Lawrence USD 497 school board

Equity issues were once again at the forefront of discussion at Monday night’s school board meeting, where talk turned to last month’s Community Conversation on race and some students’ disappointment in the progress, or lack thereof, in the weeks following that forum.

Inez Robinson, a Lawrence High School sophomore who voiced her concerns as a person of color at the Jan. 30 talks, was among a handful of Lawrence students to relay their frustrations with the school board Monday night.

“Even after the equity meeting and doing this and speaking about things in my school newspaper, things aren’t getting better. If anything, it gets worse,” said Robinson, who is Native American.

“But it can’t really get better without your guys’ help,” she continued. “I know I’ve been told that you guys don’t have the power to do that, to boss teachers around or tell teachers what to do, but you’re a really, really big influence on teachers, and teachers are a really, really big influence on my peers.”

Brittany Swearingen, a junior at Free State High School, expressed similar sentiments when she told the board, “we all spoke and nothing happened.” Swearingen, like others who spoke at Monday’s meeting, shared stories of racially insensitive comments being issued in the classrooms and hallways — and the lack of support, as she described it, that she received from staff and peers at Free State when she spoke up about her experiences.

If anything, speaking publicly about those experiences has only created a more hostile environment, Swearingen said, leaving her to ask, “What is going to happen now?”

What hasn’t happened, Swearingen and others said, is the “follow-up” from administrators that they said had been promised to them in the aftermath of Jan. 30’s Community Conversation on race. Marcel Harmon, school board president, said that it was his understanding that school staff would contact Swearingen and other students. But, in the two weeks since that discussion, Swearingen said she hadn’t been contacted.

One of the problems in this area, she said, is that students “don’t have any insight into how these things are handled.” Taylor Royal, a junior at Free State, agreed with Swearingen’s assessment. She said she has tried in the past to report her issues to school staff, but has felt disappointed by the lack of change, as she’s seen it, to emerge from those encounters.

“I get yelled at down the hallways to ‘go back to my country,’ yet I’m Native American, so where do you expect me to go?” recounted Royal, eliciting a few rare laughs from the room. “So I’d really love to know (…) what are you guys going to do to (get to the point) where I don’t get yelled those things down the hallway and feel victimized in my own classroom setting?”

Jessica Beeson, one of the most vocal school board members in her response to patron complaints Monday night, said she was “appalled” to hear that students hadn’t been contacted after last month’s Community Conversation.

“I share a lot of your frustration, and I don’t have great answers. I don’t have any answers I like, frankly,” Beeson told the students.

“I do believe your story. I believe every story I heard at the community meeting two weeks ago,” she later added. “I’m also frustrated by the timeline. It’s too slow, and I am willing to say that because I’m very dissatisfied that it’s taken this long to get information out to the community about that meeting.”

District officials last month estimated that it would take “a few weeks” to summarize the findings of the Community Conversation on race and make those findings available to the public. On Monday, it was suggested that the information might be shared at an upcoming board meeting — possibly the next scheduled meeting, on Feb. 27.

In the meantime, Beeson stressed the importance of including students in the district’s new equity-focused advisory council. One public commenter, parent Peter Karman, also urged the school board to fill the spot vacated last week by now-former school board member Kristie Adair with a person of color.

School board members seemed receptive to that idea, and Harmon said the board will start accepting applications for the position on Wednesday.