One Year Later
June 18, 2021
Today marks one year since the WL CARE letter was sent, and we’re going to share everything that’s happened since then.
We thought for a long time about whether we wanted to do this - after all, sometimes it can be better to get change done working behind the scenes. But after the WL CARE letter was sent, and days waiting for a response turned into months, we realized we have no idea what we’re doing. There’s no such thing as an activist playbook.
So, we’re going to share what the past year has looked like. All of the frustrations, high points, low points, and good moments.
This is a very, very long story. For ease of reading, we’ve broken it up into four sections. We have a lot of allies, and to all of you, we say a massive thank you for always being there for us. This story, however, is geared towards those of you who aren’t aware of what’s going on behind the scenes. We recognize that we’re young and inexperienced and have made mistakes. At the same time, though, we ask that you read this with an open mind, and pay attention to what we have to say and what this journey has been like.
CHAPTER 1: Waiting on a response
June, 2020
One year ago today, the WL CARE letter was sent. It was signed by 802 parents, alumni, and students. Alumni began writing the letter in early June, and the WL CARE Facebook group was created June 5th.
The process of writing the letter was extraordinary. The Facebook group responsible for writing the letter grew to 1500 people in the span of days. It was truly evidence of how a dedicated, passionate, and focused group of people, from all walks of life, can come together and create something extraordinary. On June 12th, 2020, in less than 3 weeks, the letter was officially completed. The full letter and list of signees can be found on our website here.
On June 17th, WL CARE sent the letter to WLCSC Superintendent Dr. Killion, Indiana Superintendent of Public Instruction Jennifer McCormick, Principal Psarros, Principal Shriner, Principal Targgart, and local media. We also sent the letter to Board President Karpick a couple days later.
On June 18th, the administration made a statement on racism in WLCSC schools. The administration did not send this statement to WL CARE. We only found out about the statement on June 19th when the Journal & Courier reached out to us for comment.
The administration’s statement was as follows:
A group of WL CARE admins came together to write a response to the administration’s statement. This was our full response:
Today, Juneteenth, marks not only a celebration of the liberation of Black Americans, but a time to confront the critical anti-racist work still remaining. Our call for reform within WLCSC schools is part of this ongoing work. Yet, the school corporation’s response to the media shows no acknowledgment of historical or current events, nor an impetus to enact any real change.
The objective of the letter is to move towards collaboration on our demands for anti-racist education. While we hoped for a detailed, empathetic response to the 1,500 alumni who expressed their desire for change, we received a response from the corporation only secondhand, through the media.
In its response, the school corporation emphasized a zero-tolerance policy towards racism and racial discrimination. While this policy may be in place, WLCSC’s response ignores hundreds of alumni’s lived experiences with racism during their time in West Lafayette schools. Alumni have shared stories, spanning decades, of unchecked racism from both fellow classmates and faculty on school grounds. We encourage the corporation to reflect on these experiences, both on their substance and on how they occurred in a climate fostered by the corporation itself.
While the corporation hails the “well-rounded education” it offers, any education absent of BIPOC-centered curricula falls short of “well-rounded” by design. We again point the corporation to the specific demands of our letter and await a thorough response to each demand.
The current response is inadequate and demonstrates the inability of the corporation to understand its own complacency, complicity, and active role in broad racial misconduct at WLCSC. The time for change is now, and the first step requires listening.
July
As the summer continued, we were still waiting on a response from the administration. We understood a certain amount of patience was necessary, given the focus on the COVID reopening plan. However, we had not received any recognition of the letter or a timeline for when we could expect a response. As we waited, the WL CARE Facebook group continued to grow, and people began sharing heartbreaking stories of their experiences at WLCSC schools.
This moment in WL CARE’s story is incredibly special. There were alumni from the Class of 1969 to the Class of 2022 in this group, all sharing their stories. Many of us had never met each other, didn’t even know each other before joining the group, but through these stories, we all found community.
August
Given the lack of response from the administration and the 100+ stories being shared, WL CARE decided to put together a collection of stories to send to the administration. You can (and should) read the full story collection here, but we want to highlight the introduction:
We sincerely believe in the power of education to transform society. We also believe in WLCSC’s capacity to enact that vision by implementing anti-racist education and policy.
On June 18th, 802 alumni, parents, and current students affirmed this vision in a letter to the administration. To this outpouring of support for reform, WLCSC’s response should have acknowledged students’ lived experiences and motivated actual reforms. Instead, in the two months since its immediate, perfunctory media statement, WLCSC has offered no further response. In contrast, Tippecanoe School Corporation and Lafayette School Corporation, respectively, have hired a diversity and inclusion coordinator and have begun to engage in dialogue with alumni calling for reform.
WLCSC has the opportunity to pioneer anti-racist education and to rectify its past mistakes. Alumni, parents, and current students have shared stories - spanning decades - of unchecked racism and discrimination, from both classmates and faculty, on school grounds. To illustrate the pervasiveness of these issues, we share a small selection of such stories, in their authors’ own words. We encourage the corporation to reflect on these experiences, both on their substance and on the climate fostered by the corporation itself, and to enact the reforms enumerated in the letter.
