Congratulations Mr. Adams and let’s get to work.
Parents for Responsive Equitable Safe Schools has spent 20 months on the frontlines for educational justice, and fighting for families at the intersection of DOE accountability, public health, equity and access.
We welcome a new mayor, after the deeply harmful failings of the de Blasio administration — particularly in the case of a rushed, unplanned, unsafe and poorly managed school reopening resulting in over 9,000+ positive Covid cases (this year) and the last ditch effort of what could have been a truly “brilliant NYC.” But history has taught us well that change can shift a movement in either direction.
As parent leaders with a collective 120 years of experience with public education, 20+ children, 10+ languages spoken, over 10 school districts, 20 countries and strong relationships with families and educators in all 5 boroughs, we are uniquely positioned to co-create the kind of public education any mayor would be proud of.
We hope we get the chance as Mayor Elect Eric Adams is poised to take office this January. His calls for universal dyslexia screenings and a federally acknowledged day of celebration for Diwali exhibit some understanding of our multilingual, immigrant and disabled communities’ needs. However, what we are hearing regarding gifted and talented programming and specialized high school admissions deeply concern us as parent leaders with research-backed experience as well as anecdotal evidence proving that change is not only possible, but essential to move us toward true equity rather than the tokenization of a few additional Black and Latino children in violently racist and classist public institutions.
We also have profound misgivings regarding the uptick of policing in schools due to the disproportionality data school district leadership teams have been using to address bias in our communities for several years now, which proves that our children of color, our children with disabilities and our children who are LGBTQIA+ experience an astronomical rate of suspension, expulsion, arrest and in-school violence at the hands of adults in comparison to their peers who do not share these identities.
We are confident that despite an unimaginably traumatic 20 months, the students, parents, educators, advocates and New Yorkers we advocate for and stand alongside are ready for the kind of transformative change NYC desperately needs to create a truly equitable public education for EVERY family. We know the unparalleled potential of practices that are anti-racist, anti-oppressive, and culturally responsive and sustaining — including authentic assessments, small class size, and restorative and healing-centered approaches — and we will continue to lend our time, energy, and voices to ensure every child can thrive in their full humanity in our schools.
This won’t be easy, but the status quo has done us no favors and as New Yorkers, we have not only the often mentioned ‘resilience’ intrinsic to our city, but also the collective care and creativity necessary to forge a path forward beyond categorizing and adultifying our children. In addition, we hope to address the criminalization and barring of historically underrepresented parents in decision-making spaces from having a meaningful say in their children’s education beyond how to get them into an accelerated program — programs that wouldn’t be such a hot topic in the first place if we adequately funded and supported the schools in low-income communities of color.
We look forward to the opportunity to build the city New Yorkers deserve and the infrastructure necessary to sustain it: truly affordable housing, accessible and culturally responsive healthcare, language-accessible and gender-expansive mental health supports, adequate support services for our community members with disabilities, resources for our undocumented families, pathways to safe and permanent citizenship, and so much more in order to create a truly functional and flourishing democracy — not on paper, but in practice.
Congratulations Mr. Adams and let’s get to work.
Parents for Responsive Equitable Safe Schools (PRESS NYC)
