Education We Received on District 11’s Equity Policy

FAIR’s Statement in response to the 12/17/21 Gazette Telegraph article
Hello Board members.
We are speaking this evening on behalf of the El Paso/Teller Chapter of FAIR, the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism. 

Our chapter’s statement is in reference to the article in the December 17th edition of the Gazette Telegraph entitled Colorado Springs School District 11 dissolves its equity leadership team.
We were disappointed to read that at least one currently sitting board member – if quoted accurately in the article – believes that the rejection by the voters of the prior Board’s “equity” program is the result of that program not having been explained better so that people were “more educated on the topic.”
The truth is that the parents, taxpayers, and yes, teachers and other D11 staff were all too well educated on this topic.
For anyone in or out of the D11 Community who may have forgotten the education we received on the prior Board’s “equity” program over the summer and fall of 2021, we have, on our Chapter’s web page at fairforall.org, posted clips from the prior Board’s work sessions as well as news articles from that period to refresh our community’s memory.
The clips and articles are too numerous to mention in the time we have allotted to us here, but among the highlights you’ll hear a representative of the research firm hired by D11 under the old Board explaining that no references to Girls vs. Boys success rates are included in the findings because they only researched what D11 officials explicitly told them they wanted researched – hence race and only race.
From the August 4th work session you’ll hear the District Director of DEI, Ms. Knox-Miller, demanding that all board members be, “ideologically on the same page when it comes to equity.”
In these work sessions, as well as the so-called café and conversation sessions, and in the Equity Audit document itself we find ample reason to question the validity of the process that produced document.
Would the product of an authentically open inquiry upon which far reaching policy actions are to be predicated be based on such explicitly narrow terms?
Would a truly unbiased assessment of our student’s needs come with a demand for ideological conformity? 
The prior Board’s equity audit appears to be not a product of open inquiry, but the result of a quest to justify a predetermined ideological conclusion.
Again, it’s disappointing to hear that the informed decision of the D11 electorate is being dismissed as being the result of a lack of education.
We look to an era of genuine two way communication between the new Board and the D11 Community.                                      

We also want to address another aspect of the Gazette article of December 17th.
We certainly hope that Director Ott was correctly quoted as saying, “I think we all agree that we need to address whatever is holding our students back. The question is, can we agree on what those things are?”
We at FAIR agree wholeheartedly with that statement and with the framing of the question.

 A starting place for agreement would be to clearly and accurately define the term, “equity.”
It appears that the former Board’s definition of the term “equity” is not the commonly understood meaning of the term, but rather a term of ideology disguised as the commonly understood term. The DEI director’s demand for ideological conformity at the August 4th work session makes this clear.
To recap Judith Sears’ differentiation between the true meaning and the ideologically changed version of the term “equity,”: “Conventionally, equity has meant fairness, but equity is currently being redefined by some as equal outcomes among groups. Unequal outcomes among groups according to this view are ipso facto evidence of racism, about which it is said,….the only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination.”
We reject that ideologically altered definition of the term.

Regarding Director Ott’s question as to whether we can agree on what things hold our students back; an open, honest, and fair process of inquiry into causation would be required to identify those impediments. As the prior Board’s equity audit plainly demonstrates, a report produced by working backwards from a pre-determined ideologically driven conclusion is not a fair inquiry and the citizens of District 11 will rightly reject it no matter how strong the efforts may be to push it through.

We believe that the recent election shows us that the citizens of the district would like to see work toward helping all of our students thrive. Understanding what holds them back should not be an ideological process

Finally, we at FAIR believe that bad ideas should be confronted with better ideas. The prior D11 BoE’s race-essentialist Equity Audit was clearly a bad idea. A better idea is the pro-human FAIR Equity program. We have sent a link to a video introduction to that program to each board member.
We would like to hear specific feedback on what strengths you see in the FAIR Equity program and what if anything you find objectionable in the FAIR’s pro-human approach.
Thank you