No Racist Structures. No Structural Racism.
Black Lives Matter at Richmond Public Schools.
“We are trying to build something that this country has never been.”
— Chenjerai Kumanyika
Our city is witnessing an incredible sea change in its willingness to engage in frank conversations about the history of racism that has driven place-making here. There is no question: across Richmond public monuments and the naming of public spaces has been used to advance the myth of the lost cause, reframing the Confederacy’s fight for human enslavement as noble, peaceful, and just.
Today we are privileged to witness history in the re-making: monuments to the confederacy are coming down, and not just on Monument Avenue. What we are witnessing has the potential for far-reaching change. I hope to see those changes met in good faith. What we need is massive: we need a 3rd Reconstruction.
As we embark on a process of rethinking who and what we will be in this still very new century, I call upon our leaders to embrace substantive changes in policy, not just structures. It is not sufficient to just remove Robert E. Lee from his throne. We must also tear down the policies and budget practices that carry forward a legacy of racism in our city and in our schools today.
Like many of my neighbors, I am happy to see our conversation expand to the removal of the A.P. Hill statue in Northside; I fully support its removal. Like many of my colleagues on School Board, I am glad to see the names of those who fought for and defended slavery come off our schools. These changes are necessary, but they are not sufficient. If we are to truly tackle the legacy of racism in our public school system, we must also embark on a path that shifts the ground on which racism is built: policy and funding. To that end, I call for the following:
- We must develop a plan to transition police out of our schools. Virginia has the highest rate of in-school referrals to law enforcement in the nation. These referrals target and harm Black and Latinx students, and students with disabilities. It is time to staff our school support personnel who are trained to support students in need and intervene safely in a crisis. Despite extraordinary need for a plan to mitigate disciplinary referrals, our FY21 budget eliminated planned stipends for lead workers in restorative justice and trauma-informed care.
- We must have a substantive conversation about Special Education. In my tenure on the board thus far, we have yet to have an agenda item that is focused on meeting the needs of these students who reflect a disproportionately high percentage of those who are suspended, and are underrepresented in our application-based specialty schools. According to VDOE data, 14.4% of students in the district’s 2019 fall membership had a disability. By comparison this percentage was 3.6% at Open High School, 2.2% at Community, and 3% at Franklin Military School. Because our district serves a majority of Black and Latinx students, failing to meet the needs of students with disabilities becomes a source of compounded oppression.
- We must establish baseline equity across our school zones. All students have the right to equitable access to supportive educational environments including stable teachers, reliable transportation, and access to a breadth of electives and advanced-placement programming. I’m requesting clear accessible data to identify which schools are disproportionately reliant on long term subs, where our transportation system frequently falls short, and which schools are lacking in the availability of advanced coursework in addition to world languages, the arts, and other elective courses. The completion of our equity audit is overdue.
- We must allocate resources to Black teacher recruitment, retention, & development. It is time for our district to get serious about the retention of Black teachers, particularly Black male educators. Despite ongoing FOIA requests, our district has failed to make public district-wide retention rates, and our funding for Black male teacher retention has been an exceptionally small portion of our budget, and our commitment to track Black male teacher retention has gone unfulfilled.
- Finally, we must put forward a just reopening strategy for the Fall 2020 school year. Across the city students and families continue to be affected by COVID-19 and the economic insecurity wrought by the pandemic. We have no plan in place to ensure student safety or worker safety. We have no plan in place to assess the impact of cutting the school year short and truly meet the needs of students with IEPs or of our English learning population. As a parent, this terrifies me.
If the last week’s events have shown us anything, it is how powerful a mobilized public truly is. The parents, students, and educators of our city have immense capacity to affect change. Lean into that power. We must take down racist structures. We must also tackle structural racism. Let’s join together in making the substantive demands that our students deserve.