When it comes to enacting anti-racist policy, silence and inaction are tantamount to support for otherwise racist institutions (to be clear, we are not calling any individual person a racist; however, policies, institutions, and people that are not actively anti-racist are, by definition, racist). But we know that West Side is better than this. We remain hopeful that WLCSC’s administration will begin to actively implement anti-racist policies and engage in dialogue with community members and alumni.
The story collection was sent to the same list of recipients as the letter on August 13th. Again, we received no response, beyond Board President Karpick’s acknowledgement of receipt of email.
September
We continued to remain patient as the school year began, but yet again, we were met with silence on the part of the administration. On September 24th, a full month of silence after sending the story collection and three months of silence after sending the letter, we emailed Dr. Killion, Principal Psarros, Principal Targgart, Principal Shriner, and Board President Karpick requesting to meet.
Only Board President Karpick responded.
In particular, please notice the lack of response to our explicit request to meet. We responded:
Five days later, President Karpick responded:
In his email, we’d like to point to 2 things: 1. President Karpick ignoring our questions 2. His refusal again to even acknowledge our request to meet. At this point, it had been three months since the initial letter was sent, and we had been unable to meet even once with any member of the administration. Instead, President Karpick focused on the fact that our emails were signed “WL CARE” and informed us that no substantive work would occur until January 1st.
October
We responded:
At this point, one of our admins, Ila Chaubey, frustrated by the administration’s unwillingness to work with WL CARE in any substantial way, wrote an op-ed to the Journal and Courier.
In response to Ila’s op-ed, a Journal and Courier writer called Ila, letting her know they couldn’t publish the op-ed without comment from President Karpick. They asked if she would be willing to allow the J&C to run a full story, rather than simply publishing the op-ed with a comment from President Karpick. Ila agreed. After the J&C began writing a story on the op-ed above, the school board finally agreed to meet with us.
This was the first substantive response we received from either the administration or school board. We’d like to point out, however, that we only received this response after an admin felt it was necessary to go to the Journal & Courier.
CHAPTER 2: A short engagement
October
October is when we met with Board President Karpick for the first time. We were extremely grateful for the opportunity and were excited to hear about the policies the board was considering. We responded with a few questions on the policies the board had proposed:
And President Karpick’s response:
Once we had agreed upon the October 22nd date, WL CARE sent over the following agenda:
President Karpick agreed to the agenda, and we had our first meeting with the school board, 4 months after sending the initial letter. You can watch the full meeting here, but these were the key items discussed:
If you watch the recording of the meeting, you can see that something we strongly emphasized was community input. As great as a diversity committee idea is, there is no solution without input from parents, students, and community members, particularly BIPOC voices. As we will talk about in more detail later on, this advice was not implemented.
The next day, we asked to set up dates for our next couple monthly meetings. Board member Rachel Witt volunteered to be the liaison between WL CARE and the school board. We set meetings for November 19th, 2020 and January 7th, 2021.
November
Our next meeting was set for November 19, 2020. A few days ahead of the meeting, we sent over the following agenda.
Rachel responded, asking about who sent the agenda over and what the purpose of the meeting would be.
This was now the second time we had been asked who was behind the group email, and we were confused as to why. However, we clarified this misunderstanding, and we responded to her question on the purpose of the next monthly meeting.
Once that was cleared up, we were set to meet for the second time. You can watch a recording of this meeting here, but these were the key items discussed during the November 19th meeting:
One thing we’d like to emphasize is that WL CARE admins were the ones spreading this information. It would be one thing if this information had been publicly available at this point in time, and WL CARE was simply amplifying it, but that wasn’t the case. People did not know about the diversity committee or criteria to join without this post.
How is this possible? How is it that the responsibility to inform the community was placed on a group of alumni, rather than their publicly elected officials?
December
As this was all going on, WL CARE began planning the Town Hall. We’ll detail this process and discuss the Town Hall more in the next chapter.
Back to the school board, though - after bringing up the Town Hall idea to President Karpick, we were informed for the first time that Margaret Psarros and Laura Falk were chosen to be co-chairs of the committee. There was no community input or open call for these positions.
2 days later, we requested to meet with Margaret and Laura. We felt this was a reasonable request, since it seemed to us that WL CARE was one of the biggest reasons diversity and anti-racism had become such major topics of conversation in the community.
A couple days later, we received a response from Principal Psarros. We were grateful for the more in depth introduction of Laura and herself, but we were disappointed that she ignored our request to meet, just as President Karpick had once done earlier.
We responded, requesting to meet for the second time.
After our November 19th meeting with Board Member Rachel Witt, we had asked for a brief update call before the January school board meeting, since that is when the school board would be formally announcing the diversity committee. Principal Psarros offered to join that update call.
However, this update call was scheduled to be a half hour, and its purpose was just that - updates from the school board. We wanted to create a dedicated time and space to speak with Principal Psarros and Ms. Falk on the goals of the diversity committee, WL CARE’s work so far, and our conversations with community members. So, we reiterated our request to meet - our third time asking for a call.
Principal Psarros responded, asking for our written recommendations instead, yet again ignoring our request to meet.
