CALL TO DISMANTLE ANTI-BLACK RACISM
AND UPLIFT BLACK PEOPLE AT DECE
Dear Deputy Chancellor Josh Wallack:
We are a coalition of educators, caregivers, and public servants from the Division of Early Childhood Education writing in answer to the call to stand with Black lives. We write this letter in support of the educators who serve 94,000 infants, toddlers, and young children and their families across the city, and in solidarity with our DOE colleagues and school leaders who shared their demands for an anti-racist educational system in open letters to the Chancellor earlier this month. Our letter reaffirms many of their demands, and seeks to offer a blueprint for the commitments the DECE can make to advance equity now.
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We also write in solidarity with the people who are protesting the NYPD’s unchecked abuses of power and the City’s criminal legal system. Experts, activists, and ordinary New Yorkers are fighting for a budget that funds essential social services that actually keep communities safe, including youth services, housing, and education. Their call for transformative change must become ours.
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Racism is not isolated to our policing and criminal justice systems: it shapes and is upheld by the city’s education system. The DECE is the gateway to one of the most segregated and policed school systems in the country. Therefore, the actions we take as leaders of early childhood education cannot be isolated from issues of race. The DECE must dismantle structural racism and center the voices, needs, and lives of Black and brown communities, both in our offices and in the programs we oversee. We must do more than commit to equity; we must actively pursue racial justice.
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We want to acknowledge your leadership during this challenging time, and appreciate your regular communication with the entire Division. Under your leadership, there has already been a push to open 3-K programs in low-income neighborhoods and create mixed-income classrooms by mixing funding streams. With our union partners, we are beginning to secure significant pay raises for some teachers in community-based organizations, who are disproportionately Black and brown women. Internally, we are piloting the Leadership Forum, a new, more representative body which offers a more transparent approach to decision-making.
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We also want to acknowledge and celebrate the work of the Racial Equity Core Team, who have for many months pushed us all to think critically about race when making any decision that might affect children, families, and staff. It is our hope that the demands made in this letter, many of which align with the DECE Equity Strategic Plan, will better equip the RECT to continue stewarding what must become the entire Division’s work.
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With this letter, we hope to build on the momentum of our colleagues at the DOE, educators and leaders in programs, and fellow New Yorkers in the streets. Below you will find specific, actionable demands that lay out what the DECE must do to become an anti-racist organization. While the demands were collected from and developed by a broad group of concerned staff, they do not represent all of DECE. Our hope is that they serve as a starting point for launching an inclusive, collaborative process to generate policies and next steps.
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No anti-racist work is easy or quick, nor is it cheap. Many of our demands will require significant long-term investment, and become possible only when we reprioritize our current work. Many cost nothing, offering clear strategies for how the Division can begin this work immediately. In all cases, the DECE must cultivate new ways of working that are rooted in the values of anti-racism. We ask that you (1) meet with the authors of this letter and the RECT by the end of June, (2) respond to the RECT and Leadership Forum with a detailed timeline for addressing each demand by the end of July, and (3) share your plan for addressing each demand to the entire Division. We look forward to partnering with you and other senior leadership in pursuit of real change that benefits our DECE team and the communities, families, and children we serve.
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In Unity & Service,
DECE Anti-Racism Coalition
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