Excellence Requires Equity

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For many of us, the growing excitement about improved COVID numbers and the start of in-person instruction for some of our youngest students next week has been tempered by the race-based violence in Atlanta last week, followed by the terrible shootings at a Boulder, Colorado supermarket. Then we learned that a rainbow-colored lifeguard tower on the shoreline here in Long Beach, painted by lifeguards in honor of Pride month last year, burned down earlier this week. Mayor Robert Garcia said he had little doubt that the fire was an act of hate against our LGBTQ community.

Our nation and our communities deserve better than this. In our local schools, we are working systematically to get to that “better.” Despite all that has happened over the past year, the Long Beach Unified School District still stands for something. Our College and Career Graduate Profile explicitly states that beyond meeting academic proficiency and graduation requirements, graduates will display integrity and ethical personal skills. We are keenly aware that excellence includes preparing students for success in a society that is diverse in its demographics, viewpoints and beliefs. We are modeling collaboration by including student voices in more decisions about classroom and school experiences and our curriculum. Doing so helps us to create what we call student agency, helping students to take ownership of their learning through activities that are more relevant to them.

We are also activating a plan involving all of our staff on the issues of equity and implicit bias so that we can lead by example. And as an educational institution, we are doing what we do best – teaching, and finding better and more culturally relevant ways to do it, so that we can prepare our students for the real world. This work can sometimes involve difficult discussions among our staff and community as we reflect on existing practices, but Long Beach is not a community or school district that shies away from work because it’s hard.

Equity and excellence are not disparate concepts, and they are not mutually exclusive. We cannot have one without the other. We know we can do this work. We’ve seen thousands of our graduates of all backgrounds become first generation college students, often with full-ride scholarships to prestigious universities. Many of these students begin their college careers with a full year of college credit already completed. Inspiring examples of students overcoming the odds abound in our schools.

But we are not declaring victory. As we’ve seen over the past year and in recent weeks, societal strife, trauma and inequities remain. As proud as we are of our local schools, they are not immune from larger societal forces.

We remain excited about the return of in-person learning after the worst pandemic in a century. As we restart school in person, we will remain socially distant from a physical standpoint. But we will stand shoulder-to-shoulder against the common enemy of hate. Our children will be watching. We must not let them down.

Sincerely,

-Jill

Jill Baker, Ed. D.
Superintendent of Schools