This was frustrating for two reasons - first, of course, we were disappointed that we were still unable to schedule time to speak. Second, though, the framing of “anything new that you’d like us to consider” was strange.
Had our initial requests, the June letter, ever been really considered? What work had been done on the part of the school to actually carry out the wishes of the 802 community members who signed that letter? Of course we had new ideas to bring up, but there wasn’t even a real conversation happening on the “old” ideas. Principal Psarros was a recipient of both the WL Letter sent in June and the story collection sent in August but didn’t respond to either.
As you can read from our previous emails, we weren’t looking to bombard the diversity committee with recommendations. At least, not yet :) We wanted to have an introductory conversation on the co-chairs’ goals and vision for the diversity committee. So, we asked for the fourth time if Principal Psarros and Ms. Falk would make time to meet with us.
At this point, Principal Psarros stopped responding to our emails. Laura Falk then sent us the following email.
In this email, she stated that the WL CARE letter had “invalidated all that the corporation has been working on”. She accused us of voicing our judgment and impatience, chipping away at the community’s trust. Additionally, she stated that we should remember that we’re working from a single story, and there are other stories out there to listen to.
We were, to put it lightly, shocked by this email. It was extremely concerning to us that a co-chair of the diversity committee would consider a letter pointing to all the ways in which the district could improve itself to be invalidating the work done so far.
Is this how it must be - community members should never voice ideas on pushing the district forward? Should the BIPOC in this community sit idly by, quietly hoping that their experiences improve?
To be clear, we understand that diversity and anti-racist work takes time. We kept asking for updates from the administration and the school board, not because we expect change to happen immediately, but because they continued to provide no real plan for how they intended to address these issues and community concerns.
Additionally, the accusation of WL CARE’s viewpoint being that of a single story was concerning. WL CARE’s letter was signed by over 800 people. Not to mention, at this point, admins of WL CARE had spoken to at least a hundred community members. We were having phone and Zoom calls multiple times a week, as we continued to gather feedback from as many voices as we could.
To us, this seems to be a repeated motif from the school board and administration. Anytime concerns or recommendations for improvement are brought up, community members are accused of never being happy, always criticizing the district, and not being grateful for the schools we have.
We responded, clarifying the purpose of WL CARE and why we would like to meet:
And that was it. We never received a response to either of our emails to Principal Psarros or Ms. Falk. Five separate meeting requests to the diversity committee were ignored.
At this point, we were exhausted. Time and time again, we had to practically beg to be given the opportunity to present community ideas to the administration. And so, we went public:
January, 2021
As our attempts to meet with the diversity committee had failed, we turned our focus elsewhere. During our last meeting with Board Member Rachel Witt, we had asked for data on disciplinary and academic track recommendations to be made public. One of the demands in the initial letter was to do an analysis of current recommendations, and we felt making this data publicly available would be a good first step to this end. Rachel had stated that there were difficulties in doing this, due to privacy concerns, but she would look into it. In the meantime, we began looking for the data ourselves, and we found extremely concerning results.
Most notably, Principal Psarros, one of the chosen co-chairs for the committee, was principal at WLIS, where Black students are over 20x more likely to be suspended than white students.
Now, we did not say in the post that this was solely or explicitly her fault. However, as a member of administration, the duty lies with her to ensure that students are being treated in a fair and equitable manner, and clearly that isn’t happening.
We also sent this data to Board Member Rachel Witt, who did not respond.
During the January 2nd school board meeting, Board President Karpick responded to Ila’s Facebook post. From the board meeting minutes:
You can watch a recording of the video here.
President Karpick called Ila’s Facebook post “incomplete, inaccurate, and misleading” but would not explain why. As you can see in the Facebook post, only facts are stated. The data Ila referenced is directly from the Department of Education, Principal Psarros is indeed the principal of WLIS, and Principal Psarros and Ms. Falk did refuse multiple requests to meet with WL CARE.
Two days before our next scheduled call (January 7th), Board Member Rachel Witt ended monthly meetings with WL CARE, citing the need to focus on the diversity committee. At this point, we had met three times: twice for our scheduled monthly meetings and once for an update call ahead of the January board meeting.
CHAPTER 3: Thus spoke West Lafayette
December, 2020
Backtracking a bit, we began planning an Anti-racism and Diversity Town Hall in December. One big problem we frequently encountered was that there was no public channel to speak to the school board.
Yes, community members could email or call the school board, but how does someone bringing a concern up 1:1 know that they’re not the only one feeling this way? After the inception of WL CARE, there were a lot of moments of “Wow, it wasn’t just me”. And so, the Town Hall was created.
We had two goals in mind as we were planning it. 1. This was an opportunity for alumni, parents, and current students alike to voice their feedback and concerns directly to the school board with a guarantee that they would be there to listen. And 2. This was a continuation of what we had been doing - creating community.
President Karpick responded to our initial invitation in vague terms, and it was unclear whether he or the school board were interested in attending.
We appreciated that the board was taking the time and energy to plan a committee/task force. However, by this point we were seeing a pattern:
1) The continued lack of response to our explicit request to meet. The school board would always thank us for our updates but never follow through with the substance of what we’re actually asking for.
