Safe Routes to Schools and the Equity Matrix
PBOT's Safe Routes to Schools (SRTS) Program used an equity matrix to prioritize which schools they would be collaborating with and providing services too. PBOT's 5 Year Racial Equity Plan outlines that many of PBOT's programs, policies, practices and procedures will be using an equity prioritization matrix, and SRTS was one of the first to use an equity as a metric for prioritization.
The equity measures that were used to help determine priority schools for funding were communities of color, low income communities and limited English proficient (LEP) communities. Essentially census information was used to map tracts and neighborhoods by percent of the population being people of color, low income households, and households who spoke a primary language at home other than English.
PBOT's Safe Routes to Schools Program translated their brochure into 5 languages in addition to English, after they did an analysis of the top languages spoken at the schools they were collaborating with.