LYNNFIELD — Dr. Darnisa Amante-Jackson gave an in-depth presentation to the School Committee, addressing her Findings Report, the experiences that have been expressed to her from both students and teachers, as well as recommendations on how to move forward.
Her presentation, “Findings and Recommendations for Strengthening Climate, Safety, Belonging, Trust, and Organizational Coherence in Lynnfield Public Schools,” comes at a time when incidents of discrimination have been reported at both the middle and high school.
Amante-Jackson said the district reached out to her this past April with an interest in looking at not just incident reports but creating opportunities for community members to be heard.
“I’ve been watching a lot of our School Committee meetings,” Amante-Jackson said. “We have a very robust section in here about measurement and accountability with care and oversight.”
At the end of May, Amante-Jackson’s scope of engagement was extended to include community office hours, which started on June 4. Over the course of just 20 days, Amante-Jackson said she completed community office hours with a total of 22 people ranging from community members to students at the elementary, middle, and high school levels. She also spoke to teachers, counselors, and administrators, of which she joined their meeting to present what a new incident response protocol framework could look like and to also get their perspectives.
As a result, Amante-Jackson has created a Findings Report that includes both an Incident Response and Restoration Framework with a step-by-step process of first reporting incidents, then investigating, responding, restoring, and, finally, learning what patterns are present and the systems that need to be adjusted to prevent future harm. She also went over a Climate and Safety Improvement Cycle that administrators can use to monitor what is happening within the school, as well as a Student Response Framework. Amante-Jackson has also developed a Professional Learning and Implementation Roadmap.
“While I was reviewing, something really huge occurred to me,” Amante-Jackson stated. “What started first as an incident response review — how does the district respond to incidents — actually turned into a different question about the district’s organizational coherence … that means how well do our policies speak to each other.”
Of her six key findings, her first is that LPS’ Incident Response practices are lacking consistency. While Lynnfield does have strategic plans and goals that identify that climate safety is important, as well as existing compliance documents, these practices are being implemented differently within the different schools.
“That inconsistency has caused a true breakdown of trust,” she said, later adding: “The absence of continuous, or the consistent use of the Incident Response documents across the buildings, I think has created a huge ripple that I continue to hear in the office hours.”
Amante-Jackson also revealed that students at different schools in Lynnfield are having completely different experiences. At the elementary level, the difference between Summer Street and Huckleberry Hill “has felt to community members like a true difference of representation.”
As a result, that can create a feeling of “non-belonging” and “isolation” for students who may feel as though they have not yet been able to see teachers who look like them.
“I’m not suggesting replacing the teaching force; I’m just also emphasizing that representation in the workforce also creates tethering,” she clarified.
Meanwhile, Amante-Jackson shared that students and families at Huckleberry Hill have communicated that they have been able to form smaller affinity groups and even play groups.
“There’s just more racial difference, economic difference, representation,” she said.
When incidents do happen, she’s found that leaders at different buildings respond in different ways. Some principals are sending newsletters while others are directly speaking to students and families. Some, however, might not communicate at all.
“Depending on where you go to elementary (school) … families could have a completely different expectation at the beginning of their journey in the public schools,” she said. “And then it will change in middle school.”
By the time they get to high school, she added, that expectation could very well change yet again.
Her second finding is that communication processes and expectations are unclear. Because there are currently different investigation approaches within the schools, leaders are using different methods to report incidents.
While incidents are being reported, Amante-Jackson explained that the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) only captures “high-level incidents,” specifically expulsions, crimes, and violence. There’s another tool called Power Schools that is used to track behavioral challenges and when families are being reached out to, but not every school has the same reporting practices. The elementary reporting, specifically, relies on partnership with the school psychologist, restoration, and healing — but it doesn’t have witnesses.
While the middle school reporting does have a section for witnesses, students have admitted that “they are afraid to say what happened” and are not comfortable reporting things out of fear of being called a “snitch” or losing relationships.
Ensuring confidentiality is not only the responsibility of LPS, Amante-Jackson emphasized, but townwide.
“In a small town, it becomes really hard to guarantee that people aren’t going to find out who said it and what happened … This is deeper than the schools,” Amante-Jackson said.
Students want clearer reporting and supportive pathways, while teachers also desire greater support as well as response training. That includes learning about scenarios involving different types of incidents within a smaller community, as well as resources on how to talk about racism, antisemitism, ableism, and gender and economic differences.
“That’s the other hard thing to say in Lynnfield,” Amante-Jackson pointed out. “The feelings of non-belonging are not just about race and religion; they’re also about class. They’re about newcomers.”
Last year, every LPS principal did the legal compliance training on how to report incidents and how they are coded, but the training did not include communication. Amante-Jackson said that, this summer, the training will expand to also include communication coaching, role plays, and monitoring data and patterns in the building to lessen patterns of incidents.
Her other recommendations include seven strategic actions, the first of which is implementing an Incident Response and Restoration Framework immediately. The second is building administrator capacity through coaching and calibration, followed by also building staff response capacity through on-going professional learning and resources that both they, as well as families, can access.
The fourth action includes developing student learning — how, where, and who they can report to — as well as support structures. The fifth is implementing climate, culture, and incident monitoring systems. The sixth action is strengthening the communication infrastructure; the seventh is establishing a district climate, belonging, and community advisory structure.
Amante-Jackson imagines this could be a committee to keep transparency open, or even a K-12 council where families, students, teachers, and even administrators could all inform what goes into the data repository, the student learning, and provide feedback on different frameworks created.
This, she emphasized, is essential.
“The trust breach is too deep here. Anything done in a silo is interpreted as a cover up. It’s a hard word to say out loud, but I’m telling you that word came up 27 times,” Amante-Jackson said. “The absence of knowing what happens means people are creating narratives about what happened because they don’t know what happened because of the communication.”
Amante-Jackson has also outlined the questions that the School Committee should be asking regarding whether systems are working, if students are experiencing belonging and incidents are decreasing, whether staff is prepared, families are informed, and outcomes are improving.
“The School Committee does not manage day-to-day operations,” one of the slides read. “The School Committee leads the systems that creates conditions for success.”
The specific data that is needed for oversight and accountability includes academic outcomes, school climate and belonging, safety and incident data, system implementation and resources, family and community engagement, staff capacity and well-being, and equity and access.
After the presentation, School Committee member Kim Baker Donahue asked Amante-Jackson how long she typically sees improvements within districts. She answered that districts who have prioritized capacity building have made a “full flip” in three school years.
In her experience, one district who did not have alignment took as long as eight years.
“The first year is getting people comfortable with the new framework,” she said. “The second year is usually students being more forward facing and doing their training. Year three is when we’re fully living it.”
