RtR Community,
This is an op-ed piece written by Dorothy Atwood, President of the Lake Oswego Sustainability Network and Bruce Poinsette, Executive Director of Respond to Racism.
What do your School Board Candidates think about Equity and Sustainability?
The May 20 election will decide who will be on our Lake Oswego School Board. Respond to
Racism (RtR) and Lake Oswego Sustainability Network (LOSN) reached out to the five candidates that are running for the three open school board positions (Lena Elbakshish, Neelam Gupta, Brian Bills, Kasey Adler, and Kate Lupton), to find out their thoughts on equity and sustainability. Our organizations do not endorse individual candidates, however, we are committed to providing information about the candidates’ positions on equity and sustainability.
These are not esoteric issues. With today’s environmental and political climate, understanding these issues is critical to being prepared for the future that our students will face. RtR and LOSN focus on education and our school to move the dial on these issues. RtR’s mission is to educate and empower Lake Oswegians with tools to combat
racism and make LO a better place to live for people of all ethnicities (respondtoracism.org). LOSN’s mission is to promote an economically, ecologically and socially healthy community through outreach, education, and action (LOSN.org).
Our organizations work closely with students and the school district. RtR supports a group of engaged students through its Youth Empowerment Coalition, which seeks to create a third space for antiracist high school students, many of whom serve
in leadership roles with RtR’s board of directors, community building team and direct engagement team (including moderating candidate forums and crafting questions for the this school board candidate questionnaire). RtR also attends and participates in LOSD’s Belonging Committee meetings and provides recommendations on curriculum, training and books on the histories of local communities of color. LOSN has been working with the district to incorporate sustainability into the curriculum and
operations. Our members have served on the School Board’s Sustainability Advisory Committee and convene parent sustainability networking gatherings, and supported development of the elementary school garden curriculum. We also sponsor a sustainability award for a graduating senior from each school.
Our questions covered a variety of topics including: advisory committees, working with community organizations, microaggressions, lack of trust in bias reporting,
sustainability integration into operations and curriculum, ethnic studies and climate literacy, strategic planning, disparities in educational outcomes and budget priorities.
Some of the themes we heard in the candidate responses were 1) The benefit of working with community based organizations especially in times of budget reductions, 2) Diverse perspectives are important, 3) Shifting from being reactive to proactive, 4) Intentionally integrating equity and sustainability,
and 5) Clear processes and accountability.
As an example, two of our questions specifically addressed classes and curriculum:
Question 5 - We’ve heard from current and former students that taking Ethnic Studies helps them feel better prepared to work with people from diverse backgrounds. Will you support reinstating Ethnic Studies and making it mandatory? If so, how will you go about it? If not, why?
Question 6 - We have heard from our students that climate
literacy is critical to be prepared for life after graduation. How would you ensure our students are learning about the climate crisis at all grade levels?
These are important issues to help prepare our students to be productive members of society, especially in our current political climate that is increasingly hostile towards equity and sustainability initiatives. Including new classes can be particularly difficult with declining budgets and strict graduating
requirements. Candidates agree that it is important for students to learn about ethnic studies and climate change. Some of the candidates feel, for example, that with the State Board requirements to integrate ethnic standards across all grade levels, the District is on the right track and this might be a good approach for climate change. We applaud the candidates for their desire to include these important issues. YEC student leaders have highlighted the need for these efforts to go
further, not just through testimony to the school board, but the creation of a formal proposal to reinstate ethnic studies as an elective and eventually mandatory course, and creation and distribution of a survey of the current social studies climate for their peers. When students mobilize so thoroughly for transformative systemic change, our
leaders need to listen.
Thank you, again to all our candidates for engaging on these issues that are vital to the wellbeing of LOSD students and families. To our fellow community members, please take time to read the candidates’ full responses and most importantly, VOTE!!
Dorothy Atwood is the
President of the Lake Oswego Sustainability Network. Bruce Poinsette is the Executive Director of Respond to Racism in Lake Oswego.
