Schools – NAACP New Bedford

Public hearings on the Dartmouth mascot

[caption id="attachment_2328" align="aligncenter" width="960"] Maulian Dana speaking at Skowhegan, Maine school board meeting, March 8, 2019. Photo by Amelia Tuplin, Creative Commons CC BY-SA 4.0.[/caption] On March 8th, the Dartmouth School Committee heard from members of Mashpee, Pocasset, and Aquinnah tribes about the harms of Native American mascots and related imagery. Several members of the Aquinnah spoke in support of the mascot and one member spoke against it. On March 22nd the School Committee offered an opportunity for general public comment. All things considered, this sparsely-attended meeting was relatively calm and respectful although several members of one group of mascot...

Dartmouth School Committee hears indigenous views on mascot

A joint session of the Dartmouth School Committee and Equity and Diversity Committee met on March 8th to finally hear from a number of indigenous voices on the matter of the "Indian" mascot. Several of those who spoke last night oppose the mascot and were being heard for the first time by the committees. You can view the meeting here or by clicking on the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zjDTReoyDc

Reckoning with race and history: Dartmouth edition

[caption id="attachment_2328" align="aligncenter" width="960"] Maulian Dana speaking at Skowhegan, Maine school board meeting, March 8, 2019. Photo by Amelia Tuplin, Creative Commons CC BY-SA 4.0.[/caption] Like so much in America that is touched by race, a reckoning with the Dartmouth High School mascot has been simmering for years. Maine, Oregon and Washington state have all banned Native American school mascots. And here in Massachusetts -- even after Pentucket, Groveland, Merrimac, West Newbury, Athol, Barnstable, Nashoba, Hanover, Winchester, Grafton, Brookfield, Taconic High, Braintree, Walpole, and Pittsfield abandoned theirs -- many in the Town of Dartmouth insist on defending their "Indian" mascot...

UIA Community Education Forum Survey

Our friends at United Interfaith Action of Southeastern MA have been conducting Education Community Forums involving the New Bedford Public Schools. If you have not done so already, please offer your feedback on the Forums and share your interest in next steps of action at the following link: Community Forum Feedback & Next Steps Form: https://forms.gle/9caCHdubcMEjbofy5 If you have not completed their Funding Survey for NBPS, please do so. Feel free to share this funding survey with other New Bedford parents, students, educators, and community members, in order to hear back from as many people as possible on how the...

NBCSOS to be honored with MTA’s 2021 Human & Civil Rights Award

Congratulations to our friends at NBCSOS! The MTA Human Relations Committee is hosting its 2021 Human & Civil Rights Awards Ceremony which will be held virtually via Zoom on June 18, 2021 from 5:00 PM - 6:30 PM. The Human and Civil Rights Ceremony honors MTA members and others who have made substantial contributions in support of human and civil rights. This year the following organizations and individuals will be honored: Kathleen Roberts Creative Leadership Award Recipients: 2020 Sutton High School Connections Program Black Student Union of Cambridge Rindge and Latin 2021 Alice Arena, President of the Fore River Residents...

MOU Commission Teach-In

The policing reform bill created a permanent Commission to create a model Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between schools and police departments that have assigned school police (aka SROs). CfJJ and MHLAC were appointed to the Commission by statute and their respective executive directors are full voting members. These two organizations want to make sure that the perspectives and experiences of community members and advocates, who know first-hand how police in schools operate, are centered in the decision making on the MOU document, which will govern how police behave in schools and provide a basis for further grass-roots advocacy. Therefore, CfJJ...

Schools

Statewide survey on Discipline and School Exclusion During COVID-19

The Chapter 222 Coalition, an alliance of educational advocates and attorneys and Citizens for Juvenile Justice (CfJJ), a non-profit statewide advocacy organization, are concerned that schools may be excluding and disciplining students, particularly students of color and students with disabilities, during the pandemic. We are also concerned about schools filing 51A “child neglect” reports with the Department of Children and Families (DCF), and Child Requiring Assistance (CRA) truancy cases in juvenile court, if children are not able to access online school. If these things happen, we want to hear about them so that we can seek systemic and policy change...

School Resource Officers MOU Commission meets TOMORROW

Please forgive the last-minute notice. We just found out about this. The first meeting of the School Resource Officers MOU Commission is scheduled for Wednesday, March 24th at 9am to 11am. The zoom link and agenda can be found here. The meeting is open to the public. Pursuant to the provisions of G.L. c. 30A and 940 CMR 29.00 et seq, notice is hereby given of a meeting of the School Resource Officers MOU Commission to take place on March 24, 2021, 9:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. virtually at zoom link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81074760083?pwd=Z1BnU29GVkc4U2x4UGtSZDVaSDVpZz09 What's at Stake? While we all celebrated that...

Schools

DESE data shows New Bedford Schools over-disciplining children of color

We know that in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts neither the schools nor the police are collecting adequate data on school-based offenses. This is not to single-out New Bedford. It reflects a state-wide, if not a national, lack of interest in tracking at-risk youth. Many types of data describing the process of a child moving through the juvenile justice system — from schools, the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE), police, district attorneys, courts, probation, the Department of Youth Services, federal DOE and DOJ mandated data — must be analyzed in order to answer two critical questions about School Resource...

Schools

A Week of Forums on Opting Out of MCAS

Education advocates, including the New Bedford Coalition to Save Our Schools (NBCSOS), have scheduled a week of forums on opting out of the MCAS test. Sunday, March 14th at 1:00 PM Tuesday, March 16th at 7:00 PM Wednesday, March 17th at 6:00 PM (en español) While COVID-19 has disrupted education and students need social and emotional support as never before, schools are still fixated on test prep. Register here These forums are for parents and guardians across Massachusetts to learn how to opt out student from MCAS this year and to learn more about this problematic examination and high-stakes testing...