This has to stop

We stand with Black Lives Matter. We stand with the African American community. We stand with George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and the countless other African Americans who are unjustly murdered on the basis of their skin color.

We stand with Black youth and their families whose lives have been affected on a daily basis by the structural racism that is embedded in our communities, in our society at large, and in our schools. Anyone who has worked in or around schools or has had an opportunity to be at schools as a student or family member [essentially all of us] has to be blind to not see the racism that black students face in our schools. And, unfortunately, too many of us are ‘blind’ and, worse yet, enable or perpetuate systemic racism. We see over and over again schools and school systems that talk about equity, talk about ‘unconscious bias’, but then willfully ignore explicit bias and racism. This needs to stop. We have lived through the Watts Riots, we have lived through the Uprisings of the 1990’s, and here we are  ‘standing up’ with our black community who has been pushed to a breaking point yet again because we have been unable to address the systemic racism that pervades our society, our individual interactions, and our schools. Now is the time for action.