LOS ANGELES — As the country’s second-largest school district looks to service its multicultural classrooms, district officials took steps towards finding out how they can improve the classroom experience, and their focus is on Asian-American students.
LAUSD closed out Asian Pacific American Heritage Month with the “Everyone Counts” resolution.
The resolution, believed to be the first of its kind in the country, will use data to identify specific issues among Asian American students in the nations second largest school district.
“We are committed to your success, this district has changed the way we identify our racial-ethnic identifications, how to disaggregate data, how to stay in conversations with the community, and above all how to reach out to every family so they know too yes, they too count,” says Monica Garcia, LAUSD Board President.
Eventually, the initiative will hope to lead to programs for specific communities in certain areas as needed.
Filipinos are one of the only Asian groups to have disaggregated data, makeup 2 percent of the student population, while Asians make up 4 percent of the 700-thousand strong LAUSD student body.
Breaking down this data will help these minority students improve by getting better services.
“The uniting message behind these stories is that not all our Asian students are thriving, and without disaggregated data LA Unified has no way in the means of quantifying its 85,000 or 18% AANHPI AMEMSA students,” said Andrew Murphy Office of LAUSD President.
The resolution will include Asian Pacific American, South Asian, and middle eastern students and employees, which Filipino community leaders welcome.
“This is going to be steps to get classes such as language classes ethnic studies and also mental health services for our Filipino community.”
Despite the unanimous passage, school board members did express a few concerns, and have asked that other ethnic groups including Hispanics should be also have their data broken down.
“I think it’ll be very helpful for us to know the progress and learning pluses and minuses per country.”
For the next 4 months, the district will develop a plan on how to accomplish its goal of making sure everyone counts.