The death of George Floyd in the custody of Minneapolis police has led to discussions about racial and ethnic equity across institutions, and on Tuesday, the Durango School District 9-R Board of Education began to delve into the topic.
“We’re in a summer of protest, and we’re aware, and I’m aware of how pervasive racism is,” said board member Erika Brown.
Addressing racism would be a “big job” Brown said and suggested the district was too close to problems to conduct an examination of racism solely from inside the institution.
“Addressing racism is a big job, and I want to make sure it is done right,” she said.
Superintendent Dan Snowberger suggested bringing in Fort Lewis College to help with an independent assessment of multicultural equity in the district and to help collect data that would help provide some measures of how extensive bias, especially implicit bias, is in the district.
A suggestion to hold listening sessions for families and students of color might be one avenue the district pursues.
Listening sessions, Snowberger said, could help identify “why, where, how and what” the district’s challenges are in providing multicultural equity.
“I think listening sessions would be wise and help identify problems. I would hate to say it (racism) exists here. That troubles me, but we all have implicit bias,” he said.
Ideally, Snowberger said the district would find a person of color from within the community who can engage with communities of color to begin addressing problems in providing multicultural equity to students and families.
Examining difficulties in providing multicultural equity would not be a first.
Snowberger said a conversation about issues of multicultural equity was attempted with communities of color years ago. However, he said the effort was hamstrung by limited participation from families of color from within the district.
In any current assessment of multicultural equity issues, Snowberger said he would like to see a higher participation rate by families of color.
“I don’t deny there is racism in the world, and there is racism in the district and we need help identifying it,” he said.
Snowberger indicated some numbers illustrate a problem exists and an examination of multicultural equity would be productive – noting the Native American population constitutes 4.5% of the district’s student population but Indigenous students make up 9% of disciplinary actions.
Board member Mick Souder suggested collecting ideas about how to examine multicultural equity issues in the district.
“On our to-do list, we need to find ideas on how to deal with this,” he said.
parmijo@durangoherald.com
