FAYETTEVILLE-MANLIUS SCHOOL DISTRICT – School boards across the country have found themselves in the crosshairs of angry parents concerned about the teaching of concepts like critical race theory. Last week, this national debate arrived on F-M’s doorstep as several parents of students in the Fayetteville-Manlius school district attended the F-M Board of Education meeting to voice their displeasure at the district’s year-long focus on diversity, equity and inclusion.
In May, Superintendent Craig Tice sent an email to parents outlining the district’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiative, which began last summer as a response, in part, to a petition circulated online by current and former students urging the district to focus on these issues. That petition generated more than 2,000 signatures.
“We are taking steps to educate ourselves and our students to be more aware of our own internal biases that could cause some members of our school community to feel uncomfortable or unwelcome,” Tice wrote. “We want to be a place where everyone feels like they belong and matter.”
As part of the DEI initiative, school board members and administrators have participated in a series of retreats and training sessions focused on creating an anti-racist environment in the district and educating participants to identify implicit bias. The district also plans to audit the curriculum to “ensure inclusiveness” and “to make sure that our students feel represented and that the experiences they are living are reflected in the classroom,” Tice wrote.
“We need to help our students make sense of the racial and social injustices happening around them so that they can learn, grow and invoke change,” Tice wrote. “That work has begun and will continue into the 2021-22 school year and beyond.”
About a half dozen parents spoke in opposition to the DEI initiative, some equating the initiative to critical race theory, “an intellectual movement and a framework of legal analysis according to which (1) race is a culturally invented category used to oppress people of colour and (2) the law and legal institutions in the United States are inherently racist insofar as they function to create and maintain social, political, and economic inequalities between white and nonwhite people,” according to britannica.com.
“CRT or DEI teaches our children to look at others through the lens of the color of their skin,” said parent Tony Prince. “It also labels oppressor and oppressed based on their color of skin.”
“There’s a reason across the country [there is] an uproar of the public opposed to this Marxist ideology and indoctrination of their children,” Prince added. “Dividing classes and races is what happens in socialist and communist countries.”
“Ladies and gentlemen, a fight is coming,” said parent Jamie Holmes. “I don’t want my children to be called racist or oppressors just because of the color of their skin. Isn’t that the very essence of racism?”
There were also voices in the audience that supported the district’s DEI initiative.
“I am so glad to hear about the steps the school district has already taken to begin to address the issues of diversity, equity and inclusion in the school community,” said Karen Porcello. “We support this initiative and look forward to learning what steps come next.”
School Board President Marissa Mims responded to those in opposition that the DEI initiative should not be confused with critical race theory. The curriculum audit, she said, is a requirement that all districts in New York must undergo.
“Critical race theory is not the same as DEI,” Mims said. “Unfortunately, when people start talking about issues of related to race and inclusion, there is this effort to divide people by politicizing and coming up with very untrue statements. Nobody’s talking about critical race theory.”
