Ahmaud Arbery. Breonna Taylor. George Floyd. David McAtee. These are just a few of the Black lives lost over the past two months. As our country and community grieve these killings, the Washington State Charter Schools Association (WA Charters) is committed to amplifying the voices of Black and Brown leaders and taking intentional action to address racism.
As acknowledged by our CEO in a statement released earlier this week, our public education system is not exempt from racist policies that have an adverse impact on the lives of Black and Brown students. Part of the mission of charter public schools in Washington is to meet the challenges of systemic racism in education head-on.
We’ve made much progress through individualized, responsive, and anti-racist education for our students but there is much more work to be done. We will continue to ask ourselves how we can do more to combat the unacceptable racism we see in our region and across the nation.
WA Charters is committed to ongoing, transformative action. We have made contributions to the Equal Justice Initiative and Black Lives Matter Seattle in support of anti-racist action and have added a resource page to our website to help support our schools and communities.
We will continue to build meaningful partnerships with communities of color, foster a culture of anti-racism in our schools and work, and move toward equity for and representation of the diverse population of students we serve.
Steve Mullin, Washington State Charter Schools Association Board Chair