Attention:

Tony Byrd, TFA WA Executive Director 

Staff of Teach For America, Washington Region

     As a community committed to educational equity and the pursuit of “one day”, we believe that bettering Teach for America’s practices and culture is not a top-down pursuit. We have seen the sluggish pace of this bureaucratic process, and, as corps members committed deeply to the students and communities in which we serve, we have compiled this list of action steps. This has been the work of a diverse group of corps members, and the systemic changes we are asking for will ensure that our students and the students of future corps members will have better teachers. 

Demands for TFA Washington 

• We demand that TFA Washington issues a statement in support of the Black Lives Matter movement.
• We demand that TFA should denounce police presence in schools and acknowledge the existence of the school to prison pipeline in which zero-tolerance policies play an active role in perpetuating. 
• TFA has not addressed their stance on the ongoing Black Lives Matter Movement publicly or with CMs. This national movement has not only affected TFA staff and CM, but is also having a profound impact on the students that CM works with. BLM is a non-partisan issue. TFA WA should publicly support the BLM movement because it is not a political issue, in the same way that TFA WA’s goal to support low-income students of color is not a political issue. 
  TFA has also not shared their stance on police presence in schools. TFA is an organization that claims to support the education of low-income students of color. We know that police presence in schools negatively affects this population of students. TFA WA needs to denounce police presence in schools and work with CMs and partnering school districts to advocate for the removal of police and school resource officers in schools in order to better align with TFA WA’s overall mission of “strengthening the movement for educational equality and excellence.”

Ongoing Anti-Racist Work Demands 

• We demand that at least one full day as well as continued conversations throughout the week of Induction be dedicated to discussing Teach For America’s problematic role in educational inequities across America and that substantial anti-racism and anti-bias training be incorporated into this week. [This demand is aligned with “BIPOC in TFA” Short-Term Demand #6]
• We demand that TFA Washington transition White Affinity spaces from open style forum discussion to learning objective based instruction around the impacts of White Supremacist Culture and Anti-Racism, in order to decrease the traumatic experiences inflicted by White CMs. We encourage TFA Washington look into the following organizations to do this: European Dissent, The People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond
• We demand that TFA Washington hires qualified outside professionals during all-Corps events in place of TFA-led DEI work during all-Corps events. In relation to this work, we demand that TFA WA partners with other Americorps programs, and/or other relevant organizations in order to better their anti-racist work.  
• We demand that TFA WA align their anti-racist work with U-ACT’s developing anti-racist work. 
• We demand that TFA WA focuses on hiring and retaining staff members and Corp members who reflect the communities in which we are placed. 
  As an organization committed to educational equity, Teach for America should be providing more intentional and comprehensive anti racist training to its staff and corps members. The pursuit of educational equity must include working toward anti-racism. In order to learn and unlearn through DEI work, TFA should be centering BIPOC voices that come from outside of the organization’s power structure. These outside voices would provide context and an unbiased perspective on Teach for America’s alignment to their values. We believe that in order to continue working towards “one day”, we must be critical of our position and how we as teachers and CMs may be perpetuating systemic inequity. 

Cultural Demands 

• We demand that TFA WA staff do all work they require of their CMs. This includes all anti-racist training. 
  We demand that anti-racist training be ongoing throughout CMs commitment. 
• We demand that TFA WA is transparent with their CMs regarding their practices. In order to hold the organization and staff members accountable, we demand that survey results from CMs be anonymously published. 
• We demand that TFA WA have an external consultant conduct an annual diversity report in which data can be shared about the organization.
• We demand that this report shares diversity across staff, CMs, and leadership positions.  More so, we demand that the diversity report includes information on BIPOC who are retained, laid-off, and hired by the institution within the fiscal year. [This demand is directly aligned with “BIPOC in TFA” Ongoing Demand #1]
• We demand that Teach for America WA provide mental health resources and support services that are specific to our teaching experiences. 
• We demand that TFA WA provide to South-Central Corps members the same level of support and resources that are provided to the GPS Corps members. 
  Due to negative experiences that CMs have had in TFA WA, we are highlighting the following demand aligned with BIPOC in TFA. TFA WA staff have been presented with scenarios in which CMs have experienced racist, sexist, and homophobic remarks made by other CMs. TFA WA staff have not acted appropriately in these scenarios.
  
• We demand that clear, transparent, and thoroughly communicated plans for racist, sexist, homophobic, discriminatory, or exclusionist behavior by any Teach For America affiliate be established. Any individual who is a part of the institution who violates their responsibility to uphold such ideals should be subject to a disciplinary process that results in measurable improvement in their behaviors (e.g. training, time-off, and potential termination). The disciplinary process can be staggered by the number and/or severity of offenses so that those who demonstrate patterns of behaviors or create toxic work environments can be adequately reprimanded. [This demand is directly aligned with “BIPOC in TFA” Short-Term Demand #5]
• We demand that clear structures are put in place in order for CMs to safely report any discrimination they have experienced while working for TFA. 
  It has been many CMs’ experience that the culture of TFA serves as a detriment to both their own wellness and their ability to best serve their students. It is foolish to assume that staff members’ DEI work is complete and they do not need to continue this work alongside CMs. We believe that to fully align with TFA’s values and mission, we must all continue race and equity work together as a community of educators and leaders.

Financial Demands 

• We demand transparency in CMs’ financial obligations. This includes informing CMs of the predatory nature of the onboarding financial process of working with Teach for America before they sign their TFA contract. This also includes financial literacy training around short-term and long-term costs of being a CM and explicitly informing TFA CMs of the taxes they will be required to pay on their transitional funding and the interest-rates of their transitional loans.
  Far too many CMs have joined our organization without the full understanding of the financial burden: including out-of-pocket expenses, taxes, grants, etc. This disproportionately affects low-income applicants.

Onboarding Demands 

• We demand that TFA Washington provides a plan for Summer healthcare during Induction, including both mental health services and physical healthcare services
• We demand that TFA Washington restructures their recruitment process to focus on hiring people who desire to be long-term educators in order to decrease the negative impact that TFA has on the communities we are present in.
• We demand that the recruitment team goals and strategies shift to a more inclusive model that targets community colleges, HBCUs, and minority dominant colleges. We demand that the same resources that are allocated to the top tier institutions be utilized for colleges and institutions that have predominantly high percentages of BIPOC students.  [This demand is directly aligned with “BIPOC in TFA” Short-Term Demand #4]
• We demand that TFA Washington, in order to preserve the mental health of BIPOC CMs, hold Institute in the communities that CMs will be working in. If TFA WA cannot be certain that they can send their CMs to a place that will not traumatize their BIPOC peers due to poor leadership and inadequate mental health services, they must directly oversee Institute by holding it locally or being present for the entirety of Institute. 
  TFA WA’s recruitment does not currently use a model where they recruit from diverse colleges (HBCU, Community Colleges, etc.) Not only does this mean that TFA WA has many corp members who are not from the community that they are serving, this also contributes to the culture of whiteness among the organization. Institute ill-prepares members to be teachers, it provides no context for what it will be like to teach in Washington state, and it has also been a traumatizing experience for many WA CM’s across corps years and racial, gender, and sexual identities. 
  Corps member: Potential members whether or not they desire to be long-term educators are not immune to the low retention rates in high-need schools for many different factors. (ex., TFA's lack of transparency for prospective members, training, how to assess a person's commitment to working with marginalized, disenfranchised communities under strain and lack of leadership/resources)