Wow! Last night, for the first time, I watched a Salem-Keizer school board meeting. It was gripping, almost like a soap opera, filled with emotion, inspiration, and, yes, aggravation.
It was clear that the school board is dysfunctional under the inept leadership of chair Marty Heyen. There were more than 180 people signed up to testify at the meeting, where the district budget was to be approved, including money for the highly controversial school resource police officers.
Yet at the beginning of the meeting Heyen took the time to engage in a pity party for herself, talking about how unjust it was for her to be accused of being a racist and white supremacist by students and others involved in the Black Lives Matter protest movement.
Well, someone sent me this photo of Heyen supporters, with some observations about who those people are.
The good news is that after the low point of Heyen's self-absorbed opening remarks, I was mesmerized by a powerful statement from Salem-Keizer Superintendent Christy Perry.
It was amazing.
I've included the entire statement at the end of this post, boldfacing parts that stuck out for me. Perry courageously criticized the school board for their weak-kneed responses to student demands in the wake of weeks of Black Lives Matter protests here in Salem.
Here's a few excerpts to whet your appetite for reading the whole statement.
We have provided opportunities to help understand our own biases. Our board members barely engage in the training. We have instances of social media display of white supremacy, a black face mask and mockery over that mask. All actions I can’t defend.
... I will advocate for Director Blasi as your next board chair because she is one of the few leaders who have at least the embers of trust from our communities of color.
... I am so committed to this, that I will only continue to do this work if I can have will and the strength to do this even if it means calling you out.
... I commit to the vision for creating the conditions for safe and welcoming schools, especially for our students of color, which includes an antiracist agenda and truly listening to our communities of color. I urge you to reaffirm your commitment to my contract as well knowing full well my support for anti-racist learning.
Really gutsy of Perry.
The school board hires and fires superintendents. Yet she was willing to publicly call them out for failing to do their duty to protect and serve students of color and other disadvantaged students. I liked her statement that she wants the board to reaffirm their commitment to her contract.
Here's a You Tube video of the school board meeting that starts with Perry's statement if you'd prefer to listen to it rather than read it.
Perry's reference to a school board member wearing a black face mask is in regard to Paul Kyllo holding up a photo of a Black man in front of his face during almost an entire meeting. Astoundingly, no member of the school board asked him why he was doing this or if it was appropriate.
Student activists have a petition signed by over 2,600 people so far that calls for the resignation of Kyllo and Heyen, given Heyen's connection to white supremacists. I urge you to sign it. Here's their demands. [UPDATE: There's another petition explicitly calling for Marty Heyen's resignation. I just signed it. Hope you will also.]
KOIN TV in Portland has a story about this, "Superintendent calls out Salem-Keizer board over blackface." It includes a video and this image of Kyllo. Excerpt from story: (In a very partial defense of Kyllo, it looks to me like he was wearing a black "virus" face covering under the cutout of the Black man, who I believe is ex-Trailblazer Cliff Robinson, rather than actual blackface.)
The black face mask was worn during a 97-minute school board meeting via Zoom on March 30, 2020. In that meeting, board member Paul Kyllo holds up a black face mask for nearly the entire time. When he put the mask down, Kyllo is seen with black face from his nose down through his neck.
When it came time to hear public comments, both via phone and video, I was hugely impressed by the passion and coherence of the student activists who gave the school board well-deserved criticism in the course of calling for the defunding of school resource officers and the resignations of Kyllo and Heyen.
What struck me was how the students had their act way more together than the school board did. They spoke clearly and calmly with a consistent message. That included promises by several students that they wouldn't be attending classes in the fall if the school board didn't meet their demands.
This needs to be taken seriously by the school board, because based on their actions over the past weeks, the students sure seem to be ready and willing to engage in a student strike come September if the board continues to downplay their concerns.
At the end of the meeting, another unusual thing happened.
The board members were blathering on about how to address the controversy over school resource officers, trying to figure out what to do without actually doing much of anything. At one point the attorney for the school district reminded them that they had to approve a $1.5 billion budget at this meeting, so maybe they should get to that at some point.
