The Tuscola school district website says it aims to help students “become responsible citizens with an understanding of the global interdependence of all people and societies in an ever-changing environment.” This is an admirable goal. Tuscola students should be given the tools to be well-educated global citizens — cross-cultural communication and understanding is an important skill, one that grows more and more vital every day. 

However, Tuscola schools are not currently meeting this goal and Tuscola students often leave our schools unprepared to live in culturally diverse communities. We, as Tuscola graduates who have left town to live in vastly more diverse cities and countries, can attest to this experience. We're willing to bet that many alumni would say the same. 

Additionally, the district has three basic expectations of everyone: be respectful, be responsible, and be safe. The district also explains its responsibility to students on the TCHS welcome page: that the "administration, faculty, and staff strive to offer a safe and supportive environment where our students can grow personally, socially and develop the personal characteristics that will prepare them to be productive citizens […]”. Unfortunately, in spite of these standards, racism is present in our schools. The school board has, in fact, already heard testimony on this from current students of color and their parents. Many studies show how and why the presence of racism in schools creates a hostile, unsafe environment for students and faculty of color. A safe and supportive environment cannot exist when bullying of any form is present. 

This is why we have created this Petition for Cultural Inclusivity in Tuscola Schools. We are asking for three changes: 

Curriculum revision:

1. Initially conduct a full review of the current curriculum in all three Tuscola schools, particularly in history and English/literature courses, and identify ways to achieve the desired result of teaching the most complete, inclusive version of racial and cultural history to Tuscola students.
2. Develop or revise policies and protocols that integrate additional racially and culturally relevant content, along with anti-racism instruction, into the curriculum.
3. Solicit educators, students, parents and other community members, especially people of color, to bring forward recommendations around the implementation of an aligned, culturally responsive learning curriculum.

Concrete action:

1. Establish a lecture or assembly series addressing anti-racism. This is an opportunity to talk about different forms of racism and how to confront them, including microaggressions, cultural appropriation, systemic racism, and color-blindness. This series can also be used to explain how this is relevant to the existing anti-bullying policy. 
2. Declare the second Monday in October as “Indigenous People’s Day.” This is an opportunity to recognize and honor the local and national history of Indigenous people, as well as learning about their present lives.
3. Establish a comprehensive reporting procedure for both students and teachers who witness or experience racism. This requires a collaborative effort and the acknowledgement that racism does exist in this community and is not tolerated.
4. Revise and expand mandatory diversity and inclusion, equity, and implicit bias training, to the extent it is not already being provided to district administration, teachers and staff (in accordance to their representative contracts) and all volunteers, advisors, and mentors who serve our students.
5. Publicly commit to being an anti-racist school district by recognizing that our community is not immune to racism. Commit to actively dismantling systemic racism in the education system. This could include adding “anti-racist” to job descriptions, developing a racial equity statement, and asking specific questions about diversity when hiring new faculty and staff.

Redesign imagery:

1. Add specific provisions to student dress codes that prohibit racist and/or cultural appropriative imagery, including the Confederate flag, Nazi imagery, and appropriated Native American symbols. With the added provisions, the administration should provide leadership, support, and training so the rules are effectively enforced.
2. Redesign the Warrior mascot. Merriam Webster defines a warrior as “a person engaged in some struggle or conflict”. Most images that appear when searching “warrior” are of soldiers with swords and shields. Tuscola can adopt this imagery instead of appropriating, reducing, and caricaturing Native American cultures and peoples to an image of violence. 
3. Warpath/ Tomahawk Chop/ War Chant must no longer be played at school events. This song, like the imagery of the present mascot, has and continues to appropriate, reduce, and caricature Native American cultures and peoples to an image of violence.
4. Suggested solution for our mascot history: Create an exhibit in the TCHS lobby display cases informing why this mascot existed and why it has been changed. This is also an opportunity to educate students whose land Tuscola is occupying, their history, and who they are [via native-land.ca, the Kiikaapoi (Kickapoo), Myaamia (Miami), and Očeti Šakówiŋ (Sioux)].

We believe that these three points will be a good start in the process of truly preparing Tuscola students for the culturally diverse world they will encounter after they graduate, and help foster respect and empathy between students. Too often, our alumni realize how much was left out of their hometown education once they move to more diverse communities. Tuscola alumni should be able to feel proud of the education they received here, and these three petition points are a step in that direction.

Our goal is to bring this petition to the school board meeting on August 24th, 2020, where we hope it will be addressed by board members as an agenda item. Every signature counts in getting the school district and school board members to listen to us, so if you're a Tuscolian and this issue is important to you, please sign and share this petition. Thank you so much for your support. 

Signed,

Marnie Leonard (TCHS Class of 2014), Nicole Mannen (TCHS Class of 2014), Glenda Wold (TCHS Class of 2015)