[Image Description: National Equity Project logo on the left and BELE Network logo on the right.]
Building Equitable Learning Environments (BELE) District Network
Centering the wellbeing of BIPOC youth and communities in our education system.
About the NEP BELE District Network
The NEP Building Equitable Learning Environments (BELE) District Network is a cohort of school districts from across the country committed to dream, disrupt, and co-design more equitable, healing-centered, and joyful purposes of school and approaches to teaching and learning in partnership with Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) students.
By working in deep and sustained partnership with BIPOC students and their families, school districts learn how to co-design approaches that ensure that every student emerges from K-12 education with strong academic skills, social-emotional wellness and intelligence, a sense of agency and civic responsibility, an awareness and appreciation of their multiple identities and a broader set of competencies that equip them to be healthy, happy contributing adults who can make a positive change in the world.
The BELE District Network builds on the work of two regional NEP District Networks (Midwest launched in 2019 and LERN launched in 2020) and is supported by an innovative collaboration between the National Equity Project and the BELE Network Learning Partners including UChicago Consortium for School Research, Project for Education Research that Scales (PERTS), and the Collaborative for Social, Emotional and Academic Learning (CASEL). Current Midwest Network and LERN districts are invited and encouraged to apply to re-commit to the BELE approach for an additional two years to deepen and expand their equity redesign efforts and provide leadership within an expanded Network of school districts.
NEP’s BELE Network districts will work collaboratively across all roles in the system and community to apply current research and contribute to emerging research in the Science of Learning and Development (SoLD) in service of whole child, whole community wellness and racial justice.
Current School Cohort (2021-23)
Bloomfield Hills Schools, Michigan
Chicago Public Schools, Illinois
Davis Joint Unified School District, California
DeForest Area School District, Wisconsin
Elk Grove Unified School District, California
Forest Park School District 91, Illinois
Kalamazoo Public Schools, Michigan
Montclair Public Schools, New Jersey
Morgan Hill Unified School District, California
Northwest Regional ESD, Oregon
Princeton Public Schools, New Jersey
Troy School District, Michigan
Waunakee Community School District, Wisconsin
Why a Network? Why now?
We have all experienced tremendous loss and uncertainty over the last year; the disruption has been universal, but the impacts have not been distributed evenly. Historic and current racial injustices have become more visible for some and the demand from our young people, communities of color, and leaders committed to justice everywhere means we have both a responsibility and an opportunity to co-design more equitable ways of doing school that dismantle structural barriers to opportunity and work better for everyone.
Our collective future rests on the decisions and actions we make today to close the ‘knowing-doing gap’ and redesign our systems in accordance with the overwhelming research in the science of learning and development (SoLD) about what all young people need to grow, learn, and thrive. We can’t do this work alone; we will create our future together, learning from each other and supporting one another along the way in a community of belonging and resistance and with a commitment to creating systems that value and care for everyone.
The NEP BELE Network is NOT:
An ‘equity initiative’ separate from the core work of schools and districts;
A program or training;
A predetermined ‘solution’ to educational inequities in your system;
Experts telling you what to do to be more equitable.
Something has to be done about the way in which this world is set up.
June Jordan
Photo by Allison Shelley for American Education: Images of Teachers and Students in Action
Network Participation Overview
Participating school districts receive National Equity Project coaching, and technical assistance from BELE partners to:
Form and become a high functioning cross-role BELE Design Team utilizing Liberatory Mindsets to share power, build trust, dream, innovate, design, and test new possibilities.
Learn and apply National Equity Project’s Leading for Equity Framework:
To SEE where and how BIPOC students are thriving, and how the current rules of the system reproduce harm and consistent patterns of inequity;
To ENGAGEin ways with one another, students, families, and partners that builds trust and redistributes power to learn together how to create something better for everyone;
To ACT courageously in alignment with our values and implement on-going inquiry and reflection to deepen our learning and impact.
Collaboratively work and learn through a combination of:
Monthly 1-2 hour BELE District Design Team meetings
Monthly leadership coaching of identified BELE Design Team members
Ongoing within-district inquiry led by BELE Design Team members
Monthly whole Network convenings including BELE Design Teams from all participating districts and BELE Learning Partners
Implement what educators currently know about advancing whole child wellbeing and racial equity aligned with a set of BELE Essential Actions in context-responsive ways, while simultaneously learning and co-designing new approaches with students and other stakeholders at the classroom and system levels.
Implement Copilot-Elevate, a tool designed by PERTS to measure the quality and the equity of the learning conditions that support learner engagement and agency.
Document and share learning and impact in local, regional, and national forums.
BELE Network school districts are:
Passionately committed to prioritizing the brilliance, interests, and wellbeing of Black, Indigenous, Students of Color and ready to commit to learning and leading systemic change and the redesign of core school district and school functions, policies, and practices;
Teams of leaders from a school district that are diverse by gender, race and cross-functional roles; to include central office and site-based administrators, resource specialists, counselors, classroom teachers, students, Board members, and family/caregivers.