October 26, 2022 4 Public Education, Fairfax Federation of Teachers, Fairfax Education Association, Stand and Deliver and FCPS Pride have joined with other community groups to co-sponsor the Free and Antiracist Minds’ resolution at the October 20, 2022 FCPS School Board meeting. The resolution was to support administrators and teachers who daily are presented with the difficult questions surrounding race in Virginia and are charged with educating our children with accurate, balanced and meaningful information.
It was also an effort to reassure those who work with Fairfax County children that some political perspectives and politically motivated attacks would not endanger their jobs and careers.
Additionally, it was needed to assure parents of Brown and Black children in Fairfax that their children will see and hear themselves and their ancestors represented with dignity in the curriculum and instruction in their schools.
At the 11th hour, the carefully drafted and fully vetted resolution was scuttled for a watered-down, and toothless version that was presented and approved as an amendment to the resolution. The language used in the new version reflects the current status quo of policy and offers little reassurance either to school based educators or parents. This version of the resolution merely reinforced the current policy. The amended version passed with a vote of seven to four.
As concerned members of the FCPS community, we remain committed to supporting teachers, administrators and students. We seek a curriculum and culture that does not shy away from our collective history, but embraces it, for all its good or bad, and respects that without an honest reckoning with our past, we cannot move toward a just future.
Respectfully, 4 Public Education, Stand and Deliver, Fairfax Education Association, Fairfax Federation of Teachers, and FCPS Pride request that the FCPS Board reconsider their decision to support a resolution that may seem politically safe, but is both damaging to its most vulnerable students and signals to its most creative and engaged teachers that they can not count on this Board to protect them from extremists.