Community Voices

To Clayton School District Board members: I want to make sure that everyone will change. Real change. We’ve all seen you talk about a million words like equity, responsive teaching, and all these things are seen, and what happens is, we’re smart. We’re academically trained, right? We went to college to get our Masters and our PhDs. And we become so good at adopting language. What we’re not good at is implementation. I think this is literally a moment in time and this, by the way, this isn’t just about Black Lives Matter (but) how are we going to make our school system, our school district the best it can be?

We are a community in pain. The pain stems from systemic and institutional racism within our schools. There are many of us who would like to believe that we don’t have such an issue in Clayton – but we do. I have the responsibility to all Black and Brown students, staff and families to acknowledge the microaggressions, racism and pain they have experienced. I am truly sorry. What happened was wrong, hurtful and completely unacceptable.