2) Communication about “plans”, but very little detail on what these plans actually are.
We asked again for the school board to attend the Town Hall.
At this point President Karpick agreed to attend the Town Hall.
We were excited to continue planning, and we were grateful that members of administration and the school board would be able to attend. To our knowledge this was the first event of its kind for WLCSC.
Once we had settled on a date and details, we made a flyer, which we sent to Dr. Killion, all the board members, diversity committee co-chairs, and the diversity committee facilitator.
Board member Rachel Witt responded with a question about our flyer:
We clarified what we meant, which was honestly both statements. We wanted the school board and administration to listen, but what good does listening do if what they hear doesn’t advise policy?
Rachel responded that she did not feel comfortable with that specific wording in the flyer.
As a reminder, the wording Rachel is uncomfortable with is “We hope they will use this time to listen to the public and advise policies going forward.”
We responded, confused about Rachel’s specific issue with the wording.
Rachel suggested we hop on a call to discuss the wording. We agreed to a call and ended up changing the wording on the flyer to “We hope they will take this time to listen to the public and use what they hear to inform policies going forward”.
Rachel thanked us for changing the wording, and, once the flyer was finalized, we moved forward with inviting the public.
January, 2021
In order to help publicize the town hall, we reached out to Board member Amy Austin, who at the time was also in charge of writing the WLHS Parent Council newsletter.
Board member Amy Austin responded:
We were very disappointed with this email.
Why are anti-racism and diversity events considered "political" or "non-child friendly events"?
At every turn throughout this journey we have been met by resistance. Just a few examples we’ve seen thus far:
Administration doesn’t respond to a community letter of discrimination in its schools.
The school board doesn’t meet with WL CARE until October 2020.
The school board doesn’t put the letter on the agenda until December 2020.
Now, the first Town Hall to address these issues head on is not allowed in a parent council newsletter by a board member.
Why is WLCSC so resistant to change? Why is WLCSC so resistant to not just change, but to even hearing about the prospect of needing change?
We responded to Board Member Amy Austin’s email with the following:
We never received a response to this email.
Again, a pattern: we did not receive a response to our letter or story collection until approaching the J&C. We did not receive responses to our requests to meet with the diversity co-chairs. And we did not receive a response to the question of why diversity and anti-racism are considered political.
However, the Town Hall itself was a high moment for WL CARE. Almost 100 people attended, and there was incredible and important discussion. We felt the same passion from the community at the Town Hall as there was during the initial writing of WL CARE’s letter and the process of collecting stories for our story collection. There is one thing we know for sure that the Town Hall only confirmed - this community is home to extraordinary people, who are strong, resilient, and compassionate.
You can (and should!) watch the full event here. We have a transcript of all the statements here, and the public chat log from the event here.
However, while we felt that the Town Hall was valuable in and of itself, we also felt that those who spoke deserved some sort of response from the administration. A dozen folks spoke about positive change they would like to see in the district - what was the administration going to do to enact this vision for WLCSC’s future?
The administration and school board ignored the event entirely.
Some months later, we requested Dr. Killion’s emails in regards to WL CARE and the diversity committee. Here’s what we found out he was saying about the Town Hall behind the scenes the day after the town hall.
This email floored us. Dr. Killion’s apparently only response to the Town Hall was to diminish the importance of the personal stories of those who spoke. This email made it clear why the administration never responded to WL CARE’s story collection - they seemingly just don’t care.
February
After the February school board meeting (February 1st), where the Town Hall was not even mentioned, we emailed the school board asking why the Town Hall was not addressed with 6 key questions.
Board Member Rachel Witt responded to our questions. We’ll discuss her answers to the latter four questions in our next chapter. Here were her responses to the first two questions:
We were again disappointed with this response.
To our first question, Board Member Rachel Witt responded in vague terms, with no substantive answer to our question. She seems to focus on how individual student complaints will be addressed, which is not our question. We are not asking and have never asked to publicly release information about any individual student’s case.
What we are asking for is system-wide change. It’s clear that marginalized students - across classes - have faced and continue to face discrimination and racism at WLCSC schools. If all that the board got out of the Town Hall was that they had to reprimand a couple students and teachers, they clearly have not been listening.
On our second question, she responds only to the anonymous story read at the Town Hall. First, the accusation that it was “unfounded” is extremely concerning. It’s unbelievable that a school board member would accuse a parent of lying. This goes along with Dr. Killion’s apathetic attitude towards those who bravely spoke at the Town Hall. There’s a reason this story was anonymous - this parent knows how the district responds to parents who bring up concerns.
Additionally, Rachel ignores Ila’s Facebook post, citing disciplinary statistics from the Department of Education. Are those numbers “unfounded”?
Despite questioning this many times, the school board has never responded to why they refuse to acknowledge data reported by the Department of Education.
Why is there such pushback against being held accountable? This could have so easily been an opportunity to apologize and grow.
We see this lack of accountability repeated time and time again when someone brings up a concern to the administration or school board.
