Starting Point
Acting on Racial Equity
School Administrator, March 2021

WHAT DOES IT MEAN to be a white superintendent who cares about race and equity leading a predominantly white community that at best is indifferent to these issues if not outrightly opposed?

For the past 18 months or so, Lee Teitel has managed a small professional network of such superintendents in southeastern Connecticut who are wrestling through peer consultation with complex questions of racial equity and social justice in their communities.

In many respects, they reflect the predominantly white ranks of the superintendency (92 percent, according to AASA’s 2020 decennial survey) and are running school districts that exemplify the experience of roughly half of the nation’s K-12 students who are largely isolated from students of color.

One superintendent was drawn to the network after hearing from white graduates how unprepared they felt to go to colleges that were so much more diverse than their hometown. Other superintendents were motivated in the aftermath of the death of George Floyd. They came to the network knowing they needed to do something about systemic racism without being sure what that is.

Teitel, who works for the Harvard Graduate School of Education, contributes an important piece about the peer network in an issue full of powerful expressions and descriptions of practical measures for acting on racial equity in K-12 education.

I would welcome hearing from readers on what here resonates and what does not.
 
Editor, School Administrator
Voice: 703-875-0745
E-mail: jgoldman@aasa.org
Twitter: @JPGoldman