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Village at Ithaca director and longtime educator urge equity-driven 'village rep' role on hiring panels
Summary
At a Team of Resources Community Committee meeting, Roberta Wallet and Merrill Pitts described how the Village at Ithaca's 'village rep' appointments and EILC trainings aimed to diversify hiring panels, and they discussed application barriers, alternative submission formats, HR training requirements, and retention measures such as tuition support and mentoring for Education Support Professionals.
Roberta Wallet, a longtime teacher and lead member of the Equity and Inclusion Leadership Committee (EILC), told the Team of Resources Community Committee that intentional representation on hiring committees helped prevent hiring patterns that replicated the district’s existing demographics. "If we don't have people who are intentionally on the committee for the purpose of making sure that we hire teachers who are culturally competent... we are going to just keep replicating the people who don't know how to teach children of color," Wallet said.
Merrill Pitts, executive director of the Village at Ithaca, described how the village recruited and trained "village reps" (formerly called community reps) to serve on interview panels with an explicit equity lens. "The point is to be a representative to multiple…
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