Why are they so resistant to admitting mistakes? Anti-racist work involves admitting and apologizing when you’ve caused harm and working to improve in the future.
Like we’ve said from the beginning - we are all racist. We all make mistakes, and we all have a lot of growing to do. No one’s asking the school board and administration to be perfect. We do, however, expect that when a mistake occurs, the school board and administration use that opportunity to apologize, learn, and move forward with steps to remediate the mistake.
CHAPTER 4: A home truth
December, 2020
Our final chapter will discuss the school board’s biggest point of progress this past year - the Diversity Committee.
As you may remember from Chapter 2, we were informed by Board President Karpick when planning the Town Hall in December that Margaret Psarros and Laura Falk were chosen as co-chairs of the diversity committee, with no input from the community. We were unaware that the board had already gone through the process of choosing co-chairs. There was no open call.
Additionally, during a conversation with Board Member Rachel Witt (Timestamp 42:00), we found out that the initial plan for the Diversity Committee application was to keep the application private.
Despite Ila’s Facebook post about disciplinary rates at WLIS and a parent’s concern about Principal Psarros, read at the Town Hall, the board was not willing to incorporate community input into the co-chairs decision. However, the board did eventually decide to make the Diversity Committee application public, which we were excited about.
January, 2021
On January 4th, the Diversity Committee application went live. The application was emailed to a few people who had emailed Rachel Witt earlier with interest, and it was available on the school board’s website.
To our knowledge, there was no other public advertisement of the application, besides Board Member Amy Austin including it in her newsletter after we asked to include the Town Hall.
Daniel and Ila received their rejections for the Diversity Committee on January 24th. No reason for this rejection was provided in the email.
However, when requesting Dr. Killion’s emails about WL CARE, we found emails detailing Dr. Killion’s opinion of WL CARE.
We found it surprising that Dr. Killion accuses Daniel (incorrectly referred to as “David”) and Ila of seeking public recognition.
If you remember from Chapter 1, Daniel and Ila did not include their names in correspondence with the school board until asked to by Alan Karpick and Rachel Witt multiple times:
Additionally, if you remember from Chapter 1 and 2, Board President Karpick didn’t respond to an invitation to meet with WL CARE until after Ila went to the Journal and Courier about the school board’s lack of responsiveness. The application to the diversity committee wasn’t made public until after Daniel posted on Facebook about how, at the time, the board was not planning on doing an open call.
Not to mention our story addendum, which included many anonymous stories of racism and discrimination was never formally addressed by administration or the school board. Rachel called out a parent’s complaint at the Town Hall as “anonymous and unfounded” and “without merit,” when the parent chose not to go public in order to avoid retaliation.
So, which is it - should we use our names or not?
To be clear, we are not saying that the Diversity Committee could only be successful with the inclusion of a WL CARE admin. There are many, many intelligent, hardworking folks dedicated to anti-racism in West Lafayette, and by no means are we saying we’re the most qualified people out there.
We do believe, though, that the school board and administration have consistently taken WL CARE’s work for granted.
Dr. Killion stated that, "the Board members have given credit to them for the information provided." But this is not the case.
Besides a brief mention by Karpick during the November 2nd school board meeting that the board has begun "some discussion not only exclusively with what has occurred with WL CARE and the initial petition." (Timestamp: 43:00) the board has never acknowledged the work of WL CARE.
In fact, if you remember from Chapter 2, Ms. Falk - one of the diversity committee co-chairs - said, "Your letter that was posted online has, in a way, invalidated all that the corporation has been working on long before your group began … By voicing your impatience with us, you are actually chipping away at that trust and we cannot build anything on a foundation of mistrust."
Not only has the administration ignored WL CARE’s work time and time again, they’ve gone as far as to disparage the work this group has done.
Again, we are not seeking public recognition. The work of the 1600 Facebook group members; the 800+ alumni, parents, and current students who signed the letter; and the brave individuals who trusted us to share their stories have been ignored. We are seeking better schools for them.
February
Back to the Diversity Committee. After being rejected, we found out the only person of color on the school board, Dr. Yue Yin, was also rejected. We also found out from some folks who were accepted that the committee was in the process of setting their first meeting date. So, we sent the school board a few questions.
We discuss Board Member Rachel Witt’s responses to the first two questions in the previous chapter. Her response to the latter 4 questions was:
Board Member Witt ignores the premise of our third question entirely. Even if Dr. Yin was not prepared to be a board representative on the Diversity Committee, why was she excluded in the role of a parent?
Similarly, her response to our fourth question is not a direct answer to the question. We aren’t asking about the intention behind the selection criteria; we were asking why those selection criteria had not been posted.
Our fifth question received the absolute minimum response: “training appropriate” to the committee. What does this even mean? Why the hesitation to tell us specifics? If specific training hadn’t been decided yet, why not just say so?
Finally, our sixth question was miscommunicated. We were not asking for transcripts of Diversity Committee meetings, but rather the public monthly school board meetings. Though we clarified this in a response to Rachel Witt, we did not receive a response.
