Long-standing: Mountain Brook alumni criticize separation of school board from Anti-Defamation League

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A week after parents pressured an Alabama school board to change course on its diversity plan, former students are pushing back.

A June 30 petition, signed by more than 1,200 alumni of Mountain Brook Schools, urges the school administration to rethink its disassociation from the Anti-Defamation League, which is a national organization that provides schools with resources related to fighting racism and diversity since the late 1980s. The split, according to the petition, was carried out in an attempt to appease an extremely vocal minority of community members.

Earlier this month, around 600 parents and residents of Mountain Brook signed a letter urging the school board to sever ties with the Anti-Defamation League, which it called a politically controversial organization. On June 22, the district announced it would stop working with the organization, which provided anti-bias training to Mountain Brook educators after an anti-Semitic incident last May.

Read More: Mountain Brook Revisits Anti-Bias Training After Parental Criticism Ties To Critical Race Theory

The new petition is signed by a series of graduating classes dating back to 1939. It criticized the councils’ new internal approach, accusing a district that had allowed racism and intolerance in its schools for decades to be ill-equipped to deal with it. handle these issues on his own.

We firmly believe that outside organizations with expertise in tackling racism and hate are essential for school systems to address these issues, and we say that for MBS this work is long overdue, the petition says.

In the petition, former students also responded to criticism that schools should leave education about race and racism to parents. The elders said the education they received was not neutral and that MBS’s curriculum and culture, intentionally or unintentionally, obscured historical facts about race and racism and avoided treating racial discrimination as an issue. reality continues.

Mountain Brook Schools spokesperson William Galloway said the district is not commenting at this time.

Rebecca Griesbach reports on the opportunity gap for the Alabama Education Lab through a Report for America scholarship.

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