“Honor diversity and build on the strength of its communities…”

The school should demonstrate non-discriminatory and inclusive policies, practices, and pedagogies. It should model democratic practices that involve all who are directly affected by the school. The school should honor diversity and build on the strength of its communities, deliberately and explicitly challenging all forms of inequity. – from the Coalition of Essential Schools (CES) common principles

As a part of our school’s strategic plan adopted in the fall of 2014, ANCS made a commitment to “improve the racial and socioeconomic diversity of the student population” and to “realize the benefits of that diversity”.  This commitment was made in part because of indicators showing a decline in such diversity, like an 8% decrease in the number of students who qualify for free/reduced price lunches (FRL) and a 4% decrease in the number of students of color over the past five years, and our desire to remain reflective of the neighborhoods we serve.  But we’ve also given focus to issues of diversity and equity so that we are giving our students the most meaningful educational experience we can create for them.

So what are our goals and where are we at with this work?

In the interests of having a rich and varied learning environment, ideally our student diversity would find us with no single demographic group making up a predominant percentage of our student population.  For the purposes of what we can practically and legally give attention to, though, our quantitative goal is to have each grade level be between 30-50% of students who qualify for FRL.  Going back to the CES principle at the top of this post, this goal moves us towards both addressing potential inequities in who is accessing the ANCS experience, and, just as importantly, helping us to “honor diversity and build on the strength of our communities”—more on that second point in a bit.

Over the past 18 months we have stepped up our efforts at spreading the word about ANCS to families in areas of our attendance zone from which we’ve had smaller numbers of students apply.  Our staff diversity coordinator, Larry Carter, has organized this outreach, and it has included door-to-door canvassing, attending community meetings, hosting information sessions, distributing materials about the school, and using social media and yard signs to raise awareness of ANCS.

Our board has also taken two concrete steps to increase the possibility of a more racially and economically diverse student population.  First, effective with this current school year, our school’s primary attendance zone now extends to the neighborhood of Summerhill.  And this past spring, our board voted to make ANCS the first charter school in Georgia to use a weighted enrollment lottery as now allowed by Georgia charter school law.  In the lottery process for the 2017-18 school year, students who qualify as “economically disadvantaged” will be given additional weight in the random enrollment lottery so that we may maximize our chances of reaching at least 30% of our students qualifying for FRL.

Beyond issues of equity, our drive to increase the diversity of our student body is based on our belief that students gain critical academic and life skills by learning with and from a diverse group of classmates.  In fact, this belief is grounded in substantial research that is unequivocal: all students in integrated classrooms experience better outcomes–academically, socially, and civically.  Our work as a community of educators and parents, then, is to help make sure these benefits of diversity come to fruition for our students.

Last school year, the ANCS leadership team began exploring issues of race and class in teaching and learning with a team of expert facilitators—Rhina Fernandes Williams, Vera Stenhouse, and McKenzie Wren.  This year, this work is expanding to include all of our faculty and staff, launched at our annual July retreat where we grappled with ideas and questions from texts like Rac(e)ing to Class: Confronting Race and Poverty in Schools.  Throughout the school year, we’ll come together to consider how we can best insure that all students are pushed to their potential and that all students learn from the diversity around them.  And we will also learn from colleagues at other schools through the National Coalition of Diverse Charter Schools with whom we recently affiliated.  Soon too we will find structured ways to invite families and students into what needs to be a community conversation.

I am aware that speaking plainly about race and class can be uncomfortable for many, especially when doing so calls into question our own thinking and actions.  I am also aware that we have a range of views in our school community, including, unfortunately, some who fear that more racial and economic diversity will, as one parent put it in an anonymous survey response, “water down what ANCS is”.  There are challenges and points of discomfort that come from addressing issues of diversity and equity, but that shouldn’t stop us from confronting them.  Coming off a summer in which intolerance and hatred based on differences reared its ugly head in our country far too often, this work at ANCS for our students and school is even more important to me.  As Margaret Wheatley, in her essay “Willing to Be Disturbed” wrote:

As the world grows more strange and puzzling and difficult, I don’t believe most of us want to keep struggling through it alone, I can’t know what to do from my own narrow perspective. I know I need a better understanding of what’s going on. I want to sit down with you and talk about all the frightening and hopeful things I observe, and listen to what frightens you and gives you hope. I need new ideas and solutions for the problems I care about. I know I need to talk to you to discover those. I need to learn to value your perspective, and I want you to value mine. I expect to be disturbed by what I hear from you. I know we don’t have to agree with each other in order to think well together. There is no need for us to be joined at the head. We are joined by our human hearts.