The Diversity Committee member list was officially posted a few days later. As soon as the list was posted, we noticed some serious issues:
Over 60% of the committee was made up of school staff, the administration, or the school board. While we agree that teachers should be included on the committee, it makes very little sense to us why 60% of this committee was affiliated with district administration in some way. Particularly, the inclusion of multiple principals seems counterintuitive - as high-level members of administration, these individuals already had the opportunity to make the schools more equitable. What would they accomplish in this committee that they had not already had the chance to do in their roles in administration?
The initial committee did not include a single Asian adult member. For reference, 22% of WLCSC students are Asian. This made it even more concerning that Dr. Yue Yin, who both applied as a parent and requested to be a board representative, was left off the committee.
Extremely concerned about the zero Asian representation on the “Diversity” Committee, we emailed the committee co-chairs, facilitator, and board representative, asking what steps would be taken to rectify this situation.
As usual, we did not receive a response to our email.
Later, Wenbin Yu was silently added to the committee. While we appreciate the steps taken to increase Asian representation, the board’s inclusion of just one Asian member, with no acknowledgment of their mistake, when the community is over 22% Asian is treating Wenbin Yu as a token.
Equally concerning was Ms. Falk statement to WLFI (link to full article):
Why is the response to having zero Asian representation on the Diversity Committee that the "selection process [is] less about ticking all the races or ethnic boxes"? Was it more important to include a dozen members of administration? How can any citizen committee, much less a Diversity Committee, call itself representative, without representing all marginalized voices?
However, later we found out when requesting emails about the diversity committee, that Dr. Killion already had an ideal membership in mind for the committee.
Why was outreach to the Asian community the last priority for a Diversity Committee, below both police and government representation?
The Diversity Committee began meeting in early February. The public was not made aware of these meetings, and members were made to sign an NDA before joining.
March
In March, because of the restrictions placed on the Diversity Committee, WL CARE filed an Open Door Violation complaint on the committee.
We’re big proponents of transparency. The Indiana Open Door Law is one such law that helps promote transparency in local government. The law states that “government agencies must hold official meetings of a majority of their governing body, such as council or board meetings, publicly. As a citizen, you have the right to attend and record these meetings.” The importance of such a law is clear - school boards, city councils, and larger governing bodies should make their decisions that affect constituents in public.
The school board’s Diversity Committee’s meetings were private, and members of the committee were forced to sign NDAs in order to be able to participate. This was pretty shocking to us - we recognize that there are times the public shouldn’t be able to listen in on meetings. But the diversity committee’s sole goal was to inform diversity recommendations for the district.
Why should the public be excluded from this? Why were committee members signing NDAs?
These were the questions central to our complaint. You can read our full complaint here.
As we’ve seen in the past, the school board and administration continue to use chilling tactics to make sure parents, students, alumni, and teachers don’t feel comfortable speaking up.
When the school board became aware of our open door violation claim, we were met with hostility. Board Member Rachel Witt sent us the following email:
Similarly, the board’s response to our Open Door complaint stated that we were just “upset that [we] were not chosen to serve on the committee.” You can read their full response to our complaint here.
In March, we were also all witnesses to the rise in horrific anti-Asian attacks across the country. Given the district’s significant Asian student population, we asked Dr. Killion to make a statement in response to these attacks.
He responded that he would consider this idea and discuss it with others in administration.
The following statement was sent to parents four days later.
We are grateful Dr. Killion listened to and followed through on our request.
April
At the April 5th school board meeting, Rachel Witt reported that the Diversity Committee had been focused on foundational training and common definitions. Rachel hoped the committee would start to get animated as they got to the meat of the matter (Timestamp: 1:46:15).
From the board meeting minutes:
May
In May, as we awaited updates from the Diversity Committee, we began reflecting on our journey with the school board so far. Ila decided to attend the May school board meeting, and she made the following comment at the meeting:
Hi, my name is Ila Chaubey. I graduated West Side in 2016. First, I’d like to say it’s so nice to see all of you in person. We’ve had quite the journey.
Before I begin my formal comment, I’d like to start with a quote by James Baldwin that I love. “I love America more than any other country in this world, and, for that reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.” I’d like to acknowledge that we all love this city and these schools, and for that reason we have to always strive to be better.
My comment will compose of two things. First, I’d like to speak about what I believe to be a pretty serious shortcoming I’ve seen on the part of the school board and the administration. And two, the culture that’s been created as a result of that shortcoming. And, again, we all make mistakes, and we have all things to improve upon, and that’s something I think we should all be working on.
So, from what I’ve seen in my 9 or so months of attempted activist work is that the school board has an issue where parent feedback is ignored, and when mistakes are made, those mistakes are swept under the rug, as opposed to leaning into it and acknowledging it. I have a few examples I’d like to point to.
