PS/IS 276, the Battery Park City School, stands with the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community. We are saddened by the senseless acts of violence against all Asian-American and Immigrant communities following the recent violence in Georgia, nationwide, and locally in New York City. While these recent events are putting a spotlight on the AAPI community, these events are not new and have been occurring for far too long.

We want our students, staff, teachers, and parents of Asian descent to know that their pain and fear are acknowledged and honored. Our teachers are committed to teaching the histories, cultures, contributions, and sacrifices of the diverse Asian communities in the USA. We strive to inform and educate our school community about how the fear of “others” can lead to harmful acts that are as small as microaggressions or as big as violence.

To that end, we will

• Call our friends and peers into conversations when they use racist memes or language, tell jokes at the expense of any ethnic or cultural group, assume that stereotypes are factual, or not recognize an individual's humanity.

• Commit to learning about the experiences of people who do not share our backgrounds.

• Treat everyone with respect and dignity.

If you have experienced discrimination and violence first hand or the emotional trauma of the violence against the AAPI community, we see you; it is not okay, and you are not alone. The entire school community is working to make 276 a safe space for everyone to be seen, feel included, valued, and heard.

The Battery Park City School has always shared a special relationship with our neighbors at the Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust. From trips and programs to invitations to special events and one on one interactions with survivors, the museum plays an important role in helping us to educate children. Being situated across the street, the images and artifacts outside the museum allow us to address history, sometimes without even entering the building.

Friday night, January 8, 2020, we heard the awful news regarding the hate crime that occurred at the museum. We want to be clear that while the act was directed at your institution, as your neighbors it is an attack on all of us who stand for justice, peace, and anti-violence.

Last week as we spoke to students about the events that took place at our nation’s Capitol our students noticed the use of Confederate and Nazi symbols as just part of what was alarming. Listening to young people discuss this gave us hope.

We will address what happened in our own neighborhood and nation with students.

As educators who teach across the street, we will encourage students, families, and colleagues to engage in activities that show solidarity with the museum, to take a stand against hate, and to put on display the true heart of our community. Our school community will create a display of our core values in the face of what happened in Washington DC and in our own neighborhood. We are happy to forward details if any members of the museum community would like to participate.

If there is anything we can do to help you please do not hesitate to reach out.

In Solidarity,

Jessica Abraham

Maren Aydogan

Patricia Baumann

Audra Benjamin

Mara Boden

Jeremiah Bornemann

Krista Bruschini

Andrew Burke

Rachel Carr

Sandra Chung

Catherine Cohl

Stefanie Cuttita

Amy DeFrancesco

Morgan Fusetti

Dina Garcia

Shelby Gerstenhaber

Tamar Goelman

Saeed Golpoor

Rachel Goodman

Rebecca Haverstick

Alexis Hoffman

Grace How

Maddy Hyde

Rose Kaplan

Nikolet Krasniqi

Jess Kuhl

Mikaela Kur

Elissa Levine

Rachel Lewis

Johni Licht

Odalys Lopez

Glo Macagnone

Jenniffer Mateo

Stephanie Mazarakis

Katie McGinn

Paul Miller

Mollie Noel

Kim Owens

Dawn Panebianco

Samantha Qureshi

Sabrina Raza-Wiese

Stephanie Robbins

Carmen Robles

Fallon Roher

Lucas Maehara Rotman

Terri Ruyter

Dawn Schafer

Natalie Skeels

Pooja Shekar

Shirley Shum

Julie Smith

Mary Jo Stallone

Liz Stelzer

Basia Tov

Danielle Valasiadis

Mary Valentine

Nico Victorino

Erica Foley Weldon

Jennifer Willard

Jacqueline Wong

Melanie Pavlovich

Kristal Aliyas

Alison DiMaria

Jillian Meyers

Adam Kelley

Dear Battery Park City School Community,

In February we had a successful meeting with staff and families to begin the long overdue and never-ending process of addressing issues of inclusion, diversity, and equity within our school. Our second meeting is Tuesday, June 9, 2020 at 7 pm via Zoom.

Over the past two weeks another crisis, one that is ever-present, hit a boiling point as people took to the streets across the nation to draw attention to the murders of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd. These events and our distance from one another evoke feelings of anger, sadness, and fear. We need to process these feelings together within our families, as a school community, as New Yorkers and as a nation even when we cannot be physically together. We stand as a community to denounce racial injustice in all its forms and commit to engage in the hard work of facing this historic issue. We seek solutions to grow personally and as a community in our understanding of oppression to help our students develop the courage, strength, and consciousness to face these issues and be agents for positive change.

