A Message of Thanksgiving for CB
Thanksgiving is a perfect American holiday, a gift Americans give to the world. Its perfection lies in its contradictions, its historical poignancy, its simplicity, and its emphasis on humility and gratitude, even shadowed as it is by catastrophic failures of those qualities and many others.
Thanksgiving, like our beautiful, robust, flawed nation, shines a light on our bravest aspirations while also illuminating the many ways in which we have fallen short.
We celebrate by preparing foods of the new world: turkey, potatoes (many thanks to Peru), perhaps squash, beans, and corn—the Three Sisters of Indigenous People’s cultivation. We remember a famous meal when indigenous people rescued European colonizers from starvation. We gather with loved ones simply to eat and to give thanks. We also give thought to how generous indigenous people gave so much only to face land theft, erasure, and an organized attempt to eradicate their culture, heritage, and existence entirely in the years that followed.
It all prompts thought of how mixed and complicated everything is. More than one thing can be true at a time. More than one thing is usually true at a given time. For many, Thanksgiving celebrates joy, family, harvest, and good fortune—and also it’s a time when we feel the loss of loved ones who have died, grief from war, or the conflict with those we don’t get along with.
This year, in Central Bucks, we at AFIE are grateful and hopeful for the future of our neighborhood schools. We trust that our new board will honor the needs of ALL students, follow research-based practices, and will find ways to offer every child and every family an equitable, inclusive, and outstanding educational experience K-12 free from discrimination and harassment based on sexual orientation, gender, religion, ability, race, or socio-economic status. The future of our community depends on excellent schools that work for each and every child.
And in the mixed spirit of Thanksgiving, we look back on where we’ve been even while we look ahead to where we’re going. There is so much we don’t know about the reasons why the outgoing board made the decisions and incurred the burdensome costs that they did. Therefore, we call for transparency and a full accounting of recent decisions, particularly those that pertain to policy and spending. Only when we know the truth can we heal as a community. Then we can support leaders who will put the needs of the district ahead of their own. Then we will find a way to make every child and family feel welcome and valued in our community schools.
It is our responsibility as parents and community members to come together across our differences to safeguard our children’s freedom to learn and thrive.
We will do all this and more in the coming months and years. Our wonderful schools form the foundation of democracy. They’re worth fighting for, worth celebrating, worth our investment and care. They hold the promise of our collective future.
It’s up to all of us to stand up with and for each other and for our country’s values of equity and justice for all. We must show up for healing in our community. We must help our new school board succeed in meeting the challenges that face our district.
We are profoundly grateful for the leadership that will help our community schools thrive and flourish, becoming vibrant learning communities for ALL our students.
And we offer our deepest thanks to you, our wonderful readers, and ALL the vital voters who stood up to elect the candidates of their choosing. We did not agree with one another except on one thing: our schools matter.
Because in America, we believe in the rights of ALL people to an outstanding equitable public education that embraces diversity of all kinds. And now we must turn that belief into healing, listening, learning, and working together to develop ideas into tangible solutions.
E pluribus unum.
Happy Thanksgiving, CB.