School Design
Positive and Inviting School Climate
Are you creating a school climate where students feel safe and heard and have strong relationships with adults who can support them?
When focusing on Positive and Inviting School Climates, strategic school leaders…
- Ensure each student feels safe through transparent, culturally sensitive, and consistently enforced rules and discipline policies.
- Implement structures, time, and processes to ensure that each student has positive relationships with staff and other students.
- Embed social-emotional development opportunities into both instruction and standalone structures.
- Implement structures and strategies that enable educators to engage families actively and meaningfully.
Explore these resources to get started:
Positive and Inviting School Climate Guidebook: The Alliance for Resource Equity
This interactive workbook provides a structure to help your team better understand what is causing challenges related to Positive & Inviting School Climate and identify concrete next steps for improving the experiences that students have in school.
Toolkit: Building Strong Relationships Through Advisory & Lower Teacher Loads
Students are returning to school with unprecedented social and emotional needs due to pandemic-related disruptions. Explore our toolkit on investing ESSER funds into advisory approaches and strategically scheduling and staffing to lighten teacher loads.
Building a Racial Equity Office to Give All Students a Path Toward Success
In 2017, the Dallas ISD Board took a big step. It unanimously passed a Racial Equity Resolution and Policy and established the Racial Equity Office (REO). We worked with the district to write a detailed whitepaper about its experience.