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We, as a student collective, demand a series of changes within North Carolina public schools. We demand these changes to make our school systems more inclusive on the basis of gender, race and national origin amongst other identities. Every student deserves to be welcomed into an inclusive, accepting school culture that prepares them to be successful. Feel free to share your personal anecdotes of discrimination or lack of inclusion in the "Reason for Signing" section if you feel comfortable doing so.

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To the incumbent North Carolina Governor, Mr. Roy Cooper, and the incumbent North Carolina Superintendent Mr. Mark Johnson,

We the students and alumni of North Carolina Public Schools make the following demands in order to change our Public School System as the result of the discrimination that we and our peers throughout North Carolina have faced.

We are enraged with the North Carolina Public Schools for upholding several systemic policies that create an unwelcoming culture, rendering the system detrimental to the educational, physical, emotional, and mental wellbeing of our marginalized students in particular.

We are tired of being promised change during political campaigns, yet being deceived once election seasons end and left with broken promises and a broken education. The marginalized students of North Carolina are NOT a political pawn. And this is NOT a political debate; the well-being and futures of our students are at risk. We are people and we are your future, yet time and time again we are ignored, overlooked, disrespected, and neglected within our schools and government.

This school system was built for the success of our upper-class White students and the failure of our Black and Brown students; our school system is not broken, it is working exactly how it was meant to work. It suppresses our marginalized students by neglecting to teach us our history, disproportionately punishing us, segregating us, and affording us less opportunities.

Recognize this, address it, and fix it.

Government officials and school board members have political arguments over our education by fabricating it to be a right versus left or Republican versus Democratic issue. Discrimination, prejudice, bias, and disparity in our schools is a right versus wrong issue, in which remaining complacent is wrong.

Governor Roy Cooper and Superintendent Mark Johnson, you must work together to reimagine the education system to create opportunity and equitable environments for all students. More particularly, you must work to correct the systemic inequity that disproportionately marginalizes Black and Brown students, further hindering their success in our society. Doing so is apolitical, as it simply roots itself in bettering the educational system for the success of every student, regardless of their background. We as a state and as a nation must pride ourselves in valuing the education of all students, something that the current state of the system seldom reflects.

Our largely segregated, under resourced, and disproportionately funded schools should be an embarrassment to our state and our country. We must be alarmed by the current situation, and actively work to remedy it. It warrants immediate change.

North Carolina, this is a wake up call.

Since our administrators, school board members, and government officials have failed us we are no longer simply asking for change, we are rather demanding it.

To do so, students across the state have elaborated on several immediate changes that the system requires, with detail as follows.

 

As it pertains to the curriculum:

We demand that the current American History K-12 curriculum, which is taught from a Whitewashed perspective, be replaced with an accurately improved curriculum that:
-Teaches about the iniquities allowed and perpetuated by the American Government, and their modern effects on American society (including, but not limited to the Tulsa Massacre, the Wilmington Massacre, Japanese internment camps, etc.).
-Ensures there is no denaturalization of factual history (i.e. the motivations behind the Trail of Tears, the Civil Rights Movement, etc.).
-Includes LGBTQ+ History, famous figures, and their contribution to present-day society and government.
-Incorporates the history of Native Americans and Indigenous peoples, and their cultural development into the present-day.
-Uses textbooks and resources written and created by diverse authors, including Black and Indigenous people.
-Rebrands Whitewashed concepts, such as the “Age of Exploration” as the “Age of Colonialism.”
-Eliminates the improper characterization that the Civil War was over “state’s rights” and not slavery.
-Explains the Civil Rights movement in detail, and its implications on today’s legislative realities.
-References American immigration and its role in creating this present-day nation.

We demand that the current World History K-12 curriculum, which is taught from a Whitewashed perspective, be replaced with an accurately improved curriculum that:
-Teaches from varying points of views, rather than a Western or Americentric perspective
-Incorporates a global and holistic understanding of immigration, ethnic migration, and the movement and development of various cultures.
-Uses textbooks written by diverse authors, from a variety of countries and cultural interpretations.

