Fox Meadow PTA president, deferred to PT Council President Megan Simon and Superintendent Thomas Hagerman.

Halyard told the Inquirer that each school PTA has a DEI committee.

DEI PTA representatives at both Edgewood and Scarsdale High School did not respond to requests for an interview.

Beth Keyser, Heathcote PTA president, told the Inquirer the group’s committees were just getting started and they hadn’t yet put together a plan for the upcoming year, and she noted last year the COVID-19 pandemic had set their plans back to square one. She said plans for the DEI committee would be put together “in the next few weeks.”

At Quaker Ridge, Trish Chen, who co-chairs the PTA DEI committee with Farah Kathwari, said this was the first year the PTA had a DEI committee. She said a planning meeting was slated for next week to find volunteers and to go over events, including a plan to have a speaker at a PTA meeting in November, potentially similar to the SMS PTA’s scheduled talk with McIntosh.

“Although it might seem repetitive … there are definitely some parents that don’t have middle schoolers so they won’t be attending that meeting,” said Chen.

Having served on Quaker Ridge PTA’s global learning committee, Chen said the DEI committee planned to collaborate with that group on projects, such as sprucing up the school’s bulletin boards with a diversity theme.

The PTA committee also wants to focus on LGBTQ issues and collaborate with the school librarian to bring authors who write about DEI-related issues to speak to students and parents.

“We’re still in the very early stages of planning events and since we are a new group we’re kind of going in it blind,” said Chen.

Greenacres’ DEI committee co-chair Alison Milam said the Greenacres PTA started discussions on formalizing a DEI group in the summer of 2020.

Originally, the group was formed to respond to national incidents involving race and to have a dialogue with parents, teachers and students. Although that mindset still exists, the group has evolved with a renewed focus in unison with the district’s DEI goals to create a welcoming and affirming environment for students and to help families feel they are an asset to the community.

Milam said the group defers to teachers for instructing students about DEI and the committee will focus on giving parents tools to reinforce that.

“The overall thing at Greenacres definitely started with … creating students who are global citizens. We want to have students who contribute back to the community [and] understand what’s going on in the world,” said Milam.

As the school year progresses, the DEI committee will also focus on making sure there are books in the schools and in the classroom from minority voices and that address DEI-related issues. There is also interest in starting a book club for parents and teachers, as well as encouraging the Greenacres community to get involved in future PT Council-led speaker events, such as the PTC-sponsored presentation on implicit bias and cultural competency with the Rev. Dr. Bryant T. Marks Sr., a diversity and implicit bias expert.

Halyard said the PT Council was considering Marks returning for another program this school year.

“For me specifically, I really would like to be involved in helping these kinds of ideas get in front of students in a way that they may not have seen them before,” said Milam. “I think it’s all about making sure that the students have this vocabulary and this language … and that they hear from a lot of different voices.”