Blog

A week after speaking to the recent incidents of overt white supremacy impacting our school community, we want to further clarify our thoughts, observations, and intentions–as well as some ways we might all play a part in addressing issues of racism and inequity in our district.

1. What’s happening on social media and re: the confederate flag are not the first incidents of explicit white supremacy in the district. There have been swastikas found on the sides of school buildings and bathroom stalls, racial slurs in school hallways, etc. It’s also critical to acknowledge that there are people of color who were feeling unfairly treated and unsafe in our district long before last week.

2. We must engage in authentic dialogue with people across our school community who are coming to the table to listen to and learn from one another’s experiences. However, we do not think it productive to engage with the kind of white supremacist presence we’re seeing on social media. The aim of these groups is to inflame, not to learn, and engaging with them serves their purposes instead of ours. It also brings greater visibility to their harmful platform.

3. The issue isn’t just overt white supremacy in our school community, but attitudes and practices of whiteness in our district that are much less explicit–not seen as easily by white people and baked into what has become “normalized”–but still harmful. In emphasizing only in-your-face white supremacists, we fail to acknowledge that all white people are complicit in upholding racist systems and practices and thus have work to do to help break them down and build more equitable alternatives.

Racism at this systemic level is evident in our district’s low representation of teachers and administrators of color, curriculum that fails to adequately represent the experiences and perspectives of people of color, disciplinary practices that have a greater negative impact on students of color than white students, the underrepresentation of students of color in college prep courses–and the list goes on. Northampton public schools reflect racism in many forms, as is the case throughout our country.

4. Issues that are rooted in systemic racism require dedicated long-term work. Since 2017, with support from NPS teachers, staff, caregivers, students, administrators, and the NEF, REAL has worked toward building an anti-racist district. Here are areas we’ve been focusing on/work we’d like to support in the months and years ahead:

• looking at hiring and retention practices and how we might attract and retain more administrators, staff, and educators of color
• moving away from a punitive and toward a restorative practices approach to school discipline
• revamping school curriculum to emphasize the voices and contributions of people of color (local educators Tiffany Jewell and Michael Lawrence-Riddell are leading some awesome work here)
• creating a variety of ways that students and others can report incidents of bias and receive support in response to these incidents
• expanding district communication channels so that all caregivers, including those who aren’t as connected digitally, have regular opportunities to join and initiate conversations
• holding community-wide conversations about the impacts of racism and whiteness
• promoting ongoing and in-depth anti-racist professional development for school employees
• challenging discriminatory high-stakes testing like the MCAS, which disproportionately impacts students of color, ELL students, students with disabilities, and students from poor and working class families

District-wide story collection has been a central part of REAL’s work since our beginning, and we will soon launch an exhibition on Instagram drawing from stories shared by students, teachers, staff, and parents/caregivers about their experiences with race and racism in NPS. We took up this project with the intention to help guide conversations that are essential if we’re to work together to build the anti-racist school district our community deserves. As a reminder, story collection is ongoing–and we would love to hear from you.

By now, many are aware of the white-supremacist social media pages created in the wake of Principal Caldwell’s powerful, heart-centered message challenging displays of the Confederate flag. Hate symbols and hate speech are among the violent acts that contribute to unsafe environments for our students, staff, and teachers, and they cannot be tolerated any more than physical acts of violence. The current threat to the safety of our BIPOC community members is not diminished by the fact that our school buildings are not being accessed by as many people as in a typical year. Harm is still being done. Safety is still being threatened. 

While in this moment many in our district are rallying in response to particular actions unfolding on social media, white supremacist idealogy is not limited to online spaces, and it is enabled by the racism that is baked into our country’s foundation–racism that is alive and well in Northampton, as everywhere. What was initiated on social media may be the work of an individual or individuals, but it is not an isolated event, and it is a call to action for us all.

REAL Northampton is committed to working with students, staff, teachers, and families to fight for the anti-racist school environments our community members deserve. As we continue to communicate and collaborate with individuals and groups across the district who share our commitment, we will keep you updated. 

Dear School Committee Members, Superintendent Provost, and School Principals,

We want to thank you all for the enormous effort and long hours you have put forth on behalf of our community. You must be flooded with people’s ideas, questions, feelings, and demands. We’re reaching out today not because we are advocating for hybrid or remote, but because we are concerned that communication from the district is not as clear, transparent, and accessible as is needed for families to make informed decisions at this critical time.

In an effort to offer some possible solutions and not simply critiques, we’re sharing an idea we think might be broadly helpful for NPS families: a spreadsheet that one of our members started initially to help the Bridge Street School principal collect and share answers to the many questions families were asking her. Considering many families have children in more than one school, making all information available in one document strikes us as particularly useful. 

