After protests, North Thurston school leaders hear from students, parents and teachers
About 130 people, gathered both in person and online, watched the North Thurston Public Schools board meeting on Tuesday, after student protests shook River Ridge and North Thurston high schools last week.
Black student union members at both schools and their supporters staged sit-ins and walkouts last week to call attention to what they say are unaddressed concerns about racism and sexism at the schools.
Their action resulted in a Tuesday meeting with district leaders, including school board members Dave Newkirk and Jennifer Thomas.
“As a group we agreed on a lot of changes that are coming, and that is because you guys stood up and voiced your opinions,” Newkirk said, addressing the audience at Salish Middle School.
“You are heard, and you were heard, all the way up to the top, and we showed up with our ears wide open because we wanted to hear what you had to say and wanted to be part of the solution.”
More than a dozen students, teachers, parents and community leaders spoke in support of the student protests and the need to do more for students and their concerns.
Black student union member and River Ridge student Laila Markland urged the district to improve its hiring practices to ensure staff are able to teach topics such as race or sexism that don’t perpetuate harm in the classroom.
“It’s extremely important more Black teachers and teachers of color are being hired, and that curriculum works to empower Black and brown students and portrays a full truth rather than a whitewashed half-truth,” she added.
Chinook Middle School teacher Holly Burchet-Hall said staff training is desperately needed.
“It is really hard to facilitate and to have difficult conversations with young students in our classrooms,” she said. “They want to have those conversations and I need help in how to do that so that it’s responsive and doesn’t re-traumatize our students and forwards our work with all of our students, particularly students of color.”
Lacey-based New Life Baptist Church senior interim pastor Eric Jackson said the district needs to develop an educational system that dismantles anti-blackness and that anti-racist policies and practices are put in place.
River Ridge parent Qayi Steplight, who has been thrust into the spotlight in recent weeks after his son, who plays for the River Ridge basketball team, was the target of racially insensitive remarks during a game at Capital High School in west Olympia. Those comments were captured in a video that was shared on social media.
“I speak about trauma, but I don’t really know how I’m going to fix this,” he said.
He urged the district to have zero tolerance for racism.
“You have the resources to send a direct message to the community,” Steplight said. “Send the right message that (punishment) is going to be harsh. It needs to be harsh because that’s how we stop it.”
River Ridge paraeducator Andrew Johnston took aim at the statement released last Friday by Superintendent Deb Clemens and board president Newkirk. The statement said, in part, that campus protests would not be allowed because the chanting was disruptive to students enrolled in life-skills programs.
Johnston said that was false, adding that no member of the high school administration or the district checked on those students.
“To scapegoat a special needs student who does not have a voice themselves in lieu of listening to the Black student union is despicable,” he said.
This story was originally published February 9, 2022 at 5:30 AM.
