Dear Boulder Valley School District Board of Education,
Our family has been hoping for more school choice for years and we have been supporting the Ascent Classical School movement. We are a biracial family, one that you should be working to help, not enslave to your ideology. We take racism seriously. We are appalled that the Boulder Chapter of the NAACP is coming out against Ascent without any validity. The ‘statistics’ that charter schools hurt children of color is a statistic to be applied in places with a different demographic. That climate does not exist in Boulder County.
We have seen the effort to recruit people of color and rally them against Ascent, in the name of ‘social justice.’ It is sickening that you are using people who do have real injustices as pawns to advance your own political agenda in an arena is that not against them. These people have no interest in my family, they do not speak for me. One such example, is a white NAACP member reaching out to several black professionals in Boulder and surrounding areas pleading that they show up at the meetings, because ‘people like them are needed more…because their voice matters…..their name carries weight’. I think they meant to say the pigment of their skin carries weight. But why should their skin color carry more weight than mine and the other families of color wanting Ascent to open?
We attended BVSD meetings, where there was more diversity in families making requests to BVSD than the actual school board itself. We have carefully read Ascent’s plans, BVSD question/answers, the DAC recommendations. I believe Ascent can service my children of color. Boulder NAACP NEEDS TO READ THEIR MISSION – they are supposed to protect my rights, ensure political or educational equality, equitable resources. How are they protecting my rights? How are they helping my children be contributing members of a democracy? They are doing the opposite, attempting to enslave me to only the options that they see fit. The hypocrisy is appalling the efforts to rally people of color and mistreated people groups like puppets is sickening. They have no right to speak on my behalf, as though they know better than me. They are creating the real social injustice.
I are not afraid to be given school choice and I want that freedom. I should not have to be slave to your political agenda.
Angela