Searching for Equity: Students and Staff Tackle Tough Talks About Race

Only nine of the 77 titles in the English bookroom were written by people of color. None are required texts. Nearly 80 percent of Las Lomas staff members are white. Do you see yourself represented at Las Lomas?

At the Diversity Club lunchtime meeting on Monday, members gathered to discuss plans for its upcoming C.A.R.E. Week, whose name stands for Compassion, Acceptance, Respect, and Empathy. They talked about activities, possible dress days, movies, and the training for students who will be leading conversations in all World History classes.

“There’s a list of resources we’re giving out, and we’re doing some activities—nothing too intense to make anyone uncomfortable,” said sophomore Zoe Chapital, a member of the Diversity Club.

These trainings will “teach about diversity, about other cultures, about other races, genders, sexualities—everything beyond,” said club president Tanvi Saran, a junior. “It’s mainly about inclusivity.”

At Las Lomas, students created the Diversity Club last year after some of them attended a districtwide Diversity Summit. The club became official at the beginning of this school year.

Club advisor Marlene Miranda, a Spanish teacher and the chair of the ELD Department, said that C.A.R.E. Week is “based on race— and just awareness.”

Schools in the U.S. and in the Bay Area are more diverse than they have ever been. Accord- ing to the Census Bureau, by 2100, 60 percent of the population in the U.S. will be comprise people of color. The Acalanes Union High School District has started to work on ensuring that its students of color have equitable experiences.

“There hasn’t been much awareness or much work done around it, and there’s a ton of work to do, but I think we’ve made some progress starting last spring with the first summit,” Miranda said. McNamara, created equity teams at each other the district’s schools, a move that Miranda called “really smart” and that has helped both teachers and students plan school-wide activities to address campus issues regarding diversity.

McNamara said in an email, “I work to provide teacher training and put on the diversity

summits so people feel empowered and can form teams at each campus to address their unique site issues.”

Other schools in the district have shown their support for those who have been historically marginalized. Acalanes celebrated an “International Week,” which coincided with Nowruz, the Persian New Year on March 20, the first day of spring. The literal translation of Nowruz is New Day/Daylight.

During the week, there were lunchtime discussions about President Donald Trump’s travel and immigration ban, women’s rights, and the environment, and there was an evening viewing of Miss Representation, a film about “women’s underrepresentation in positions of power and influence and challenges the limited and often disparaging portrayals of women in media,” according to an email sent by Acalanes English teacher Eric Honda, the chair of the district Diversity Committee. The week ended with an International Night, where heritages from all over the world were celebrated with fashion, art, performances, and other fun activities.

Last month, that campus also acknowledged Black History Month.

“The Diversity Team and leadership put up a poster on every classroom door,” Honda said.

The district has a contract with an organization called Pacific Educational Group, which trains teachers who are interested in learning about how to talk about race and equity.

“We’re sending more teachers and a different group of teachers than those who have already done it, so we’re expanding our reach,” said associate principal David Granzotto, who attended a national conference with other district teachers and administrators in the fall.

“Educators from all over the country con- verge in one city and sort of swap strategies and stories and share what they’ve been doing at their site,” he said. “It’s good professional development.”

Granzotto said that the district can offer this training, but it cannot require teachers to attend.

“You can’t force that because you want teachers to come to that organically,” he said.

Most people who have acknowledged this issue have similar objectives. “My goal would

be that teachers are equipped with a skillset and feel comfortable with talking about race in their classrooms, because the only way we’re going to make progress is by having a dialogue about it,” Granzotto said, “Please be open to those conversations.”

Las Lomas might soon have another reason to train its teachers, however. At the end of the recent WASC visit to Las Lomas, the visiting team recommended adding a goal about inclusivity concerning diversity. “We’ve already started to address that,” said associate principal Amanda Renno. “We just hadn’t put it in our report as a specific goal—like one of our big goals—and so they’re recommending that we add it since we’re already kind of on that path so it formalized the efforts that we started to do.”

