RtR Community,
We need your help in urging the Lake Oswego School District to not just reinstate Ethnic Studies, but make it a mandatory course. As you may remember, LOSD made the choice to cut the course before the beginning of this school year in part due to lack of enrollment. In a community like Lake Oswego where there are little conversations engaging with BIPOC histories and futures to begin with,
especially when you remove community organizations like RtR and LO for Love from the equation, it shouldn't surprise anyone that Ethnic Studies as an elective course has low enrollment. In fact, one could easily argue that making it an elective in the context of the racial atmosphere in LO was setting it up to fail.
Nonetheless, students of all backgrounds deserve better! For students not proactively engaged in antiracism work in LO (see: the vast majority), a mandatory Ethnic
Studies course might be the only engagement they have with deeper discussions on BIPOC histories and futures, as well as the nuances of engaging in more diverse atmospheres than LO (which is most places they will likely go for higher education and their careers).
The LOSD Belonging landing page says, "Our efforts to
promote a sense of belonging are not just about the days we celebrate but also about the events and discussions we engage in." Reinstating Ethnic Studies and making it mandatory would demonstrate a real commitment to these words.
You can support this by submitting written testimony to the LOSD board of
directors via email at losdschoolboard@loswego.k12.or.us (see this link and make sure to review the full instructions before submitting written testimony). If you're having trouble getting started, our direct engagement
team has crafted sample text that you can customize for your testimony below:
Hello School Board Members,
My name is [first and last name] and I’m a [describe your role in the community]. I’m writing to urge you to reinstate Ethnic Studies and make it a mandatory course.
Before the start of the 2024-25 school year, this school board made the decision to remove Ethnic Studies from the curriculum. This decision was made without regard to
the opinion of students who may have benefited from this class.
It is part of a series of failures by this district to promote and preserve the education of BIPOC histories. Lake Oswego students are rarely taught this history, either at school or at home. The impact of not being taught BIPOC history molds white students into complicit citizens with severe internalized racism. For students of color, this impact is drastically worse. BIPOC students are effectively gaslit into
believing that the wrongs done to their people by this country throughout history were minor setbacks, and shouldn’t have affected them as much as they did. This causes BIPOC students to develop a sense of inferiority, and teaches supremacy to white students, thereby maintaining the systems of white supremacy that have plagued this country since before its founding. It leaves BIPOC students isolated, especially in a place like Lake Oswego, where the overwhelming, oppressive message is to be
grateful for what you have and just deal with it. BIPOC students are forced to turn to their parents for actual descriptions of their full history, while white students get to grow up not caring about race at all.
Ethnic Studies was a class that was designed to begin the process of righting this wrong. It would allow white students the opportunity to confront their privilege, and recognize the impact of implicit and explicit racism on their perceptions of history, media, and the
people around them. It would give BIPOC students a chance to understand the ways in which their people have been systematically marginalized, and realize that their gut feelings about the importance of racism in driving the course of this country’s history were right all along.
Part of LOSD’s reasoning for cutting Ethnic Studies was lack of enrollment. By reinstating this class, and making it mandatory, LOSD would begin the path to healing its own history of racism by ensuring that
all students understand the truth about history. Going into the upcoming school year, I sincerely hope this board makes the right decision, and opens the truth to all of its students.
Sincerely,
[first and last name]
As concerned community members, we must make our voices heard on this issue. The upcoming school board meeting is March 10 and you can submit testimony until 12:00pm that afternoon for it to be considered
for that meeting. That said, we also encourage community members to keep submitting after the date and consider testifying in person at upcoming meetings.
If we believe in creating a culture of true belonging where people of all backgrounds are not just tolerated, but can genuinely thrive,
then we need to be as loud about this as some in our community are loud about pickleball.