The first tab of the spreadsheet links to all documents we have been able to access about the shift in schooling plans for the district and individual schools, as well as information we have been able to gather about the town hall meetings scheduled this week and next. The next tabs are for information specific to the elementary, middle and high schools, in an FAQ format. As you’ll see, there are many questions to which we don’t (yet) have answers. We also acknowledge that there may be errors in the information included and we welcome your clarifications and corrections. In addition, we know that bargaining with NASE this week may change the plans.

You are welcome to adopt and adapt this document if you find it helpful, and we would be happy to partner with you on completing it and keeping it up to date as plans change. Please let us know if you would like to do either of these.

We want you to know that we will likely share the working document ourselves within the REAL community, via our email listserv and social media platforms, as our own members are struggling to understand the choices they have in front of them now. 

We offer you our best wishes and solidarity as you continue to navigate this incredibly complex and challenging time.

Sincerely,

The REAL Team

Dear Mayor Narkewicz and Members of the School Committee:

We want to thank you all for the enormous effort and long hours you have put forth on behalf of our community. You must be flooded with people’s ideas, questions, feelings, and demands. 

REAL’s focus is on the needs of Black, Indigenous, and people of color; underserved families; and students with special needs. While these needs are synonymous with the health and safety needs of the whole community, they need to be addressed in creative and deliberate ways. Let’s together commit to centering race, class, and ability in any remote or hybrid option. 

We would like to know how the district is reaching out to families whose voices are rarely at the table, so that their experiences and needs are known. We know that online surveys don’t reach many of these families, nor are these voices often in Zoom meetings. While it is likely that the voices of white parents who are the majority in town will be the loudest, we are extremely concerned that the needs of students and caregivers most affected by racism and other structural inequities be centered now. We would like to know what NPS is doing to ensure it is getting input directly from BIPOC families. In addition, we would like to know how students’ direct input on their needs and concerns are being considered. While all students should arguably have a way to participate–in age-appropriate ways–in shaping their own education, we are particularly concerned that BIPOC high school students be given real ways to influence the decisions being made right now about their futures, during this time of unprecedented change and challenge.

We are also concerned about how the district will help families access care and resources if these families want to choose the remote option or, in a hybrid model, when they are not in school. Childcare, for example, is something that will be desperately needed by many families if they are to go with 100% remote education. And of course, there is a huge divide between families that can access care and those that can’t, which will only deepen during this time. Families that lack access to solid internet connectivity will also need adequate support. What is the district’s plan for accommodating families with these needs?

Another equity-related issue around reopening is the formation of “pandemic pods” facilitated by private tutors, which we’re hearing about across the district and U.S. and which promise to exacerbate existing inequities between more affluent (and often white) students and those who have fewer resources due to our country’s historical and ongoing oppressive structures. How can we support equity in these sorts of arrangements? Can administration play a role (see last two paragraphs about a public school in San Francisco that is setting up pods for all students)? Can caregivers help develop solutions? Can mutual aid/resource pooling factor in? A group of NPS parents and educators met recently to start this conversation, which has us recognizing that there is a great deal of interest here for supporting equity in remote education. We were also excited to learn about a resource, Equity in Pandemic Schooling: An Action Guide for Families, Educators & Communities, that offers promising concrete actions toward equitable reopening, many of which can be tackled in less than an hour.

The town hall meetings held over the past week could have provided a real opportunity for sharing ideas that support an equitable reopening, but instead they felt like a list of answers to FAQs, with no chance for authentic discussion and sharing. How can we connect with others across the district? What if we had an online platform/community where caregivers could post, for example, about an outdoor science activity they’re looking to do and invite other interested families to join? What if there were a way for families that need something to reach out to others, like in the case of this mutual aid network map that was created earlier in the pandemic, by local volunteers still actively fundraising and coordinating childcare efforts?

We are aware that many educators have signed on in support of the ideas and demands expressed in a letter from the Cambridge Educators of Color Coalition. We also fully support these sentiments, including the call that “those most affected by a design solution should be prioritized in designing it.” We know that COVID-19 has disproportionately harmed people from Black, Indigenous, and Latinx communities and people with less economic means. We have a responsibility to center those voices and concerns, and to make decisions that prioritize the safety of those most at risk.

The School Committee recently adopted an anti-racism resolution. If we as a community are going to follow through on that commitment, we must make conversations about equity front and center in every decision we make, including about reopening. We must be vigilant and persistent in asking ourselves and others, “How might this particular decision impact people based on race, class and ability?” To do anything less is to fail to serve a significant number of our district’s families–and our school community as a whole. 

As always, REAL welcomes active collaboration with School Committee members and district administrators who want to work together to become an intentionally anti-racist district.

In community,

REAL Northampton (which represents over 200 NPS caregivers, students, teachers, and staff)