A Better Way for Equity

Good evening Board members, D11 teachers and staff, all of tonight’s attendees, and all members of the D11 community. I speak tonight on behalf of the El Paso/Teller Chapter of the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism (FAIR).

It’s clear that the discussion regarding District 11’s equity program has come to be understood by many as an either-or proposition. Either we accept the Administration’s program as is or it must mean that we don’t support the needs of all our students. This “our way or no way” approach to equity does not serve our students or our community. We at FAIR see serious problems with the D11 Administration’s equity program as presently put forward, but we believe there is a better way for equity in D11.

We urge the District 11 community to consider the problematic issues with the Administration’s equity proposal, a number of which we’ve compiled on the El Paso/Teller Chapter page at fairforall.org; and then take a few minutes to look into the pro-human alternative we propose at fairdiversity.org.:

                                  
We at FAIR wholeheartedly agree with Director Ott’s statement quoted in a recent news article that, “we all agree that we need to address whatever is holding our students back.”

In addressing this crucial question, we need to clearly and accurately define the term, “equity.”
It appears that the former Board’s definition of the term “equity” refers not to the commonly understood meaning of the term – which is fairness and impartiality –, but rather an ideological term that relates to equity of outcomes. DEI Director Knox-Miller’s demand for ideological conformity at the August 4th work session makes this clear. 

We believe that the recent election shows us that the citizens of the district would like to see work toward helping all of our students thrive. Understanding what holds them back should not be an ideologically driven process.

We believe the race-essentialism at the core of that ideology is not the way forward, but rather the way backward.

Finally, we at FAIR believe that bad ideas should be countered with better ideas. The prior D11 BoE’s race-essentialist Equity Audit was clearly a bad idea. A better idea is the pro-human FAIR Diversity program.

Again, we encourage all members of the D11 community to take a few minutes to view an introduction to that program at fairdiversity.org and consider the benefits of a pro-human approach to equity.

Thank you