Remarks on Equity Recommendations

I originally delivered these remarks at the CHUFSD Board Meeting on September 28, 2021, during which the district's Equity Stakeholder Recommendations (DEI goals) were discussed and approved.

I confess; I am tired of this discussion, of this argument.

As a trustee, I just want to focus on making sure that every student in our schools receives an effective education, and focus on making sure that we teach every one of our students to be proud of who they are, to be respectful of who others are, and to have empathy for the lived and inherited experience of all of their fellow human beings. I want to make sure that every kid sees that their future is not determined by who they are, but rather is determined by the skills, knowledge, and habits that they choose to learn and master.

But we aren’t completely succeeding yet. We may be achieving somewhat equable test scores, but on the social and emotional front, we are still failing.

Let’s listen to what our students have to say about it. Looking at our own 2019 School Quality Survey:

• 55% of students who responded said that students are treated unfairly on the basis of race or ethnicity

• 61% said that students are treated unfairly on the basis of gender or sexual orientation

• Only 50% of students felt that discipline is enforced fairly

• 40% said that students are teased or picked on about their real or perceived sexual orientation.

Is that OK? Is it OK for even ONE child in our schools to feel that they were treated unfairly, or bullied based on their identity?

Moving away from the report, let’s talk about the student - a person of color - who told a teacher that she cut her long hair just because she was tired of people messing with it or commenting inappropriately about it.

Or a student of color who reported choosing not to participate in classroom discussions because they were concerned that they would be interpreted as “too ghetto” or “aggressive” by their teachers and classmates.

Or about the female middle school student who told me that I must have made a mistake placing her on a Destination Imagination team solving a technical challenge, because she was a girl. It was the correct placement - but she was worried that others would judge her.

Yes, there are issues that need work. A lot of them.

It is our job to address these issues. The New York State Department of Education agrees, having set forth their Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Education Framework. If we want our kids to have empathy and compassion for each other, and if we want every student to graduate with a sense of accomplishment, promise, and opportunity, we must teach the realities of history, and their impact.

Now I know that there are folks who have a problem with that, saying things like “teaching these topics will make our kids feel bad”. Yes, it’s not fun to learn about injustice. Feeling bad that the United States forcibly displaced some 60,000 Indigenous Americans during the Trail of Tears so that European settlers could expropriate their fertile farmland, or feeling bad that millions of Africans were brought to these shores and enslaved and oppressed for over 400 years, or feeling bad about the history of pervasive discrimination against Italian, or Irish, or Asian immigrants, or feeling bad because of the 6,000,000 killed in the holocaust, is not a bug in the software. It's a feature. Feeling uncomfortable about the human created tragedies of the past is the correct and healthy emotional response. It isn’t telling students that who they are is wrong, and it isn’t indoctrination. It’s history. It’s what teaches us to prevent those tragedies from happening again. It’s what teaches empathy, and compassion, and caring, and respect, and support for every classmate, regardless of their background. It’s what teaches that an individual can succeed no matter what their family history was.

What else must we do to ensure that every student can succeed?

We must also present every student with exemplary role models with whom they can relate, who come from similar or comparable backgrounds, and who show what is possible, regardless of where you come from. What message do we send to minority students when not a single one of their teachers looks like them, or sounds like them, or shares their history? Yes - we must maintain high standards, only hiring qualified staff - but we must cast a wider net, so that our hiring can become more diverse.

We must teach our students to think critically - to probe and understand; to build knowledge based on evidence, to question and challenge unsupported assumptions and to pierce false preconceptions. We must teach them to decide who they want to be, and how to become that person. We must teach them to use reason and logic - but also to use empathy and compassion.

We must teach them how to work on a team - even when some of their teammates have very different stories.

And we must provide our faculty, and our community, with support in achieving these goals.

It is the job of schools not just to teach reading and writing, history and society, math and science - but also to provide every student with a path forward to success.

It is my belief that the recommendations being presented today are a good step forward; they should be adopted by this board. The supporting goals associated with each of the recommendations are also important. While these may need to be refined, I do believe that they are a good starting point for further work on how to implement the recommendations. This is good start at ensuring, as I said at the opening of my remarks, that every student in our schools receives an effective education, and that every one of them sees that their future is not determined by who they are, or who their ancestors were, but rather is determined by the skills, knowledge, and habits that they learn and master.