Then, when the Heyen-led board seemed poised to pass a motion about how to deal with the school resource officer issue, the attorney spoke up, saying he'd never done this before, but needed to do it now -- remind them of board rules specifying that action items are to be part of an advance agenda so the public can be aware of the proposal and have a chance to weigh in on it.
Pretty amazing that the board of a billion-dollar-plus organization is so clueless about elementary ways of doing their business. I didn't watch until the very end of the meeting, but I've read in news stories that the board wants to have the school resource officer issue wrapped up by the end of August, prior to the start of the school year.
That may be, but from what the attorney said, seemingly that desire will need to be codified in a motion at the next school board meeting. Which I'm confident will generate more controversy, since as you can read below, Superintendent Perry says, "You’ve centered every conversation around how we will get the voices in the room who share your perspective."
That was my impression also. The board seems to want to engage in outreach to the Salem community mainly to get input from those who want to keep school resource officers in order to justify what seems to be a clear majority on the school board who want to do this.
In fact, while board member Satya Chandragiri talked a lot about wanting to have a broad community discussion about school resource officers, his recent Facebook post indicates that he's already made up on his mind on this subject.
Here's the statement from Christy Perry. Again, I've added the boldfacing for emphasis.
Full Statement from
Salem-Keizer Superintendent Christy Perry
Chair Heyen, Vice Chair Lippold and Members of the Board,
On May 28, in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, I asked every employee in our school district one question: How are you actively antiracist? Our staff responded, and they also committed to growing in their path of antiracism. So, tonight I feel I can no longer challenge my staff without truly demonstrating the same. As the single employee of you, our seven-member board, I cannot sit quietly any longer. On behalf of our 42,000 students and over 5,000 staff members, I must stand up. If i can’t do this and speak truth to power, how can I expect it of everyone else in our organization?
Over the past week, I’ve been asked why I sit quietly. Parents are texting my staff asking why I don’t stand up for them in the Board room. I find myself quietly explaining why a seven-member board who is elected by the people is in charge of my employment. Over the past week, as we’ve met with students from our district who have experienced real traumas in our classrooms because of racism, I’ve shared that my ability to keep the equity work moving means I must keep the real issues out of the Board room. That goes against the very principles that I’ve been sharing with my staff – I am not being actively antiracist. Instead, I tell my team that we are going to show up the next day after a Board meeting to do what we’re here for – the right things for kids. Tonight, the right thing for our students is to use my position of power to do what’s right for all of our kids – our transgender students, our Black students, our queer students, our Latinx students, our Indigenous students, our students with disabilities, our Micronesian students, our immigrant students and every other child that comes through our doors.
And to all of those who are saying, “It’s about time!” I agree. And I’m truly sorry. This moment is a long-time coming, and I’m committed to getting it right. And there are thousands of educators in Salem-Keizer who share that commitment along with me.
As a cis gendered white female, I must first acknowledge that I have all kinds of privilege. While I grew up with alcoholism and a volatile household, I ultimately grew up in a world where white feminism, although new and strange, still was acceptable. I had female white role models, like my mom who was a school board member for many years and my grandmother who fought for full-day kindergarten. I could see myself as a leader because I was white. I saw myself in books, movies, and within my own family. While female leaders still face challenges including challenges in the superintendency, we don’t face the challenges that our leaders of color face.
I have quietly worked behind the scene to help you be better. But I need our community to know publicly the challenges you face as a board and what our community faces as we know better so we can do better. Being antiracist is more than the adoption of an equity lens and then using it as a hammer on district staff. It’s about examining your own biases and how you show up for not all students but specifically our historically underserved and marginalized students whose achievement does not match that of our white students. It’s about understanding racism and what it means to be a student of color in our district. And it’s about actively understanding the culture and community in which you serve, beyond adopting an annual safe and welcoming schools proclamation.
