Advocates in Brookline push to save school district’s Office of Educational Equity
May 06, 2025
Advocates have raised over $188,000 in an attempt to save Brookline’s Office of Educational Equity for next school year. But whether money will be taken in by the town’s school committee is still up in the air.
The school committee will vote May 15 on whether to accept one-time funds raised by an outside coalition to temporarily preserve the office, which focuses on advancing equity and inclusion programs and handling discrimination complaints in the Brookline school district.
The office’s two full-time positions were eliminated in a narrow 5-4 school committee vote in mid-March. The move was one of many taken to close an $8 million budget gap, along with eliminating unfilled administrative positions, decreasing athletic funding and removing a principal role and senior director of teaching and learning position. Last week, the school committee approved a final $142 million budget for the next fiscal year starting July 1, Brookline.News reported.
Shuttering the equity office will save the district over $380,000, according to school committee member Mariah Nobrega, who voted to keep the office.
An online fundraiser organized by Brookline for Racial Justice and Equity raised $188,093 of its $204,516 goal before the deadline on April 30. That money would go to keep the assistant director position, the office’s equity leads and other supplies for the 2025-26 school year. If advocates had reached the initial target, they would have aimed to fundraise the full $380,000, covering the executive director position as well.
“I did not expect to have to do this,” said Raul Fernandez, executive director of the advocacy group. “And there’s a lot of other work that we could and should be doing right now.“
If the funds are not accepted by the school committee, donations will be released back to contributors, Fernandez said. Several school committee members who voted to eliminate the office did not respond to requests for comment on the fundraiser or upcoming discussions.
The move to eliminate the equity office comes amid budget and leadership challenges in the district. Brookline Superintendent Linus Guillory, who has served in that role since 2021, recently announced his resignation. His last day is June 30.
Some community advocates expressed dismay at shuttering an office designed to protect students’ rights at a time when the Trump administration has tried to dismantle policies related to diversity, equity and inclusion.
Chris Chanyasulkit, a coalition member for the Brookline Asian American Family Network, said the office’s elimination will leave educators without support since it offers district-wide professional development.
“Perhaps now more than ever, [educators and staff are] really dealing with a time of chaos and division as the rest of the nation grapples with DEI,” she said.
Advocates say the office also offers critical support to marginalized students. The equity office, established in 2018, works to ensure that all students, regardless of their background, have the same opportunities to reach their full educational potential, according to its webpage.
The office also oversees a team of 12 full-time teachers across the district who work to implement equity initiatives in their own classrooms and schools.
Districts such as Revere, Cambridge and Worcester have similar equity offices.
Brookline equity office Executive Director Claire Galloway-Jones said the team has developed mechanisms for students to report incidents of bullying and discrimination, trained more than 250 teachers, held over 100 conflict resolution practice circles and established affinity programs at several schools.
“After we had already given our budget away this year to support the district… it’s incredibly disappointing,” she said. Unless funding is restored, the last day of her position will be on June 30.
Some school committee members proposed other ways to help the district address equity goals, including focusing more on academic enrichment, work readiness for low-income students and the Calculus Project, which helps more students of color and low-income students take AP Calculus classes, according to March 13 meeting minutes.
Brookline’s equity office has experienced its share of challenges, including high turnover. Jenée Uttaro, the office’s former executive director, left the role in 2023 after what she said was a lack of clarity for the vision of the office.
People would come to her “with anything, for everything,” Uttaro said in an interview. She stressed that district leadership needs to outline explicit goals on how the office should operate.
“I feel like that office is constantly spinning its wheels until it has the actual buy-in and the appropriate understanding of ‘what is the purpose of this role?’… not just that we have it because it looks good.” she said.
Last school year, the office and district were named in a civil rights complaint filed with the U.S. Department of Education over claims it didn’t do enough to protect a Black student who was allegedly the target of racial bullying at school.
The office was in the early stages of conducting an audit to determine equity issues the district is most struggling with by analyzing spending, student performance and survey data, according to Galloway-Jones.
Deane Coady, a Brookline resident of nearly 40 years whose grandchildren attend Brookline High School and Lincoln School, expressed her support for keeping the office at a recent fundraiser for the campaign.
“[Their efforts] are critical because we live in a diverse, wonderful society but not everybody’s treated equally and we still have systemic racism,” she said. “So we have to still work on it really, really hard.”