A letter from one of our co-founders:
In 2019, a friend asked me to join her in attending Williamson County School district’s Cultural Competency Council meetings. “Our families of color need more support,” she said.
The council had been proposed and initiated in good faith by a small group of Black parents, including One WillCo’s co-founder, Revida Rahman. Its goal was to create peaceful, positive, system-wide solutions that would ease the extra burdens our students, staff, and families of color carried.
There were (and still are) serious issues that required the urgent attention of district leadership:
- disproportional discipline for Black students
- too few Black students being accurately identified as gifted or assigned to AP classes
- harmful assignments, e.g., asking students to imagine themselves as slave owners and come up with a list of jobs for slaves to do
- field trips to plantations, with sorrow expressed for confederate soldiers who died but no mention of the evils of slavery or respect shown for what the people of color there endured
- racial slurs that are disregarded and hate speech that is normalized.
The list goes on and on.
When I showed up at that first meeting, I quickly understood exactly why my friend had asked me there. A few vocal but organized community members opposed the CCC, calling it “reverse racism,” and were working hard to neutralize or dismantle it.
But at the heart of the CCC was this:
Parents of color, and of other marginalized communities, wanted their kids to receive the same respect and safety their classmates received. Nothing more, nothing less.
Black families had been quietly enduring or leaving WCS to avoid the racism here, and our district was losing some of its best students. Our whole community was the worse for it.
I knew I wasn’t the only white person willing to listen to our neighbors of color, who could support their efforts to address the unchecked racial discrimination in our schools and help solve it. I didn’t believe our whole community actually opposed equipping teachers and staff to handle racist incidents.
I reached out directly to some of the original founders of the CCC and asked if they could use my writing skills to tell the students’ stories. They connected me with a few families who were willing to share, and I began the work of crafting articles for our local media in order to start raising awareness in the community.
“We’re desperate for someone to listen to us,” one mother told me.
The stories were awful. Not surprising, but awful. What did surprise me, though, was how regularly these students experienced racial harassment and how ill-equipped our schools were to handle it:
- There were no standardized policies regarding clear discipline for these racially motivated incidents.
- There was no standard tracking system or reliable data about how often and where the racial harassment was happening.
- When students reported the incidents, they were regularly met with misunderstanding from teachers and administrators and were often made to feel like they had provoked the problem or should be able to handle it on their own.
It was becoming clear why the CCC was vital and necessary.
Meanwhile, the horrific events of 2020 unfolded and the collective conversation around race grew louder and louder. For many of us, passive observation was no longer an option.
I posted on social media: “Friends, the allies are banding together. You don’t have to know what to do. You don’t have to know what to say. All you have to do is want equality for all races in our community and be willing to show up and be a part. DM me to get your name on the list and be in the loop. The only way we can make a difference is TOGETHER.”
And my direct messages started blowing up.
Revida and I had already become friends, and together we decided to consolidate our separate groups—Black leaders and white allies—and work together. Our group has more than doubled in size and continues to grow.
One WillCo wants safety and equal opportunities for all of our children, and we’re willing to do the hard and often uncomfortable work to make that possible.
We would love for you to join our efforts. Reach out via the Contact Us page. We believe we’re better together.
Jennifer Cortez
Co-Founder, Mother of 4
Williamson County Stakeholder