Note from Gail: Thanks for alerting us to this, Susan! I am out of town but hope others can join this discussion! This seems like an important opportunity for Reselient Yolo to be part of this discussion. I know a few of the SB Members are aware of RY but not sure they know what we are doing. I hope this will be discussed at the RY meeting today!
What: We All Belong Community Forum
When: 6:30-8 p.m. Monday, Dec. 4
Where: North Davis Elementary School multipurpose room, 555 E. 14th St.
Admission: Free
By Barbara Archer, Tom Adams, Alan Fernandes, Bob Poppenga, Madhavi Sunder and John Bowes
In 1958, as part of a commencement speech in Baltimore, Martin Luther King Jr. addressed the class of male African-American graduates of Morgan State College as they prepared to leave the secure confines of academia “to enter the clamorous highways of life.”
As with many of his speeches, King envisioned a future where we could work together to overcome the evils of hatred, racism and injustice and where people would “rise above the narrow confines of our individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.”
While we have made tremendous progress in the six decades since, we still find ourselves in a world, country and even local community where differences can create divisions and hostility rather than inspiring cooperation and compromise. In the past month, our own Davis schools uncovered graffiti with anti-Semitic hate slogans, a racial epithet scrawled on a wall, digital messages with a swastika sent to more than one campus, multiple incidents of LGBTQ posters being torn down and, most recently, a threat of gun violence to a school campus.
These disturbing incidents of hate and threats of violence have frightened, angered and greatly concerned the Davis Board of Education as well as our entire community.
As a community, we are proud of our commitment to inclusion. Davis is a self-declared sanctuary city that greets visitors to Central Park with a statue of Gandhi and welcomes students and families to schools named for social justice leaders like César Chávez, Fred T. Korematsu and Martin Luther King Jr.
Additionally, Davis community members actively engage in social equity advocacy, helping to found organizations like the Davis Phoenix Coalition, Empower Yolo and Yolo Interfaith Immigration Network, so it is no wonder that there is ongoing disbelief of what has happened in our schools and community. While we continue to work with Davis police to investigate all of the incidents, we are no closer today to learning who may be involved and why these acts are occurring at schools.
The role school plays
We believe our educational institutions should provide shelter, safety and security for freedom of thought and room to be curious and innovative while still aware of the clamorous highway. We expect our schools to provide protection for thoughtful discourse, respectful discussion, debate and learning.
In our efforts to create this safe space, we often aim to keep that noisy world beyond our school boundaries and outside our city limits. The outside world may struggle with the cacophony of contention, finger-pointing, polarization and bitterness, but within our educational walls, the peace can be preserved … or we believe it to be so.
Recent events, however, remind us that we cannot leave the outside world at the schools’ doorsteps. In a world that is hurting, there are deep divisions that permeate even our own campuses, bringing fear and uncertainty into our classrooms, affecting our students and their families.
When one individual is targeted with discrimination, hate, injustice or violence, we all suffer. As a school district and governing board, we struggle with this reality within our schools.
There is no easy answer. We begin to make our way by reaffirming our values and by talking openly and publicly about these incidents of hate and threats of violence. We want people to understand how words and behavior can inflict harm on others, and we want to explore openly why someone may be perpetrating these acts at this time and in this way.
To address these challenges proactively, we will focus our work to create inclusive schools and learning environments that productively engage students with each other and promote our shared value of cultural and instructional diversity.
At Davis High School, where many of the recent incidents have occurred, Interim Principal Tom McHale and his leadership team have done exactly this — to engage students in reflection and shared responsibility for their community. Every student was recently guided through a process where they contemplated how they have been affected by recent events and what might we do to make this right.
Staff has met with those who are most vulnerable and with those who want to be allies. They are listening intently to understand impact, the variability of student experiences and to plan for sustained dialogue.
Similarly, at Holmes Junior High School, students and staff are still readjusting after the gun threat to campus and the school closure on Nov. 17. Open conversations with students led by teachers, counselors and administrators are instrumental to supporting students, reducing fear and anxiety and restoring a sense of security and normalcy.
Finally, in light of the events of the past month, age-appropriate conversations are happening with students individually and collectively throughout our entire school district.
The plural voices of community
As the Board of Education, we are taking our responsibility one step further by convening the second annual We All Belong Community Forum on Monday, Dec. 4, from 6:30 to 8 p.m. in the multipurpose room at North Davis Elementary School, 555 E. 14th St.
At this event, we intend to hear from our students and community to engage collectively on how to best move forward on our “unequivocal commitment to providing a school climate of peace, respect and openness to diverse perspectives where all students, staff and families belong.”
This forum continues the work begun through the We All Belong Resolution: Safe and Welcoming Schools that we passed in February. We invite the whole community to take part in this important dialogue; child care and Spanish translation will be available.
Join us and share your voice. This conversation has real effects for our schools, our students and our community. It needs to be open, honest and ongoing.
If we draw our blinds and turn inward, if we deny the severity or make excuses for acts that may run counter to our values, if we individually or collectively retreat to a world where our Twitter feed is filled with like-minded rhetoric and we “unfriend” those who don’t make the cut, we may be adding to the clamor and not to the solution.
Our journey requires us to help our graduates meet their generation’s challenges. Our task is to provide tools and examples to help students to listen actively to others, to process diverse perspectives, to cultivate empathy and to seek out how to make our world safer, better and more just.
In the Davis Joint Unified School District, we currently are experiencing uncertainty and fear, but our foundation is solid. The recent acts of hate and threats of violence shall not define our school community now or in the future.
Through our words and actions, we reaffirm our district’s unequivocal commitment to providing a school climate of peace, respect and openness to diverse perspectives where all students, staff and families belong. The challenge for our schools is formidable, but clear, and to be successful, we cannot go this alone.
From the White House to the State House to our own house, the open conversations must continue on all fronts. In this way, we will redouble our commitments to openness and to equality and we will begin to rise above the clamor.
— Barbara Archer is president of the Davis Board of Education; Tom Adams is vice president; Alan Fernandes, Bob Poppenga and Madhavi Sunder are board members; and John Bowes is superintendent of the Davis Joint Unified School District.
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