A year or so ago we saw COVID, and because of that we had to work on a reopening plan and a distance learning plan. Very little parent feedback was taken. Dr. Yin, who wasn’t a board member at the time, did her own survey, and a pretty disparaging remark was made about that survey. A lot of people during the board election ran because of the school’s response to COVID. Similarly, more recently, with the school schedule change, again very little parent feedback was taken. A parent had to take it upon herself to do a survey. In that survey, a majority of parents were not a fan of the school schedule change, but way more importantly, they didn’t even know about the school schedule change until the survey happened. Back in June, we saw the Black Lives Matter protests. I think that it’s the responsibility of the school district to make a statement when things like that happen - to show their commitment to the safety of minority students. And, to not just verbally say that, but to write out the actions they’ll take to ensure our students are protected. That statement didn’t happen until a group of 800 parents, students, and alumni came together to ask for it. Similarly, more recently with the rise of hate crimes against Asians, I had to write an email to the school board and Dr. Killion asking for a statement to be made. A couple other parents did as well. It wasn’t until 2 weeks after the Atlanta attacks that we saw a statement come out. With the diversity committee, applications weren’t going to be public initially, until Daniel Afolabi made a Facebook post, saying it was a little strange that a public committee wouldn’t have a public application. Only then was the application made public. Similarly, there was no adult Asian representation on the diversity committee. It was the responsibility of the public to come forward and say this was an issue. Only then was an Asian parent added to the committee. But there was no acknowledgement of that mistake, no apology, no thanks to the members of the public who came forward to talk about it. That person was secretly added to the committee, and it’s like it never happened.
What we’ve seen is that when criticism happens and feedback occurs, that feedback is often ignored, but more importantly people are insulted. We’ve seen disparaging comments about parent-started surveys; I personally have received a couple rude emails. There’s this culture that’s created now where people are afraid to speak up. I’ve talked to dozens, if not a hundred, students, parents, and alumni, and a continued message that I get is, “Let me tell you my experience, but please don’t use my name. I don’t want anyone to know I spoke to you.” That happened with a teacher I talked to, multiple parents, and dozens of students. I think we really have to sit down and think about the city that we’re creating.
We are so lucky to live in such a diverse city, and it’s something we talk about all the time. But really, what is the purpose of that diversity if we’re not listening to everybody’s opinions and if we’re not taking that feedback constructively and incorporating it? I was nervous to come here tonight, and I don’t think that’s the culture we should be creating.
I’ll go ahead and end there, but I do have a few questions for the school board that I’ll also be submitting via email.
1. What steps will the board take to actively remediate this culture of fear that’s been created?
2. What will the school board do to more proactively seek out parent feedback? Not just on the big school schedule change, COVID-plan type policies, but every single change that’s happening. As publicly elected officials, it really is your responsibility to make sure your decisions reflect that of the community.
3. I have a couple questions on the ethnic studies class recently started by the diversity committee. It looks like in 2018 the Indiana Department of Education already mandated an ethnic studies class across the state. My questions are: 1. Is there a difference with the new ethnic studies class that’s being created? And 2. Currently classes that are optional but don’t receive enough enrollment aren’t offered at all. Will the ethnic studies class be mandated, regardless of how many students enroll, or will there be a student enrollment minimum?
Thank you for letting me speak!
She also sent her questions to the school board by email.
Alan Karpick responded that her questions would be answered at the June school board meeting.
June
The school board had their last meeting for the school year on June 2nd. Ila’s questions from the previous meeting were not answered, nor did she receive a response over email. You can watch the full meeting livestream here.
During the June meeting, Principal Psarros announced the Diversity Committee’s recommendations. Below is a transcript from the livestream:
I would to first start by thanking our DEI committee for serving and giving the time that they did for this important cause, they were dedicated and I really appreciate that
Between now and August 2nd, the administration will meet pending today’s approval with WLEA to discuss four recommendations starting the 21-22 school year:
To provide ongoing intentional K-12 professional development for the 21-22 & 22-23 school years. Additionally, school administrators heard many positive comments from staff regarding the work of Dr. Renae Azziz. Since we have had some professional development with her and the outcomes had been helpful and positive, the DEI co-chairs are recommending that we continue ties with Dr. Renae Azziz for the profession development listed in #1.
Identify a qualified educator or administrator who will be appointed the WLCSC diversity initiative specialist for the 21-22 school year who will oversee the process for creating a framework to address the various needs of our students, parents, and staff as it related to diversity, inclusiveness, and curriculum and instruction, and finding resources to assist with this process.
The DEI committee will continue to be involved with the diversity initiative specialist. By the Spring of 2022, the diversity initiative specialist will present the school board an implementation process that will include resources to implement recommendations from the ongoing work of the DEI committee.
Student advocacy and extended student assistance opportunities will be initiated to give all students the opportunity to get assistance to express their concerns. These may be in the form of counselling sections and guidance lessons, 1:1 peer groups, or resources through the school website to name a few. Age appropriate students will have a formal role in the decision-making processes including school committees that consider curriculum revisions, code of conduct reviews, and staff professional development. These are the recommendations from our committee.
We’re grateful that the diversity committee recommended that the school district appoint a diversity initiative specialist and provide diversity related professional development/opportunities for students. However, we were a little surprised that this was the extent of the committee’s recommendations.
The first recommendation is something WL CARE had requested in our initial letter, one full year ago.
