D11’s new School Board, which includes newly elected members that ran on a commitment to universal values, had its first working meeting on Dec. 8, 2021. Local chapter member Judith Sears represented FAIR in General Comments to the board as we seek to keep the spotlight on pro-human values in education.
Remarks are included below the video.
Good Evening.
I’m Judith Sears, a resident of District 11. I’m speaking tonight on behalf of the El Paso/Teller County Chapter of FAIR, the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism.
FAIR counters intolerance in all of its forms by appealing to the universal concepts of fairness, understanding and our common humanity.
We believe the current D-11 board was elected because of widespread community concerns about the educational philosophy currently guiding instruction in our schools.
We believe the board members should see this election as a mandate from the community to review carefully and reject any approach that emphasizes skin color or other group identity categories as the most important aspect of a person.
The term, “equity”is in frequent use today. Conventionally, equity has meant fairness, but equity is currently being redefined by some as equal outcomes among groups.
Unequal outcomes, according to this view, are ipso factor evidence of racism, about which it is said, “The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination.”
This reasoning depends on an understanding that racial characteristics count more than anything else, more than a person’s conduct, values or achievements. This is divisive and regressive. It can lead to the belief that people of different color are inevitably each others’ enemies. We have enough trouble coming together. We should not train our children in fear and distrust.
We urge the board to take the following steps:
- Chart a new course. Reject any form of race-essentialism in instruction and unequivocally advocate for one human race and universal civil rights and liberties.
- We urge the board to thoroughly review and revise the Equity Policy adopted on May 27, 2020 to eliminate race-essentialist assumptions about systemic racism and group outcomes. Revise the equity policy to reflect the need for fair and equal treatment of all individuals, regardless of group identities.
- We urge you to halt the rollout of any actions based on the recently performed Equity Audit.
- We urge you to allow for extensive public review of the Equity Audit’s assumptions and findings. This should take the form of several public forums that maximize the public’s ability to ask questions.
- We urge you to empower parents by moving to curriculum transparency. Links to free cloud storage systems, such as Dropbox or Google Drive, would give parents easy access to accurate information about the learning materials and activities of D11 students.
Thank you.