PASCO COUNTY Fla. -- The Pasco County School District will start training armed school guardians this summer to protect campuses from active shooters -- and the group called 'Pasco County Agents for Change' is pushing for wide scale diversity and inclusion training.
- Group pushes for diversity, inclusion training in schools
- Pasco Agents for Change hope to train staff, teachers, students
Pinellas and Hillsborough County Schools partner with a group called Community Tampa Bay for its diversity and inclusion training, and the Pasco County group is hoping to partner with them as well.
Pasco Agents for Change say while some schools do a good job handling matters of diversity, others do not.
Sheena Lofton helped create Pasco Agents for Change, but she is also a parent with a teenage son that struggled with diversity issues last school year.
"Once we go in and we have teachers and administrators getting the training, we also have to look at our students and maybe implementing some programs that actually celebrate diversity and inclusion, not just about race but it includes all of our students across the gamut," Lofton said.
The group says school administrators would get the training first, then those administrators would branch out to the schools to train teachers and other staff. And finally, the group wants the training made part of the curriculum to target students.
"For educators, they are afraid to approach it because they feel like well maybe if I am not in that group I have no point to talk about, you know, I don't have any backing to talk about it. So I just avoid the subject altogether. So that will be one of the biggest hurdles is getting over that fear of, you know, you can talk about diversity, you can talk about inclusion, and it's okay," former Pasco County teacher Brittany Powell said.
Pasco Agents for Change said the training will come at the cost to the school district, but they say it is mere pennies on the dollar in the overall budget.