From WL CARE’s letter --
VII. Ongoing professional development focused on anti-racism. Educators, administrators, and members of the proposed anti-racist oversight committee must participate in professional development centered on addressing their own internalized racism, cultivating anti-racist pedagogy, and critically examining existing classroom practices and school- or district-wide policies. This can include, but should not be limited to:
Annual unconscious bias and anti-racism workshops. Unconscious bias from faculty can negatively impact Black, Indigenous, and Latinx students by underestimating their abilities while propagating the model minority myth for Asian American students.7
Instruction on how to be anti-racist when confronted by microagressions and with instances of classism, colorism, antisemitism, and Islamophobia. Educators should also be prepared to lead productive discussions on race and racism and address instances of racism that occur inside and outside the classroom.
The second and third recommendations center around hiring a DEI director. Again, this is something highlighted in WL CARE’s letter last year, and it’s something we brought up in our first meeting with the school board in October of 2020.
Finally, the fourth recommendation on creating a student advocacy group is another idea that was in WL CARE’s letter.
From our letter --
V. Hiring of a Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and implementation of a DEI program and an anti-racist oversight committee. We must acknowledge that WLCSC is a predominantly white institution. White perspectives exert dominant influence in political, cultural, and social matters throughout the country, creating inequities that disproportionately impact BIPOC. To the extent a school is committed to recognizing and rectifying these matters, it must learn to reckon with its complicity and actively promote previously-silenced narratives.
We demand the development of a DEI program and the employment of a full-time DEI director to begin to coordinate the efforts of adopting a school-wide commitment to anti- racist curricula, DEI programming, disciplinary equity, and other related school activities.
Create an independent oversight committee that will allow student, parent, or faculty grievances relating to racist behavior or misconduct to be escalated and reviewed. This committee should mainly include BIPOC alumni, parents, and community leaders with student liaisons and be provided with stipend.
The school should provide statistical reports to show concrete impact of diversity and inclusion initiatives within WLCSC. These reports must be publicly available annually and previous years must continue to be made available.
Now, we’re not going to pretend that we always have it all right. But all 4 of the committee’s recommendations were in WL CARE’s initial letter.
How much tangible work could have happened this past year if the school board had gotten to work implementing at least one of WL CARE’s demands? How many marginalized students’ experiences would have improved had the district hired a DEI director a year ago like we had asked?
At the end of the Diversity Committee’s recommendations, Dr. Killion recommended keeping Ms. Falk on as the diversity initiative specialist for the district. While we’re sure Ms. Falk was valuable to the Diversity Committee, we’re unsure why she is Dr. Killion’s choice for the diversity specialist.
Ms. Falk has no formal training or experience in a diversity specialist role. While she of course knows this district, would we not want someone whose career is dedicated to implementing recommendations like those the Diversity Committee came up with?
She ignored 5 separate meeting requests from WL CARE. We would hope that the diversity specialist chosen for the district would at least hear us, or any community member, out.
In reference to WL CARE’s letter, Ms. Falk stated, “Your letter that was posted online has, in a way, invalidated all that the corporation has been working on long before your group began … By voicing your impatience with us, you are actually chipping away at that trust and we cannot build anything on a foundation of mistrust.” We would hope that a diversity specialist would recognize the importance of a community letter like WL CARE, and that they would understand that such a letter comes from a desire to better the district.
We hope that the school board hears these concerns and incorporates this feedback when officially choosing a diversity specialist for the district.
June was a busy month for us! We also received the ruling from the Indiana Public Access Counselor on our Open Door Violation complaint. Indiana’s Public Access Counselor issued an advisory opinion ruling that the diversity committee is subject to the Open Door Law. In other words, the school board was breaking Indiana code when they held these diversity committee meetings in private and made committee members sign an NDA.
You can read the full ruling here.
This is incredibly important going forward: citizen committees informing school board and district policy must be publicly accessible, and members can’t be forced to sign NDAs. We hope, based on this ruling, the board continues to work to make their decision making process more accessible and transparent.
And that concludes our highlights from the past year. Thank you so, so much for taking the time to read our story. We want to leave you with a few final thoughts --
Change takes time and continued effort. While WL CARE’s initial letter was an incredible feat in and of itself, this work could not have stopped there. Whatever change you’re pushing for - whether that is on a local or federal level - keep up the good fight.
This sort of written out story is only possible because we made sure to document as much as we could as we went along. We encourage everyone fighting similar fights to make sure to always have everything documented. Follow up over email instead of the phone, record meetings when possible, FOIA documents you think are important, and write down your experiences as you go. Even in an ideal world with perfect actors, holding government officials accountable is an important job, regardless of how much one trusts their elected officials.
Local media plays an incredibly important role in activism. We’d like to thank all the journalists out there who took the time to tell our and others’ stories along the way. We should remember how important telling people’s stories should be, how important it is to make sure that people’s stories are told, and how important it is that people’s stories are told without concessions. Local media should never overlook the stories of the marginalized.
And lastly, this one’s specific to us - Daniel and Ila. We could have been born elsewhere, gone to school elsewhere, grown up elsewhere. But we found home in West Lafayette. How lucky are we that we got to meet you all?
“The beauty of anti-racism is that you don’t have to pretend to be free of racism to be anti-racist. Anti-racism is the commitment to fight racism wherever you find it, including in yourself.”