We demand that the current Civics K-12 curriculum, which is taught with limitations, be replaced with a more extensive curriculum that:
-Teaches and analyzes the Constitution and its Amendments, including the development of that which no longer apply today.
-Focuses on civil liberties and personal rights of the student in Civics.
-Encourages healthy discourse through seminar-style activities.
-Incorporates teachings about disparities in legislative applications (i.e. mass incarceration).

We demand that African-American Studies become a required course for all students in K-12 that:
-Educates students on local, statewide, and national involvements in the transatlantic slave trade and its subsequent atrocities.
-Includes modern effects and reflections of racism (i.e. mass incarceration, police brutality, redlining, gerrymandering, the racial wealth gap, gentrification, cultural appropriation, the school-to-prison pipeline, etc.).
-Teaches about Black art, history and culture developed within the United States and its African connections and reflections.
-Highlights prominent Black figures, and their success stories in varying fields (i.e. Black scholars in STEM, academia, art, government, etc.).

We demand a broader selection of books in English classes, through:
-Author checklists, requiring every teacher to select a given number of their teaching books from BIPOC (Black, Indigenous people of color) and LGBTQ+ authors.
-System-sponsored reading lists, covering a broad range of interpersonal topics from BIPOC and LGBTQ+ authors.
-A rewards system that encourages students to advance their well-rounded literary education by discovering their own readings, then providing accurate summaries of said readings.

We demand inclusive and comprehensive sexual education, with changes to the reproductive health curriculum including:
-LGBTQ+ education, with basic terminology covering the differences between sex, gender, sexual orientation and self-expression.
-Mechanical explanation of non-heterosexual intercourse.
-Proactive forms of avoiding pregnancy and STIs, including but not limited to barrier methods (including non-traditional items like dental dams).
-Anatomical explanation of the possibilities of non-conforming human bodies, including intersex and transgender identities.
-Education on consent, sexual harassment/abuse, and healthy/unhealthy relationships (including topics such as warning signs, subsequent mental effects, emotional manipulation, etc.).

 

As it pertains to academic placement:

We demand diversity and inclusion in our Honors and Advanced Placement classes, through:
-Banning teacher recommendations for elementary “gifted” programs.
-Banning teacher recommendations for AP classes in high-school.
-Relying on testing that is equitable and eliminates the financial barrier for families.
-Ensuring equal access to AP and honors classes in ALL high-schools, including under-resourced high-schools.
-Promoting AP classes in standard classes rather than simply honors to encourage academic success at all levels.
-Encouraging the “opting-out” of higher level classes, rather than “opting-in” to ensure all students start on the same playing field.

We demand better ESL assistance within our schools to meet the demands of our non-English speaking population, through:
-Assigning assistant teachers to English classes, for English learners to have additional, real-time assistance with the language.
-Creating a “buddy system” for all other classes, where individual students gain volunteer hours for dedicated help to English learners (through translation, interpretation, note-taking assistance, etc.).

 

As it pertains to staffing and faculty within the schools:

We demand more BIPOC (Black, Indigenous People of Color) staff in our schools, through:
-Hiring more BIPOC counselors, teachers, curriculum advisors, administrators, and mental health professionals in our schools.
-Incentivizing BIPOC students to become educators, through encouragement and accurate collegiate counseling.
-Raising the pay of teachers to a level that reflects their importance to society, and their continued efforts within the system.

We demand an increase in mental health counselors, psychologists, and social workers present in schools, in order to:
-Prioritize individualized behavioral attention, rather than police presence to solve student issues.
-Meet or surpass the nationally recommended ratios of psychological and social professionals to students.
-Ensure the placement of adequately-trained staff to assist students with their struggles and needs related to LGBTQ+ identities, race, disability, immigration and related topics.

We demand the proper resources and academic assistance for our immigrant/non-citizen students, through:
-Providing an immigration expert at every school, to assist any family in need of aid and to coordinate assistance with other professionals.
-Training counselors and academic advisors to be familiar with the college-application process for non-citizens, to resolve technical issues and to encourage first-generation non-citizens to go to college.
-Educating faculty on basic terms of immigration to reduce stigma and micro-aggressions based on language knowledge or national origin (see ESL class recommendations).

