The Parent's Agenda:
Schools That Work For Us!
We want an anti-racist, equitable, and just education system that nurtures a sense of belonging and ability to thrive. Because of systemic racism, Black and Brown children and families in our community are not achieving the same rates of success as their white counterparts. Our school system is faced with critical issues around funding, truancy, suspensions, dropout rates, transient populations, and low academic performance- all rooted in various forms of oppression and systemic inequity. In addition, parents and caregivers are experiencing barriers in our school system when supporting our children.
In 2019, SUNL began developing a campaign regarding public education. A community-based study was launched to help identify pressing issues that parents and caregivers face within NLPS. It was quickly realized that a framework called “Schools That Work For Us'' (STWFU) greatly aligned with the experiences of parents and caregivers. This framework was created by a local partner organization named Hearing Youth Voices (HYV) as the result of 6 years of youth-led research and data collection. It is a comprehensive framework that includes 8 themes impacting students, and was released in 2018. With permission from HYV, SUNL is working towards bringing the experiences of Black and Brown parents and caregivers into this framework. We discovered that in addition to the 8 themes, accountability was an emerging issue. Upon bringing these findings to HYV, they agreed that we should include it as the 9th theme; recognizing that accountability is fundamental to the STWFU framework. Together we are working to improve our school system and community.
This study was concentrated on our community’s most marginalized demographic; Black and Brown people. Historically, we are often denied safe spaces to express our concerns and experiences and are not given the adequate opportunity and attention to have them addressed by those in power. This report, “The First Bi-Annual Report Regarding New London Public Schools”, will focus mostly on accountability; the area participants identified as most in need of improvement. A brief overview of the other top areas of improvement and themes are included in this report.
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