I have a fundamental belief that the best learning happens behind the scenes and that difficult equity work is hard to tackle in the board room. I remember the work session where we listened to our educators of color about their experiences and differences. It was one of the most compelling meetings we’ve had… and then you went right back to work worrying about things like who would be the next board chair and how would you tackle any concerns about policy governance.
As I’ve engaged our students and families these past 10 days, I’ve tried to help you understand the experiences of our students of color, but you have discounted the students’ experiences in a multitude of ways. After 71 comments in public testimony – the most we have ever had in my memory as superintendent – two of our members made it clear that those comments fell on deaf ears. Instead, you asked people who share your perspective to submit comment. Through that process, you white-centered the process and systematically discounted the very real experiences of our students of color even when a black man with a doctoral degree attempted to tell you it was true.
What we’ve seen from our Board in the SRO process isn’t unique. It’s been prevalent, from wanting to rewrite the equity lens to failing to stand up for our transgender students when a small portion of our community wasn’t ready to recognize Transgender Day of Visibility. Even reading the Pride Month Proclamation becomes a hot-button issue, with it always falling to Director Blasi, because she’s the only member who isn’t afraid to say the words.
We saw this systemic failure with our budget committee process, when you almost chose to prevent Levi Herrera Lopez from serving on the committee, despite him having the experience of chairing our budget committee in the past, and doing a really remarkable job of it. The membership of both Levi Herrera Lopez and Adriana Miranda bring perspective and strength to our budget committee that we don’t have when they are not there.
We have provided opportunities to help understand our own biases. Our board members barely engage in the training. We have instances of social media display of white supremacy, a black face mask and mockery over that mask. All actions I can’t defend.
We have worked to understand that when students come to us with experiences of racism in our schools, we listen. And after we listened this week, we have continually had to defend to you the experiences of our students of color. You’ve centered every conversation around how we will get the voices in the room who share your perspective.
On behalf of our students of color and our educators of color who experience racism every day in our classrooms along with their white anti-racist allies, I need you to commit to moving forward with antiracism as your guiding principle. You won’t get it it perfect. You won’t, I won’t. But we can commit to being ongoing learners together. Our youth have initiated a powerful conversation, and we applaud them. Now, together with their support, we need to develop a positive relationship that focuses on constructive results.
Moving forward:
-
- I will take on my own views on as a learner and ensure that you also have that opportunity.
- I will advocate for Director Blasi as your next board chair because she is one of the few leaders who have at least the embers of trust from our communities of color.
- I commit to continuing to learn about racism, the racism our students experience and my own biases, and I will ask you to do the same.
- I will learn what antiracist work is and what it requires, and I will create space for you as our Board members to learn too.
- I will denounce Board member affiliations to groups that are considered hate groups, organizations that are discriminatory or have a specific agenda that perpetuates systemic racism.
- I commit to apologizing specifically for my mistakes and to doing better as I will make more mistakes. But I will tend to this impact every time while centering reparation.
- I am so committed to this, that I will only continue to do this work if I can have will and the strength to do this even if it means calling you out.
- I commit to the vision for creating the conditions for safe and welcoming schools, especially for our students of color, which includes an antiracist agenda and truly listening to our communities of color. I urge you to reaffirm your commitment to my contract as well knowing full well my support for anti-racist learning.
I know that you want the process of SRO contracts to be yours as a board. I commit to providing you a deliberate community-centered process related to related to SRO contracts that supports ALL students, specifically our Black students, our queer students, our Latinx students, our Indigenous students, our students with disabilities, our transgender students, our Micronesian students, our immigrant students and every other child that we have the privilege to welcome into our schools. Be learners with an open heart in that process.
I want to thank a number of leaders of color who show up in our communities every day from the NAACP, Mano a Mano, the Coalition for Equality, Causa Oregon, PCUN and Latinos Unidos Siempre. Their leadership pushes me to be better. Certainly, we owe tremendous gratitude to our educators of color – licensed, classified and administrators – who experience racism in our community every day but never let that waiver in their commitment to our students. We must all follow their lead.
Christy Perry, Superintendent
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