Dear District 225 Board Members and Administrators,
We write to you as a coalition of alumni, community members, and current students who have come together to form The Acorn Collective: a group of Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) and White Allies who demand an immediate and ongoing response to the intersectional injustices within our shared spaces. Our intent is not to target the district, but to demand transparency and accountability from our community leaders, including its school boards. We hope that this letter will illuminate the experience and impact of District 225’s culture.
On June 1st of this year, you sent out a message, titled “Letter In Response to National Crisis” to the parents and current students of the District 225 community. Your letter, ostensibly meant to address the concerns and demands of the Black Lives Matter movement, failed in this task. Your letter did not substantively address the actual content of the Black Lives Matter movement. Your letter did not set forth an agenda for eliminating racism from this district. Your letter, in short, served no discernible purpose other than to sidestep the issues this moment demands you address, and in so doing mark you as complicit in the harm your Black students face.
You had a chance to condemn racism in all of its forms and advance an agenda of anti-racism. Instead, you offered the platitude that “District 225 is a learning community dedicated to students and committed to quality of thought, word, and deed.” This is not a political issue. It should not be labeled as controversial, but rather an issue of our own humanity and how our liberation as a people are all deeply connected to one another.
So many families move to Northbrook and Glenview because the schools are understood to be excellent. By some measures, this understanding is correct, with the Glenbrooks’ Report Card showing an average of $23,000.00 spent per-pupil, a 96% graduation rate, and 1,736 students completing early college coursework.
These measures of academic achievement should not be understood as the only components of an excellent education. The skills students take away from their time at the Glenbrooks matter just as much as how those students perform within the courses the district offers. And what skills are students taking away? They are taking away the skills required to perform well within the boundaries set by society but not to reset those boundaries. It doesn’t teach its students to critically engage with the state of the world and with ideas on how the world can be made better.
At the core, we are asking you to consider this: Who do you want to send out into the world, and what impact do you hope they will make? Do you want them to absolve themselves, knowingly or unknowingly, of any responsibility for the injustices BIPOC people face by simply claiming not to be racist? Or do you want to graduate students committed to making society just? It is imperative that we, as a district, practice anti-racism and it is your responsibility as leaders of this district to foster that practice for both your families of color and your white families.
We are no longer satisfied with vague gestures toward diversity and inclusion. Workshops and committees do not foster anti-racism if they do not result in concrete action. Having conversations about the forms that racism takes and ways to combat those expressions of racism are the gateway to action. Without action, they are just performative. These conversations should happen all the time, not just in response to viral instances of violence against Black people. More people should not have to join the ranks of Rayshard Brooks, George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and countless others. We sincerely hope that you do not wait for the next broadcast of this violence.
As members of this community, we implore you to take the following actions:
- Conduct an equity audit that will be made available to the public upon completion
- Create a policy to address racist behavior by students and faculty in and outside of school
Curriculum
- Include literature by BIPOC authors at each level of the English curriculum for all 4 years
- Adjust Social Studies curricula to correct misinformation from textbooks discussing colonization and BIPOC history
- Change the language in Social Studies curricula to accurately reflect the roles Black and Indigenous people were forced into (ex. The genocide of Native people, change slaves to enslaved people, etc.)
- Create an elective course in the Social Studies department that addresses our country’s roots, legacies, ongoing struggles, - systems of oppression, white supremacy, and privilege
Faculty and Staff
- Actively recruit BIPOC faculty and staff
- Create and mandate ongoing cultural competency, anti-racist, and equity training for faculty and staff beyond a reading list
- Create a speaker series dedicated to issues of social justice and invite BIPOC to speak and make these events available to community members
- Ensure that any and all diversity and inclusion committees are made up of a majority of BIPOC
- Partners with organizations for senior scholarship opportunities aimed toward first-gen, lower-income, queer, BIPOC, and students of other marginalized identities
We look forward to seeing District 225 truly embrace a culture of equity, transparency, and justice. We urge you to take further concrete steps and engage with your community.
This letter has been co-signed by members and friends of the Acorn Collective,
