The council is proud of our member advocates. Below, we share the public comment for last week's Richmond Public School Board meeting submitted on behalf of Richmond Region LULAC by Deanna Fierro, as Director of Education Policy.
LULAC Council #4614 urges the school board to postpone their adoption of a new curriculum for the 2020-2021 school year. While we understand that having resources that support the academic growth of our students is necessary, we don't agree that right now is the best time for the adoption or that Richmond Public Schools has corrected enough of its own systemic issues directly connected to serving our English Language Learners. The LULAC board thanks RPS for its genuine efforts to provide families computers and internet access but knows that this task is far from being completed. Our ELL families are still dealing with issues with connecting to the internet, picking up computers and hotspots and with accessing and understanding learning materials online. We can online imagine the difficulty our families have with the roll out of a new curriculum that is not directly aligned to the Virginia Standards of Learning. We also stand with the division's educators who are already stressed with the switch to online teaching and ask that you not add such a difficult task of implementing a new curriculum online.
We thank the board for keeping the 10 new ELL hires in the FY21 budget and we ask that they continue to work in this direction.
We ask that the board postpone a new curriculum adoption until access to online learning materials and time to review them is guaranteed to both families and educators.
We ask the board request of the administration a division wide disparities report (to be shared publicly) so that the administration and the board can research solutions to improve student academic performance for ALL students.
Thank you,
Deanna Fierro
Richmond Region LULAC - #4614