We demand a complete halt to predatory recruitment and determent practices in schools, through:
-Completely ending military recruitment tactics in high-schools, particularly those with high percentages of low-income and marginalized students.
-Encouraging professional recruitment and skill-development through additional fairs, workshops and activities.
-Requiring families to opt-in (rather than opt-out) to the wholesale release of private information to the military.

We demand less police involvement in schools altogether, through:
-Strictly banning teachers and administrators from using police involvement or threat thereof to discipline students.
-Limiting police presence to solely handling external and internal threats when they threaten the lives of one or more students.
-Restricting officer-student relations to amicable connections and friendly discourse, rather than threats or discipline of any kind.

 

As it pertains to punishment, discipline and behavioral consequences:

We demand that all racial biases in the current punishment system be addressed and corrected, through:
-Recording and acknowledging racial statistics in individual school’s disciplinary measures.
-Strictly banning teachers and administrators from using police involvement or threat thereof to discipline students (see police involvement).
-Adequately training faculty and staff on bias recognition and correction.

We demand that discrimination be appropriately and accurately addressed, with specific punishments to rectify this behavior including:
-Create a zero-tolerance discrimination policy for incidents amongst community members (including students, teachers, administration and any visitors).
-Allow an accessible, simple way for students to file incident reports against teachers and administrators, and allow public access to see the amount of filed reports against a particular faculty member (rather than the content of each report).
-Incorporate and enforce a “three strikes” policy for teachers and faculty, to address discriminatory behavior (with sustained incidents reported by at least two students, the first incident resulting in a warning, the second in an administrative meeting, and the third in employment consequences).

We demand a redesigned dress code policy, to eliminate the racial and gender-based biases present in current policies through:
-Allowing students to wear cultural articles of clothing (ie. durags, headwraps, etc.) and refrain from associating said articles as “gang-related,” and rather observe their cultural and practical use.
-Explicitly state and enforce the prohibition of extremist symbols, including but not limited to the Confederate flag and Nazi swastikas.
-Record and observe racial bias in dress-code implementations, to avoid the common bias of over-sexualizing, and ergo disproportionately dress-coding Black and Hispanic female students as opposed to their White peers.
-Refrain altogether from interrupting instruction in order to dress-code students, and rather discreetly communicate with them outside of the classroom, without public humiliation.

 

As it pertains to the personal protection and inclusion of all students:

We demand that faculty be required to respect each student’s identity, through inclusive practices such as:
-Asking each student’s pronouns at the start of the semester, and normalizing announcing theirs to the class (i.e.: Hi, my name is Ms. Doe and my pronouns are she, her and hers!).
-Refraining from singling out or tokenizing students, especially when speaking about particular topics (ie. avoiding having the Black student be the spokesperson when discussing racism, not turning to immigrant children when discussing immigration, etc.).
-Fostering and promoting the use of gender-neutral language (ie. “humanity” instead of “mankind,” “chairperson” instead of “chairman,” etc.).
-Promoting the avoidance of disparaging language, and the inclusion of socially-conscious discourse, particularly when talking with large groups
-Refraining from staff using racial slurs in the classroom, even when it pertains to discussing them in literature.

We demand that each student have the accessible opportunity to report concerning behavior about any person in the school environment, at any time, through:
-Creating a streamlined, accessible way for students to submit incident reports about any employee, at any time (see “three-strike” reporting idea in punishment demands).
-Allow constant access (during downtime like lunchtime) to counselors and advisors, for students who wish to meet about any particular issue.

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We recognize that some of these demands may already be in place at certain schools throughout the state, yet we know it to be true that not all endorse such policies. As a student collective, both as alumni and current enrollees, we are concerned for the well-being of our peers. We demand such items, as extensive as they may seem, for the inclusion and acceptance of our communities.

We, as a collective, are Fostering Unity, Equity and Leadership (FUEL). You may find us on Instagram @thefuelcollective or reach us by email at thefuelcollective@gmail.com. We welcome any suggestions, comments or concerns, as we are dedicated to be part of this change. We demand, as a student collective, to be involved and represented in any further decisions involving any of the aforementioned items and topics.