Our schools should be places where all children, regardless of their skin color, feel welcome, nurtured, and loved. But all too often, that’s not the case.
Join us Tuesday, June 25 at 7pm at the Utica School District Administration Building, 106 Memorial Parkway, as concerned parents and community members give voice to the issues at hand.
We’ve been asking for more than a year now that the school district address the lack of teacher diversity. All we’ve gotten in response (to the degree that there’s even been a response) are excuses. But the damaging impact of having a majority White teaching staff in a school system where the students are predominantly Black, Latinx, and Asian is becoming increasingly clear.
First, a new report showing suspension data for the district highlights the systemic racism at work in our schools, and yet we’ve still received no response to our request to form a community task force to revise the Code of Conduct (the document that guides all interactions between students & teachers or administrators).
Second, despite the fact that the district told us they would need 60 days to respond to our request for a copy of the curriculum (because it’s apparently “in storage” — a claim that’s beyond ludicrous; why would the curriculum be anywhere except online or on the teachers’ desks???) we were able to get our hands on the curriculum being used for K-5 students in our schools. It’s a standard commercial variety curriculum produced by McGraw Hill, and an analysis by the Center for Research on Equity and the Transformation of Schools shows that it is, as we suspected, culturally insufficient for the vast majority of students. Most of the curriculum authors are white, most of the story authors are white, and there are more animal characters than Black, Latinx, Asian, and Native American characters combined.
We can do better. We MUST do better.
Join us 7pm Tuesday at the Utica School Board meeting to support the parents and community members who will be speaking out not only against these issues, but against the district’s lack of transparency and failures to communicate as we’ve repeatedly attempted to address our concerns.
And of course, Tuesday is also Primary Day. So if you’re a registered Democrat, get out and vote, and then join us at 106 Memorial Parkway at 7pm on Tuesday.
See you there!
