Matthew Pinchinat, diversity, equity, and inclusion — ‘The community is larger than you’

Matthew Pinchinat was recently named as the director for diversity, equity, and inclusion — a new post for the Guilderland school district. Diversity, explains Pinchinat in this week’s podcast at AltamontEnterprise.com/podcasts, means recognizing people not from our background, and includes differences in thought as well. Now, he will be shifting his influence from just the students in his classes to the entire school district, from kindergarten through 12th grade. He is hoping to bring about system-wide change. The work, he said, calls to his heart, reaching people “in that human core” and paying forward the support he has been given. In the wake of George Floyd’s murder, several Guilderland graduates, all Black women, had talked to the district’s superintendent and some school board members about the racism they had encountered at Guilderland and problems with the curriculum. Subsequently, the school board formed a standing committee to deal with diversity, equity, and inclusion. Then, when drafting the budget for the 2021-22 school year, the board created the post Pinchinat will now fill. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.