September 12, 2022

 

The Bangor School Department is happy to announce the official start of a Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging partnership with the University of Maine. 

This collaboration builds off of the recommendations from our Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB) committee. Shepherded by the College of Education and Human Development, this partnership will involve three courses taught across the academic year, building a cohort of DEIB educators with all of our schools being represented. This course will allow the participants, including myself, to learn about personal implicit bias and help us to provide training for our colleagues within the Bangor School Department. 

In conjunction with the three courses, this partnership includes a collaborative equity audit that will gather de-identified student data for analysis of disparities, a climate survey, interviews, and focus groups of teachers, staff, students, and community members to help us better understand our community and how we can become better. 

With the guidance of the University of Maine, the Bangor School Department is building a learning community of educators in primary through higher education. We look forward to combining their diverse practices, identities, and approaches to this work with the shared goal of building a caring, inclusive, and equity-driven educational experience for everyone in our schools. 

We relish this partnership as a highly tangible way to create a sense of belonging for all students in the Bangor School Department. I would like to share a preview of an agenda item that will be presented at this week’s school committee meeting. Bangor High School will report the highest graduation rate in the history of the BSD for the class of 2022. This has been a multifaceted year-long goal. The efforts of our mentoring program to connect students with significant adults, as well as the graduation coach’s ability to work with students on a pathway to graduation, have been fundamental to our success. This partnership is one more example of a partnership that will help create a stronger sense of belonging, which will create a bright and successful future for all students in Bangor. 

Enthusiastically yours,

James Tager
Superintendent
Bangor School Department