Camas school leaders tackle issues of equity and inclusion inside classrooms

Administrators from several Camas schools, including Camas High, Hayes Freedom High, Liberty Middle and Woodburn Elementary, attended the Camas School Board’s March 14 workshop to discuss their schools’ efforts to bolster equity, diversity and inclusion.

“Equity work at Camas High School has been in development over the last four to five years,” Darci Jones, Camas High’s dean of students for grade 9, told the school board. “The most recent advisory lessons at the end of February and in early March have been conversations around race, addressing racial slurs empowering students to address those (issues).”

Jones and Seanna Pitassi, the high school’s associate principal for grade 11, told the board that Camas High staff has worked with the school’s Black Student Union and associated student body government to form advisory lessons that focus on restorative practices. Camas High staff also are working on recognizing and celebrating equity and diversity activists; celebrating diversity in the classroom; asking students to anonymously report “things on campus that are not OK” as part of the school’s “See it. Hear it. Stop It.” campaign; and collecting feedback from students and staff about how the school might improve its future equity lessons.

“We’ve heard from a lot of our students who were wanting to have the conversations we were having in our advisory classes,” Pitassi said. “I think students recognize the need to … have these difficult conversations.”

At Liberty Middle School, a survey asking 611 students how comfortable they felt in the middle school’s hallways showed that while the majority of students (93.5 percent) said they felt safe in the school’s hallways, 40 students said they did not feel safe.

“I don’t like walking alone,” one student reported in their survey. “I’m always on the lookout. I don’t feel safe out there.”

“It can feel like a war zone,” another student reported of Liberty’s hallways. “I take all my stuff just to avoid the hallways between classes.”

A total of 112 students said they don’t “feel comfortable” in the hallways of the middle school.

“Kids just group up and block the hallway. They don’t care or listen,” one student reported.

Other survey results showed that 119 students said they hear anti-LGBTQ language and 87 students reported hearing racist language on a weekly basis in the middle school hallways.

“I hear people calling Black kids ‘monkeys,'” a student noted. “Sad thing is, they have to go along with it and laugh, or they will say something worse.”

Another Liberty student said: “People use racism as a joke, but when you call them out for being racist, they get so offended.”

One Black student said they hear the “N-word” in school hallways, adding that “when a white kid says it, it’s like they want to feel better than me.”

Liberty Middle School Principal Gary Moller said staff and students talked about the survey results during their advisory lessons and are trying to transition to lessons about how students might “interrupt hate.”

“To be upstanders, that takes a lot of courage from a 12 year old,” Moller said. “So we’re trying to give students the tools they need to take this on. It’s messy, and the more you talk to kids, the more you realize you have more work to do.”

Liberty Middle School student leaders have also started to address issues surrounding racism, equity and inclusion.

In February, Jackson Tyler, the school’s student body president, told the school board that his job is “to make sure every student feels safe and comfortable at Liberty.”

“Some students have been feeling racially attacked. We’ve been hearing about anti-LGBTQ-plus and (racist) comments,” Moller told the school board. “There have been reports of students calling students of color derogatory terms, trying to touch their hair and other acts that made them feel very uncomfortable.”

Tyler said the school’s Associated Student Body organization helped implement the school’s new “See Something, Say Something” form, which allows Liberty students to anonymously report racist, sexist, homophobic or other hateful language and acts.

Moller said Liberty staff hope to have an even bigger conversation with the community about things like racism, sexism and anti-LGBTQ language.

“We’re trying to engage the greater community on this work,” Moller said in March. “The challenge is to find the right way to reach out and to find the right way to get people to have this conversation. As our survey showed, there are a lot of really positive responses, but there also are some more heartbreaking responses. We need to reflect on them and try to make changes … and ask, ‘How can we engage the community to better support all of our students?'”