Dear anti-racist leaders, recruiters, and educators from across the world!

THANK YOU for all that you do to make your voices heard! Please keep sharing and signing. We are not done yet. However, Jane Larsson of CIS has shared the holding of "important internal meetings to advance how we are going to address racial inequities at CIS". Jeff Bradley of NEASC has also responded referencing their statement, commitment and work. Please read the email response to both agencies below. Please message me on Twitter: @JoelJrLlaban or through her for areas that I am missing and might need to be included in the dialogue moving forward. 

Anti-racism is vulnerable work; and remember there are 960+ educators who are with us! 

With deep appreciation,

Joel

                           --------EMAIL to NEASC and CIS------

Dear Jeff,

Thank you to you and NEASC for your statement into what would be an ethical and moral transformation in the international schools. The change we are lobbying is beyond the confines of accreditation membership because of the intersectionality and interdependent nature of international schools. My school may not be accredited by NEASC, but I have served for NEASC multiple times as a team evaluator, worked and might work for NEASC-accredited schools. Thank you for "recognizing wholeheartedly that more needs to be done within the orbit of NEASC and beyond to address systemic racism and its manifestations". We also know that if we do not address systemic racism in international schools, its "manifestations" in the form of longevity, cycle and depth of trauma, racist and sexist bullying, exclusion, discrimination, sexism, microaggression, lack of recruitment pipeline for BIPOC and women educators, lack of explicit teaching and learning of racial equity and justice, and otherism in international schools will persist. Like you, we cannot sit in silence to see this happen - because we would be complicit. 

Thank you for this: "recently articulated a statement of where NEASC stands and are at the moment reassessing our standards and our process to ensure they are effective and appropriate"; and we suggest, to ensure accountability for the development of policies and procedures on anti-racism. NEASC's ACE Accreditation protocol is primed and well positioned to do anti-racist work with its schools through its accreditation process, as a reflective learning community, because the "Foundation Standards represent the transactional relationships, structures, policies and systems without which a learning community cannot exist". 

Suggestion on your Foundational Standard: ETHICAL PRACTICE - The school has well-established, transparent anti-racist policies and practices in place to ensure that employees, learners, and parents are treated with fairness, equity, and ethics; regardless of race, first language, gender, religion, nationality.  

When schools engage on this Standard through the reflective process in an accreditation, we will look for observables such as: 

Diverse representation in governance, leadership, and teachers; because the governance and recruitment policies ensure that race, background, first language, gender, religion, and nationality are not limitations; and in fact there would be an explicit and intentional pipeline and amplification for all these to happen. Therefore, we would hope to see women, BIPOC, and LGBTQ+ leaders mentored, supported, and promoted in international schools. 

There is intentional documentation, engagement, curation of resources in the teaching and learning of anti-racism, with the enduring understanding that racism is systemic and has generational and long-term trauma and impact on BIPOC. And in order to dismantle racism, students are going to leverage their skills, knowledge, dispositions, and mindsets of global citizenship, internationalism, interculturalism, intercultural competence. The thing about what we have in international schools currently is the emphasis on these concepts as a goal, but not yet as a means to a core problem on racial inequity as a result of systemic and institutional racism. 

Policies and procedures, developed collectively by the schools' stakeholders, that will support students, educators, non-teaching staff and families against all forms of racism - mentally, emotionally, socially, etc.

The point is, unless we don't make it explicit, we will continue to flounder in the labyrinths of racial equity detours - and continue to perpetuate international schools' structural racism with its privilege and power rendered inutile. 
 

So, a huge thank you for taking our call seriously! It is strengthening and affirming that you genuinely commit to your "fundamentally different approach to education", which is ACE aims to transform rather than ‘improve’ schools and reshapes accreditation into an instrument to enable systemic change. ACE asks learning communities to reflect on learner impacts rather than outputs and to identify the evidence required to validate the desired Impact. “All learning begins with and depends on a provocation.” "ACE intends to be such a ‘provocation’. Our most compelling provocation right now is the longevity of structural racism in international schools, that we all perpetuate. 

Currently, 965+ educators, leaders, and recruiters in national and international schools from across more than 50 countries have signed the petition. And the number is growing by minute! We heard from Jane Larsson of CIS and the intentional conversations they are having to address racism, on which I will meet with her this week. We encourage NEASC to influence other agencies as you have institutional partnerships. We have not heard from WASC and MSA. A message has also been sent to The Principals Training Center to leverage its power, privilege, and influence to amplify systemic change. As you continue the conversation at the NEASC Board level, and if you find that you are still grappling with it and thinking twice. Let's be clear and be reminded: Anti-racism is child protection. Anti-racism is student well being. Anti-racism is a moral imperative.

Please know that this petition is independent and grassroots, amplifying the voice of leaders and educators around the world, without necessarily representing schools and organisations but as anti-racist individuals, allies and co-conspirators who value the need for anti-racist systemic change in international schools. This petition is a systemic check and balance. Accreditation agencies explicitly include anti-racism in accreditation standards in order for us to have foundational and systems-bound accountability within our policies and practices in schools. As a result, we have a systemic anchor as 'third point'.

As an experienced team evaluator, I also understand the non-prescriptive input from team evaluations for school; in order to provide autonomy, voice, and choice; however in matters of Child Protection - this is non-negotiable. I wish we have confidential and aggregated data of the number of child protection issues around international schools that are deeply rooted in racist acts. But then again, racism is overt and as painful as covert.

Thank you for your commitment and action to anti-racist work.  

With deep appreciation,
Joel