Lawrence USD 497 school board

Emotions ran high at Monday’s school board meeting, where talk once again turned to the district’s equity efforts and what is being done to secure safe, inclusive environments for all students in Lawrence Public Schools.

In the wake of Tuesday’s presidential election, school board members and public commenters said, some parents and teachers may be struggling to explain Donald Trump’s ascent to the presidency. And that’s exactly why it’s imperative that the school board and district employees make equity a priority in Lawrence — perhaps now more than ever, school board member Vanessa Sanburn said.

“Last week, a man who made countless … offensive comments about African Americans, Muslims, Mexicans and women, was elected to the highest office in the country,” Sanburn said.

“Systemic racism is huge, and it’s a pervasive problem, and it’s woven into the very fabric of our society, along with sexism and rape culture, which permeates much of our world. And at this moment, I think it’s critical that we take stock of what we can do as a school board and as a school district to provide as much of a buffer as we can for our students against” any social injustices occurring now or in the days to come, she said.

There is work being done to combat institutionalized racism in schools, Sanburn pointed out. The district, since 2009, has provided Beyond Diversity training to more than 1,500 school board members, building employees and community partners.

Currently, about 75 percent of teachers working in Lawrence Public Schools have attended Beyond Diversity training. That’s not nearly enough, argued Lawrence High School science teacher Andy Bricker, who said Monday night that there are some “veteran teachers” in the district who have yet to undergo the training. To Bricker, who counts himself as an ally of Black Lives Matter, that’s unacceptable.

“On behalf of the community right now, one thing I would like to ask is for the district to produce a public list of teachers who haven’t attended Beyond Diversity and why,” Bricker said. “What are the reasons for some of the other teachers, especially veterans who have been around for years?”

Superintendent Kyle Hayden said releasing a public list of names would need to be discussed first with the school board, and that group’s president, Marcel Harmon, agreed.

Hayden said the district’s goal is to have 95 percent of its teachers trained in Beyond Diversity by the end of the 2016-2017 school year. But Melissa Johnson, a parent and former Lawrence Public Schools teacher who now works in the Kansas City, Kan., school district, said more needs to be done in this area — and at a much quicker pace.

“It is my sincere hope that by January, that something is done, that these veteran teachers that for whatever reason have not been able to attend Beyond Diversity, that they will,” Johnson said, referring to President-elect Trump’s inauguration.

But the Beyond Diversity work, as some pointed out, doesn’t end with teachers. It has been difficult, Hayden admitted, to provide training to the district’s classified staff, which ranges from custodians and food-service workers to paraeducators and other support staff.

There are four Beyond Diversity training sessions remaining in the school year. The problem, Hayden said, is finding substitutes for positions such as paraeducators, which are already in short supply, to take time off from their regular duties to attend the two-day training.

Ultimately, he said, the district aims to have every district employee, classified and certified, undergo Beyond Diversity.

Joy Mapes, a paraeducator who said she works in seven different schools around the district, told the school board that she had never, in her three years working for Lawrence Public Schools, been invited to attend Beyond Diversity training.

It’s true that few paraeducators have participated in the training, Hayden acknowledged, again bringing up challenges of scheduling and adequate substitutes.

Paras, Mapes noted, spend “a lot of time” with students in classrooms, which, in her opinion, makes the question of having these staff members receive the training even more urgent.

“I want to make sure that this issue doesn’t die out, that the school board takes this seriously, that it doesn’t come down to ‘Let’s do some more trainings, let’s make some more posters, let’s hand out some brochures, and it’ll fix it,’ because it won’t,” Mapes said.

“This is going to take a lot to deal with,” she added, “And it’s going to take more than just verbiage.”