The following message was inspired by work we saw from The Harbor School, a NYC public high school on Governors Island and a happy home to many of our alumni. We appreciate their leadership on this and, with their permission, crafted our own version with theirs as a guide.

At The Battery Park City School,

We acknowledge and condemn the systems in place, currently and historically, that maintain white supremacy in all aspects of society.

We acknowledge and condemn the ways in which the many institutions -schools included- meant to serve and protect the citizenry of this country often fail to serve and protect all citizens via explicit and implicit bias, specially aimed at members of marginalized groups.

We acknowledge and condemn the ways in which negative biases, gone unchecked and unexamined, lead to acts both small and large that maintain and further the racist outcomes we have seen for centuries and that these incidents of bias, if ignored, send a message that legitimize these actions and/or bias.

We acknowledge that public education in this country has historically prioritized single narratives resulting in schools marginalizing students whose identities, cultures, race, socio-economic status and religions do not align.

We acknowledge that elementary schools in the United States tend to focus on skill building sometimes at the expense of exploring deeper issues or racial justice with developmentally appropriate materials. This delays when students develop the skills to engage in these discussions and often centers the experiences of dominant identities.

We acknowledge that working to face injustice and bias in ourselves and our communities is ongoing work that requires a collaboration between home and school in which we help one another as well as listen and learn from one another and with one another to build a community that supports student learning.

Therefore, The Battery Park City School accepts the moral responsibility to build and sustain a school that:

• Commits to anti-racist practices with the goal to become an anti-racist institution

• Works to de-center dominant cultures and actively works to build an inclusive school that centers and celebrates all peoples, including those not represented within our immediate community.

• Strives to de-center negative competition and individualism and works to create a school that functions collectively and with the good of all in mind.

• Intentionally works to build and sustain a school environment that supports and facilitates student learning so that they can find their voice, become engaged citizens and carry forth the ideals outlined above into their own worlds.

• Actively engage in efforts to recruit and retain a diverse staff, faculty, and administration.

• Works to de-center patriarchy and actively works to include, celebrate, and acknowledge people of all genders, gender identities and gender expressions.

Below are some of the ways we envision this work occurring in our school. You’ll recognize that some of these are already in place, some are in development, and some are goals for us moving forward.

1. Engaging in Restorative Justice Practices

• Circles that focuses on participants’ experiences and give space to develop student voice and capacity for empathy

• Restorative responses to discipline and bullying

• School culture that maintains safety while allowing space for students to learn how to repair harm and take restorative action

2. Valuing and Amplifying Student Voice in Our Community

• Student Council, Gender and Sexuality Alliance, National Junior Honor Society, The BPC Post and Campaign United for Racial Equity are all student organizations that aim to develop leadership and promote student voice

• Student Advisory Board - Meets with school administration regularly

• Developing teachers, in all grades, in their ability to design student centered learning that supports student choice and voice

• Striving to develop the leadership skills of the lower school through a community action club

3. Fostering Stronger School Culture

• Working to recruit and retain a diverse staff and faculty

• Working to recruit and retain a diverse group of parents from diverse types of families to serve on the School Leadership Team and PTA Executive Board

• Reviewing disproportionality data pertaining to suspension rates and student culture surveys and taking corrective action when necessary

• Developing learning spaces for staff and families to better engage in conversations with young people about issues of inclusion, equity and diversity

• Working to create schoolwide rituals and events that brings public our inclusivity work

4. Addressing Academic Access

• Embarking in ongoing Culturally Relevant and Responsive curriculum review

• Engaging in professional development to support Culturally Responsive teaching practices

• Analyzing and responding to disproportionality in data regarding academic achievement

• Committing to classroom instructional practices that impact disproportionality data

We submit this statement to the Battery Park City School community to express our commitment to do better and to be a part of the needed systematic changes required to undo white supremacy and combat racism. While we cannot yet be together physically, we hope this statement, the intention behind it, and our work as a school community brings us closer together. We hope that in this time of uncertainty, unrest and mourning, we can offer some solace in the understanding that we are all in this together and that there is work to be done and, as a school, we are ready to engage. With this in mind we would like to invite all members to join a community discussion on June 9th at 7PM in which we will check in with one another regarding the recent events of racial injustice and offer space for families and school staff to share ways in which we are navigating these issues with the young people we all care about deeply. We miss you and hope you can join us on this journey.

Sincerely,

The Steering Committee of the Inclusion and Diversity Collaborative

(made up of school staff and parents)