To the Editor:

It is painful to hear of the latest racial slurs surfacing within our schools. I fully support Reed School Principal Dr Correia’s corrective actions to have our Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Coordinator Wes Johnson and Student Resource Officer Will Chapman address these matters with students at school.

I believe this responsive approach is essential to reinforcing racial and cultural sensitivity among students and should be handled with their skilled professionalism, particularly Mr Johnson’s. It is a key reason Mr Johnson was hired. More importantly, this approach is visible support crucial for those students and their families to whom these harms are directed.

I worry that some of our Board of Education (BOE) members are persuaded by their own political biases concerning diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), and by parents/caregivers who have made DEI into an unnecessary boogeyman. I ask the BOE members to please contribute to the solution and have the backs of the administrators and staff who are resolved to assess and mitigate these incidents with greater awareness and expertise than some of the ineffectiveness of the past. I ask BOE to also please contribute to the solution and have the backs of the students whom these hostilities damage most.

It is BOE’s practice, like some of the town boards, to omit the contents of public e-mails sent to them from their meeting minutes.

I believe this is a failure of transparency and fosters distrust since the policy provides potential air cover to those who submit viewpoints which undermine properly addressing racism and bigotry within our schools. These viewpoints need full sunlight.

The community should know what is being said, by whom and with what frequency to this body without having to file a Freedom of Information request, which I believe is the only way for the public to see this correspondence. This is a public record and I think the community is entitled without the burden of process and delay ensured by a Freedom of Information Appeal.

Whatever reasons prompted this policy of omission in the first place have become pieces of the problem now. BOE, please fix it.

Respectfully,

Barbara Wojcik

Sandy Hook