The presentation recognized ways in which the district currently supports diversity, equity, and inclusion and the ways it could improve in those areas.

“With each question my 9-year-old posed about how and why the lives of people who look like him had been taken, I could hear his innocence dissolving.”

I was not surprised because having spent two decades in the field of education, I have seen and heard of numerous accounts of school safety officers being called to detain and remove Black children whose actions were similar to those regularly demonstrated by other kids their age, with one marked difference: their skin made them a threat.

To My Black Son’s Future Teacher,

As the new school year approaches and I prepare to entrust my child once again to a teacher (whom I am uncertain has been trained in how to best support the intellectual and psychological growth of children of color), I begin to think about what I want for my child. I keep coming back to one outstanding desire: that you see my child.