Given the horrific acts of racial injustice perpetrated over the past several weeks by police officers and ordinary citizens alike—themselves only a snapshot of the racist acts and systematic racial abuses committed for centuries prior—we are deeply concerned that the education being provided by the Lancaster Central School District is insufficient to prepare its students for understanding and acting in service of the social problems of our modern world.

Social constructs of race, along with concepts of structural and institutional forms of racism, are social scientific facts taught in classrooms across the country as a fundamental part of any academic coursework in sociology, political science, history, anthropology, and psychology, among other disciplines. Moreover, concrete knowledge of federal and local exclusionary policies that uphold this system - policies such as redlining, school segregation, and other forms of economic and racial exclusion - are imperative to a thorough modern education, as the effects of these policies are still alive and well today. Yet these ideas were absent from the curriculum throughout our tenure in the Lancaster Central School District. 

Failing to provide this comprehensive education is irresponsible to Lancaster's students as future members of their communities and citizens of this country as a whole. Unless the district takes a stand on these issues, teachers will not have the support or resources to teach these ideas and information in the classroom. As one of the best school districts in the state, we have a mandate to do better by our students. As a community that cares for its residents, we have a mandate to do better by all who call Lancaster home.

The superintendent has released a public statement on the death of George Floyd but this statement does not go far enough. The LCSD should take an explicit anti-racism position and directly affirm that Black lives matter. Currently, there is not even a statement of equality in relation to race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, or ability on the district website that is authored by the administration. In Lancaster, we pride ourselves on a high standard of achievement and so we demand that the LCSD do better in this regard. Therefore, we demand that the Lancaster Central School District take the following actions, across all grade levels, to correct this educational injustice for future generations of students:

- Release a public statement affirming that Black lives matter and that LCSD is working on an anti-racism curriculum.

- Publish a statement of equality on the district website.

- Develop an English curriculum that includes more works by people of color, at minimum proportional to the representation of each of the major non-White racial groups (Black, Hispanic, Asian) in the United States.

- Develop an “un-whitewashed” American history curriculum that centers the experiences of African Americans in the Transatlantic Slave Trade, Native Americans in the colonization of North America, and other non-White racial groups in major historical events.

- Develop a social studies curriculum that includes explicit pedagogy of social scientific concepts of race, including, but not limited to: structural and institutional racism; racial segregation, race as a social construct; national and global legacies of racial inequality.

- Develop a social studies curriculum that includes explicit pedagogy of social scientific concepts that have been shown to intersect with race, including, but not limited to: structural and institutional classism, sexism, and heterosexism; social constructs of class and gender; heteronormativity; privilege and inequality broadly.

- Implement mandatory summer reading for high school students that comprises texts addressing issues of racism, classism, sexism, and heterosexism as a first step toward developing an introductory course for all high school freshmen focused on these issues.

- Actively recruit teachers of color and district board members of color, e.g. by posting job opportunities to graduates of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), enlisting the help of teachers’ unions, and reaching out to specialized programs that recruit teachers of color.

- Create a transparent system for tracking recruitment efforts and reporting race statistics for candidates interviewed, offers given, and tenure granted. Publish reports and review goals annually.