March 30, 2021.
To the Anchorage School Board:
We are writing on behalf of Enlaces, a nonprofit with the mission of educating, empowering, and engaging Alaska’s Latinx community, serving as a catalyst for equitable presence and voice.
Our organization is deeply concerned with equity for the Latinx community and for all people of color in our state. Our public school system is the first experience many young people have with Alaska’s institutions, making it all the more imperative that these formative experiences among peers, teachers, and authority figures reinforce the impression of a welcoming, diverse, and equitable community.
Alaska is home to 51,000 Latinx people with about 52% of them living in Anchorage. About 12% of Anchorage School District (ASD) students are Latinx. Based on currently available data, we know that students of color, including Latinx students, are suspended at higher rates than their white counterparts, and that they suffer lower graduation rates. Disciplinary consequences should not be decided based on race or ethnicity, and all students should be achieving comparable rates of scholastic success.
Clearly, there is work to be done in terms of achieving equity for Anchorage families. We believe a measure clarifying the district’s stance on racism is an important step to ensuring public trust and articulating a non-negotiable set of values. Requiring yearly reports from the superintendent detailing resource allocation and outcomes for students of different demographic backgrounds will allow the Anchorage School Board to make informed decisions and strategically address and ameliorate some of the disparities that we currently see.
Our schools are the bedrock of our broader society. Behaviors learned in school have the potential to shape outcomes for a lifetime. Imagine what our community would look like if every student learning in the ASD had the resources and support they needed to achieve their full potential. We won’t be able to achieve that dream until we commit ourselves to doing the hard work of gathering data and implementing policies and procedures that nurture student success. The currently proposed policies before the School Board are a solid step in the right direction.
Thank you for your consideration,
Enlaces Board of Directors
Lina Mariscal, Francesca Du Brock, Joan Ryan, and Daniel Darrow
We are writing on behalf of Enlaces, a nonprofit with the mission of educating, empowering, and engaging Alaska’s Latinx community, serving as a catalyst for equitable presence and voice.
Our organization is deeply concerned with equity for the Latinx community and for all people of color in our state. Our public school system is the first experience many young people have with Alaska’s institutions, making it all the more imperative that these formative experiences among peers, teachers, and authority figures reinforce the impression of a welcoming, diverse, and equitable community.
Alaska is home to 51,000 Latinx people with about 52% of them living in Anchorage. About 12% of Anchorage School District (ASD) students are Latinx. Based on currently available data, we know that students of color, including Latinx students, are suspended at higher rates than their white counterparts, and that they suffer lower graduation rates. Disciplinary consequences should not be decided based on race or ethnicity, and all students should be achieving comparable rates of scholastic success.
Clearly, there is work to be done in terms of achieving equity for Anchorage families. We believe a measure clarifying the district’s stance on racism is an important step to ensuring public trust and articulating a non-negotiable set of values. Requiring yearly reports from the superintendent detailing resource allocation and outcomes for students of different demographic backgrounds will allow the Anchorage School Board to make informed decisions and strategically address and ameliorate some of the disparities that we currently see.
Our schools are the bedrock of our broader society. Behaviors learned in school have the potential to shape outcomes for a lifetime. Imagine what our community would look like if every student learning in the ASD had the resources and support they needed to achieve their full potential. We won’t be able to achieve that dream until we commit ourselves to doing the hard work of gathering data and implementing policies and procedures that nurture student success. The currently proposed policies before the School Board are a solid step in the right direction.
Thank you for your consideration,
Enlaces Board of Directors
Lina Mariscal, Francesca Du Brock, Joan Ryan, and Daniel Darrow