Miranda is hoping to show teachers what students’ racial experiences are like at Las Lomas. “I’d love for them to see some student-led skits on real live things that are happening in classrooms that I think some teachers have no idea are happening,” she said. “I think that would be eye-opening and spur a really good conversation and be a starting point.”

Miranda is happy that the school’s new goals include increasing awareness of the needs of students from culturally diverse backgrounds.

She recently attended a planning meeting with other staff members from throughout the district“to think about where we want to go with this and to have it be not a thing we do, like a segmented thing, but to have it be a part of who we are, the lens that we look through everything. It’s so important, we have to look at everything through that lens so I can’t wait for it to be that day.”

At Las Lomas, some students were dismayed that there was no acknowledgement in February of Black History Month.

“It doesn’t make sense to me that Black His- tory Month didn’t have any type of event done

for it,” said junior Eryca Worthen, one of the leaders of the Black Student Union. “Maybe people felt because they aren’t black they can’t speak to certain things or it would make people uncomfortable, but you have to be able to work through those things and ask, ‘Hey, what would be okay to do?’”

Worthen thought that there was a missed opportunity for collaboration between student leadership and student groups.

“I think this also would have been a great time for leadership and the diversity committee to really interact and do something positive and beneficial for the school,” she said.

“February was a really busy month,” ASB president Thomas Henri said. “We were planning a leadership conference and I think that just kind of slipped.” That conference was de- signed to tackle race issues at all of the district schools, and around 200 students attended.

“Leadership on campus is a really evolving thing so when you’ve got groups on campus that are already pushing for more diversity, I think you’re going to see that mirrored in leadership,” Henri said. “There’s going to be more teaming up with them and also a bigger section diverted to diversity.”

Junior Betsy Fikir is the president of the BSU, although the club has not met recently.

“My goal for the school in terms of diversity would be for everyone to experience different cultures and learn about the arts, the humanities, and the intellectual of different races,” she said. “That way, students would know more about other people in terms of their tradition and nationality and can welcome them.”

Las Lomas can look to some neighboring communities for examples. Berkeley High School is known for its diverse community, and Berkeley Unified School District was the first district in the U.S. to desegregate without a court order in 1968. Berkeley High is one of the few high schools in the nation to have a an African American Studies department.

Victoria Rivers, a Berkeley High graduate who now works in the office, appreciates the wide variety of individuals that Berkeley has.

“We celebrate everyone,” she said. “We try to be very inclusive of all different people and their preferences, and however they choose to live. We try to acknowledge them in whatever way they would like to be acknowledged.”

Sophia Forrest, 19, who attended Berkeley High, feels the same way. “Teachers made it necessary to have assemblies and to have heritage nights, and to make sure the classroom is educated in all of our different nationalities and heritages and religions.”

Berkeley High senior Rebecca Torres is a member Senior at Berkeley High School, member of Chicano Latino United Voices, talks with her peers about the struggles of her underrepresented community. “For me it’s important to have the minorities voices, especially for me to advocate for those who don’t have a voice,” she said. “We planned an assembly last year in November, where we would talk about the labels and issues around students who are undocumented.”

Now they are planning a day of silence on March 30, Cesar Chavez International Day, Torres said.

“There’s so many different cultures, and races, and religious preferences, and gender affiliation,” Rivers said. “There’s so many different kinds and types of people that you just have to be open to seeing somebody new, something you’ve never seen before and be ready, be ready to open and appreciate them for who they are.”

Rivers said that Berkeley High has a simple goal: “We just try to be Team Whatever You Want Us to Be Team.”

Las Lomas Leadership is starting to work towards something similar.

Kim Fisher, the Leadership adviser, thinks that Leadership is shifting its focus and that she has already seen a positive change for future Leadership classes. The focus on environmental clubs, diversity and community service, she said, “is a whole new section Leadership has never had.

“Our goal is really to support you guys for whatever you need us to do,” she said. “We are here.”