Montpelier High School will fly the flag of the Black Lives Matter movement for the month of February.
Montpelier School District Superintendent Brian Ricca said the Racial Justice Alliance, a student-run organization at the school, had made the request in a letter to the school board. February is nationally recognized as Black History Month.
The School Board voted unanimously at its Jan. 17 meeting to support the students’ request. Board members, school representatives and the alliance have been working together for the past year, Ricca said, after he and other school officials were approached by African-American students at the high school.
The students shared what Ricca described as “very difficult things” they had heard in the halls of the high school.
“There were things said that were simply … not acceptable to me as a superintendent and also as a human,” Ricca said.
Ricca said the students’ complaints prompted the school to start addressing issues of racial injustice, in the school curriculum, in assemblies, and in teacher and administrator training. The high school obtained a grant to hire a consultant, CQ Strategies, specializing in what it calls “intercultural competency.”
Ricca said the decision to fly the Black Lives Matter flag was part of a larger process of addressing issues of race and prejudice, at the school and generally.
“We want to treat this flag not as a singular event, but as a continuation of the part of of our acknowledgement that the experience of our students of color and our black students is systematically different than the experience of our white students,” he said.
In its letter to the board the alliance agreed that positive steps had been taken by the high school, “and yet need to do more to raise our predominantly white community’s collective consciousness to better recognize white privilege and implicit bias …
“Intentionally or not, many have benefited from and contributed to structural and institutional racism; part of the key to rebalancing lies in open discussion, and addressing the issues as they manifest within our school.”
Montpelier High School’s student body is identified as 87.7 percent white, 4.6 percent Hispanic, and 3.2 African-American. In its resolution, the school board echoed the students, saying, “We make this decision to fly the Black Lives Matter flag with love in our hearts and courage in our voice, and we reject any purported connections to violence or hate.”
Black Lives Matter started as a Twitter hashtag #BlackLivesMatter following the acquittal of George Zimmerman for the shooting death in a Florida suburb of an unarmed African-American teenager, Trayvon Martin. It has grown into a national movement against racial injustice.
School Board member Michele Braun said while there is some concern that the flag may draw controversy, she hopes this will be a part of the larger public dialogue that has been happening nationally.
“We want every student to feel included and have their needs met,” she said. “There is some concern with controversy, but that is part of the conversation.”
