Akron Public school board draft racial equity plan but much is still in the works

Akron Public schools opened their doors, virtually, Aug. 12-17, two months after the board of education declared racism a public health issue for their school district. 

Since then, the district has looked for ways they can be a better resource to their students and have drafted a racial equity policy. 

The policy will look at how race and racism impacted educational outcomes and will look at how they infuse culture and race within their schools and policies.

“Analyzing the district as well and the actions we take and looking at creating a decision making tool that when we’re making decisions we think critically about key areas and make sure that the decisions we’re making isn’t adversely impacting our students,” Vice President of Akron Board of Education, N.J. Akbar said.

As of 2018-2019 school year, the district had a total of approximately 21 thousand students with 46.5 percent of the students being black and 32 percent of their students being white.

The district already had policies that promote equity, but due to the nationwide protest in support of Black Lives Matter and the death of George Floyd, the district wanted to take a more rigorous approach.

The city of Akron had also made racism a public health issue in June, creating the Racial Equity and Social Justice task force.

Donna Skoda, Health Commissioner for Summit County public health said that the whole idea was to bring to light the inequalities that lead to inequities and create struggles for people of color.

She said, when identifying racism as a public health issue they examine housing, transportation, hospitals and educational institutions.

Presently, nothing much has changed as the task force is still doing research on what leads to inequities, however Skoda said inequities begin at early education.

“Children need to have early education and they need to read by the third grade, because if you don’t read by the third grade then you stop learning,” Skoda said.

Skoda said, Half of the kids don’t pass the third grade.

According to the public-school review public schools in Akron have a math proficiency score of 38 percent and reading proficiency score of 41 percent, the districts average test ranking is at the bottom 50 percent for Ohio public schools.

Back in June, Akbar along with other board members put together policies that will require the superintendent to expand on implicit bias training, provide an annual report of complaints received from the community on racial bias and appoint someone who will work with the Akron police.

“The racism public health crisis resolution really was just looking at things I know that the district needed to focus on that focuses on equity,” Akbar said.

He said, there will always be acts of racism that will be hard to track, but they are committed investigating the incidents that have been reported.

The board will also be reviewing their hiring practices so that their teachers mimic the representation of their students. They are also currently looking at their curriculum and how they can better reflect a system that doesn’t whitewash history.

“Celebrating Christopher Columbus, for example,” Akbar said. “Not fully talking about the way slaves built the Capitol and the White House and many other aspects of this country.”

Nevertheless, Akbar said the racial equity policy will make a difference because it will bring on an equity committee with different voices and different perspectives.

“A lot has to happen in order for us to fully examine ourselves as a district, to make sure that we root out racism within our district,” Akbar said. “We also know that it is probably likely that racism will never be rooted out completely, because it’s so permanent. In our society, however, we make a commitment to put efforts in place to minimize or mitigate the impacts of racism, then we will have a more equitable society.”