Empowering Leadership is one of the most important aspects of Equity Education. Giving individuals the tools they will need to do the work of supporting students in their classrooms, offices, hallways, buildings and the broader community is a very important aspect of equity training. In the years between 1999 and 2002, the BVSD Equity Office has trained over 300 people to take up leadership. These individuals have been trained using the National Coalition for Equity in Education model. This model seeks to help people look at their own past hurts around racism, classism, sexism, language bias, religious intolerance and heterosexism as way to understand how they might bring those beliefs into the work they do with students. The model makes use of three important communication structures in order to establish a sense of safety for the participants: the dyad, the personal experience panel and the support group.

In order to prepare to become leaders, cohort members must also participate in Transformational Trainer Sessions and Support Leader Training. After successfully completing this training, members are eligible to move to the next steps of equity support. They can become district trainers, curriculum leaders, school staff improvement motivators or they can lead simply by the example they set as instructional leaders in their classrooms. At this time there have been three cohorts, Cohort I, Cohort 2, and Cohort 3 as well as District leadership Cohort 1 and Cohort 2, comprised of administrators and operations personnel. To the left is a link to a directory of individuals who have been trained as Equity Leaders.