Kimberley Jr. Public School and Beaches Alternative School
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee

Introduction

Kimberley and Beaches’ Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee is committed to:

  • Promoting an environment that enables staff, students and parents to feel empowered, valued, respected and safe
  • Helping foster students’ sense of belonging
  • Cultivating a diverse and inclusive school community
  • Raising awareness of individual differences

Active Projects

The DEI committee has been busy working on the following projects. If you are interested in being an active participant or supporting an initiative, please reach out.

Project Name Description Update
Big Box Fundraiser Starter boxes of high quality birthday cards from Big Box Fundraising were sent home with students and offered for sale, to raise funds for DEI Committee initiatives. The 2022-23 fundraiser was a huge success, raising over $2.5k! Ms. Arraial’s class gets a free pizza party for selling the most boxes.
Calm Room and Quiet Zone Seeking to provide a calming space for students to rest and recuperate during school events with potentially high sensory demands. In 2022-23, we piloted Calm Rooms in the school for Beaches’ Family Fridays and a Kimberley/Beaches’ Movie Night. A Quiet Zone was set up outside at the Fun Fair!
Inclusivity workshop Provide an Inclusivity workshop with 2SLGBTQ+ focus In partnership with Glen Ames Senior Public School, a virtual workshop was facilitated for parents and caregivers in April 2023, by The Get REAL Movement.
TDSB workshops for parents Aiming to provide two workshops for parents:

  1. Anti-Racism
  2. Principles of Bias, Power, Privilege, and Anti-oppression
 Project on hold due to TDSB speaker shortages. To revisit in 2022-23 school year.
Diverse bookshelf for all classrooms – Ongoing project Our goal is to add 5 diverse, inclusive and age-appropriate books to each Kimberley and Beaches classroom every year. We have been able to secure funding to get 5 books for 2021-22 and these are now in classrooms. We will need to get creative with fundraising for future years. If you are interested in donating, fundraising or being part of this project, please contact us.
Indigenous Awareness Workshop for the Parent community In progress
Wellness workshop for the parent community In progress
Diverse and Inclusive Posters in the school hallways and classrooms In progress
Repository of parent resources on DEI topics A list of suggested books, links, and media on DEI topics. Live.
List of resources
Parent and Caregiver Resource Library A resource library of books on DEI topics. We plan to establish a physical home accessible near the Kimberley school office, but for now you can email to borrow. Books acquired.
List of books
Community Garden  In December 2022, the Committee submitted a proposal for the Toronto District School Board Innovation Grant. This is a $1,500 grant to support innovative projects that engage parents/caregivers and build school councils’ parents/caregivers capability around various themes. The Committee has chosen to focus on education around local food production and building skills around planting, growing, harvesting by building a community garden at the school and facilitating gardening and growing at home. Unfortunately, the Grant was not awarded to our proposal in 2022-23.

We will explore other ways to proceed with these ideas.

Parent and Caregiver Resource Library

Our Resource Library for Parents/Caregivers is now available. Please see the list of available books below. We will establish a borrowing system soon but until then, please reach out to rohini.ranjan@gmail.com to borrow a book.

Repository of Educational Resources

This is a repository of educational resources tackling anti-Black, anti-Asian, anti-Muslim and other kinds of racism. These resources also support gender diversity, neurodiversity, equity, etc. Please contact us with feedback or to suggest new additions!

Caregiver Resources

Books

* denotes books that are part of our physical Parent & Caregiver Resource Library available for borrowing.

Podcasts

Websites/Articles 

Movies (coming soon)

Child Resources

Books

Podcasts (coming soon)

Websites/Articles

Movies (coming soon)

Monthly DEI Committee Meetings

Month Date/Time of the Meeting Minutes/Link to join
September 2021 September 30, 2021; 8-9 pm Minutes
October 2021 October 21, 2021; 8-9 pm Minutes
November 2021 November 25, 2021; 8-9 pm Minutes
December 2021 No meeting
January 2022 January 13, 2022; 8-9 pm Minutes
February 2022 February 10, 2022; 8-9 pm
March 2022 March 24, 2022; 8-9 pm
April 2022 April 21, 2022; 8-9 pm Minutes
May 2022 May 26, 2022; 8-9 pm Minutes
June 2022 June 23, 2022; 8-9 pm
October 2022 Oct 27, 2022; 8-9 pm Minutes
November 2022 November 24, 2022; 8-9 pm Minutes
December 2022 No meeting
February 2023 February 2, 2023; 8-9 pm Minutes