The schools our children deserve.

CBSD has gotten so tangled up and wrapped around the axle on what we don’t want (just look at policies 109.2, 321, and 123.3) and squabbles about who told what to whom and which books are no good that we’ve forgotten to put front and center what we’re working toward: the best possible schools for ALL our children.

With school starting soon, this feels like a good time to remind ourselves and everyone else what we’re aiming for.

If our schools could continue their great work, to thrive and grow to their highest potential, what would that look like?

We are justly proud of our schools’ academic rigor and record. We are proud of our students’ achievement under the expert guidance of their families, teachers, and all school personnel. And in an age of ever greater diversity, of ever greater awareness of dazzling variety of values, backgrounds, and goals of our families, what would it look like if we came together to create outstanding schools at every level?

It would mean that every family and every child felt a sense of belonging in their neighborhood school. It would mean that the adults in our community would center the needs of ALL our children and communicate about ways to protect and care for the values, rights, and freedoms of every child. It would mean that ALL parents would know that their values mattered to their children’s educators and would be honored and respected, even while their child met and pondered values different from their families’.

Our schools and our teachers and administrators would work together, with input from the community, on curriculum that honored our shared history as Americans, both the proud triumphs and the shameful failures. We would not cater merely to fear and anger, nor to defiance and denial. We would aim to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about our great and challenged nation. 

It would mean more equitable practices and policies are in place to support schools and ensure opportunity.

Our educators would work together with parents to ensure that there were library books for ALL kids and ALL their interests. Parents and librarians would work together to ensure that the right books got into the right hands. We would not seek to restrict what kids are ready to learn, nor would we try to lead kids to read what they do not yet have the maturity to comprehend. We can develop ways to keep mature books, which are relevant to some students, separate from milder books which are relevant to others.

Our school board and administrators would demonstrate their appreciation and respect for our educators, as well as for the effectiveness of an inclusive approach to change, by offering training on sensitive topics, such as bullying and sexual predation. The school board would support teachers in allowing open, evenhanded classroom discussion, working with students to see many sides of challenging issues with curiosity and wonder, including all democratic views, and demonstrating lifelong learning in the classroom. They would rely on the expertise of our professional educators and nationally researched best practices in lieu of private policy collaborations with partisan law firms. Rather than trying to govern by doubt and threat with restrictions and prohibitions, they would educate, encourage, listen, and lead—especially by example.

We would collectively recognize that some signifiers of culture and acceptance have a place in schools, knowing the safety, and comfort their presence brings to so many. Just as we do not cancel prom even though some religions ban dancing, and we do not eradicate the long break over December 25 even though some in our community celebrate no major holiday at that time of year, so we can recognize other holidays and other practices with tolerance and understanding. Likewise, instead of seeking to eliminate signifiers of safety and inclusion, we can learn to acknowledge and accept them even if we do not endorse them.

We know that there are many in our neighborhoods who fear that opponents of CB’s library policy or classroom décor and discussion policy stand for a radical agenda, that we want to lead kids and families in a certain political or cultural direction. We do not. We’ve only ever had one consistent request: to simply follow the professional authority of our expert educators who have been trained for years in identifying the diverse needs of children. We have only ever wanted our schools to be safe havens and places of inspiration and inquiry for ALL students, whoever they are, without ever trying to change any child in any way other than to become more educated.

We want instead to ensure that EACH AND EVERY CHILD, from EACH AND EVERY HOUSEHOLD, finds a tactful, supportive, expert teacher in EACH AND EVERY CLASSROOM. We want our community to come together: not to agree on how to raise our children, but to agree on the fact that EACH AND EVERY PARENT chooses how to raise their own child, according to their values, and that our schools can support all families while preparing children for the future.

It is a grave mistake to see issues as “either/or” propositions. Win or lose, this or that, you or me. This leads to diminishment, by definition.

We can instead see issues as “both/and” propositions. There is no need to take away, to vanquish, to defeat. We can turn away from division and come together, to face the problems and issues together, to find solutions that work for ALL CHILDREN AND FAMILIES.

That is the prize: vibrant, challenging, supportive schools for ALL CHILDREN, no matter what, no exceptions. 

And we will keep on working until we get there.