Riverside Elementary School District 96 is contracting with a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion expert to work with students and staff over the next year.
At the Feb. 21 meeting, the District 96 Board of Education is expected to formally approve a contract paying Ivette Dubiel, CEO of Systemic Educational Equity in Illinois, $12,800 to work with the district.
During the past five months, Dubiel, who also works with Riverside Brookfield High School, has worked with the D96 administrative team to provide DEI training for which she was paid $2,700 for three, multi-hour sessions.
Dubiel will hold four sessions with teachers and other staff beginning April 26 and running through Feb. 14, 2025. The four sessions for staff will include sessions of Equity 101: An Overview, Understanding Implicit Bias, Microaggressions/Modern Day isms and Dimensions of isms. Sessions will last from two to three hours.
In December, Dubiel will work with fifth to eighth grade students, meeting with students at their schools to spend about 90 minutes with each grade level. The purpose of the student sessions will be to elicit students opinions about their schools and educational experiences, asking students questions such as what do you like about your school, what do you wish was different about your school, in what ways does your school do a good job of making you feel safe and welcome and in what ways does your school need to improve to make you feel safe and welcome.
“It’s not delving in specifically around a diversity, equity and inclusivity lens, but that’s part of what we’re hoping to better understand,” said Supt. Martha Ryan-Toye.
Ryan-Toye said that she has been impressed with Dubiel’s work with the district’s administrative team.
“She’s really sharp,” Ryan-Toye said. “She’s very easy to listen to. She’s not judgmental, she’s interesting, she’s well informed. She makes you think.”
RBHS school board president Deanna Zalas participated in a session Dubiel held for school board members last fall and said she was impressed.
“She is considered certainly an expert in educational circles,” Zalas said.
Dubiel has worked with RBHS since 2021 and has also worked with the LaGrange Area Special Education cooperative and the Berwyn South school district.
“Her name is well known in our area,” Ryan-Toye said.
Dubiel also works as an adjunct professor at Aurora University and at Lewis University. She is the former executive director of equity and professional learning for the DuPage Regional Office of Education and the former director of educational equity at Indian Prairie Unit School District 204. She is also a former teacher in Oswego. Before she became a teacher, she worked as an investigator for the State of Illinois and the Chicago Police Department’s Office of Professional Standards.
Dubiel has a doctorate degree in education from Lewis University. She holds three master’s degrees, two in education from Aurora University and one in public administration from Illinois Institute of Technology. She earned her bachelor degree majoring in organizational communication from Northern Illinois University in 1997.
D96 will hire an additional social worker next year
In other action, the board is likely to approve hiring an additional social worker at the administration’s request next year, meaning that there will be a social worker stationed at each of the district’s four elementary schools.
The district has six full time social workers, three at L.J. Hauser Junior High School, one each at Ames and Central, and one shared by Blythe Park and Hollywood. Next year, each school will have one social worker, but the social worker at Hollywood School, the district’s smallest school, will also work with students and families in the district’s early learner program, which is based at Ames School.
