By Tim Daly
While certain Hempstead Town school districts have removed information about diversity, equity and inclusion programs from their websites, they are not abandoning DEI initiatives, according to school officials.
A survey conducted in the spring by The Long Island Advocate of school district websites in Hempstead found five published their DEI policies on their websites, while 24 did not. Some had recently removed the policies.
Such changes come amid intense scrutiny of DEI programs by the federal Department of Education, after President Trump signed a series of executive orders calling for them to be disbanded. On Jan. 29 this year, only nine days after taking office, Trump signed Executive Order 14190, ending what he called “radical indoctrination in K-12 schooling.”
The president included what he termed “gender ideology,” which recognizes multiple gender identities beyond male and female, and critical race theory, which examines society through the lens of racial discrimination, among his targets.
Among the districts that removed their DEI policies from their websites was Uniondale. In the spring, a search turned up nothing about DEI on the district’s website. However, Uniondale, a majority Hispanic and Black school system, had earlier published its DEI policy. The Advocate found it using the Wayback Time Machine, or Internet Archive, which allows users to search for earlier iterations of web pages. The DEI page had been up on the site as recently as August 2024.
It appears, however, that the district isn’t giving up on programs to promote diversity. Uniondale High School students, for example, took a field trip in April to Temple Gurdwara Mata Sahib Kaur, a Sikh temple in Glen Cove, to build cultural understanding.
“With whatever initiatives and programs are going on in the school district, I think it’s important to have policies on the pages and promote their initiatives and values,” said Aisha Wilson-Carter, vice president of the Long Island Strong Schools Association, which advocates for DEI initiatives in the schools. “It’s definitely important to let the community know what they offer.”
But Wilson-Carter, who is Hofstra University’s executive director of equity and inclusion, emphasized that having policies which are regularly practiced is more consequential than posting information online. “These pages’ existence is much less important than what’s happening in the district,” Wilson-Carter said.
The New York State Education Department refused to comply with the Trump administration’s demands that DEI programs and principles be removed from schools. On April 24, federal judges in Maryland, New Hampshire and Washington, D.C. barred the Trump administration from withholding federal funding from public schools that maintained DEI programs.
The lack of information about school districts’ DEI policies is not new. A 2023 report by LISSA found that only 32% of Long Island school districts included information about their DEI programs and policies on their district websites.
The data for this report was obtained by LISSA through online surveys and Freedom of Information requests. The organization included information about hiring practices, school culture, curriculum, professional development, existence of DEI committees and climate surveys in its report. The document did not, however, name schools or districts.
Now, the only way for parents in many districts, including the overwhelming majority of districts in Hempstead Town, to view DEI policies is through a records request.
“Making DEI information easily accessible on the district website” was among the LISSA’s recommendations for administrators, citing transparency in communication with community members as a means to build trust among parents and hold districts accountable for implementing DEI policies and practices.
Schools are not legally required to publish information about DEI online, just as they are not required to implement DEI programs, according to April April Francis-Taylor, president of ERASE Racism, an advocacy group focused on ending racial disparities on Long Island. While the New York State Education Department has a DEI policy that it drafted in 2021, which gives guidance to schools about how to implement DEI programs, the policy is not a law.
“Technically, districts can choose to adopt the State Education Department’s DEI policy, or they can choose not to,” Francis-Taylor said.
With whatever initiatives and programs are going on in the school district, I think it’s important to have policies on the pages and promote their initiatives and values.”
Aisha Wilson-Carter, Vice President, Long Island Strong Schools Association
Wilson-Carter said the lack of information online may be due to a reluctance to put policies under the often stigmatized DEI label. “It’s unfortunate that these terms have been co-opted to mean something negative by those who have a certain ideological stance,” Wilson-Carter said.
There have been previous instances of DEI-related backlash among Long Island school districts, such as a lawsuit filed by the Massapequa School District after the New York State Board of Regents voted in 2023 to ban Native American mascots. The district sued to keep its mascot, the Chiefs. Trump recently weighed in on the issue in a tweet supporting the school district.
In June, the federal Department of Education declared the mascot ban violated federal civil rights law. The State Education Department and Board of Regents have been referred to the U.S. Department of Justice for investigation after they rejected the federal DOE’s claim that the state policy violated civil rights law.
Scott Brinton contributed to this story.
