the function of art
In Chesapeake Public Schools’ Family Update, published January 15, 2021, Superintendent Jared Cotton announced that the school system’s Equity Council would soon be holding a student visual arts exhibition.
The theme of the exhibition, Lift Every Voice, is likely an allusion to the Black National Anthem of the same name. The exhibition will provide students an opportunity to forward the Equity Council’s purpose: “to promot[e] diversity and equity within our school division.”
For the students who participate, the exhibition is clearly an important opportunity to feel heard and valued. No proponent of education would find fault with this worthy objective.
Chesapeake Public Schools’ Equity Council should be able to think on a much larger scale than an exhibition that features student art, though.
In the spring of 2020, Chesapeake Public Schools received over 6.3 million dollars in CARES Act funds, monies intended for emergency pandemic relief.
Among other areas that school systems could have chosen to support with those funds are “activities to address the unique needs of low-income children or students, children with disabilities, English learners, racial and ethnic minorities, students experiencing homelessness, and foster care youth” —
students who might be perfect candidates for Chesapeake’s Lift Every Voice student arts exhibition.
Knowing how much financial support that Chesapeake Public Schools received for emergency pandemic relief, and knowing how many of Chesapeake’s low-income students opted to learn virtually this school year, the arts exhibition begins to feel a bit inadequate.
The arts exhibition becomes almost hurtful when coupled with what the school system could be doing to promote equity and diversity within the division and the fact that Lift Every Voice alludes to the Black National Anthem.
If Chesapeake Public Schools is truly invested in addressing systemic inequities and creating a platform to lift every voice, then the Equity Council needs the ability to develop long-term programs that will address those inequities directly.
The two most important areas the Equity Council of Chesapeake Public Schools should be permitted to address are the system’s apparent inequities in funding and discipline.
Chesapeake’s Oscar Smith High School serves as a good example of funding:
According to the current information on the Virginia Department of Education website, the total student population at Chesapeake’s Oscar Smith High School is 2,275.
Of Smith’s 2,275 students,
- 455 have disabilities
- 1,284 are economically disadvantaged
- 1,255 are Black
- 91 are English learners
- 3 are homeless
- 8 are in foster care
Whom better to provide extra support? Whose voices better to help lift?
Well…
Chesapeake Public Schools does support and lift the voices of a small subset of the Oscar Smith population: the students who are enrolled in the International Baccalaureate Program.
The International Baccalaureate program is a magnet school for gifted teenagers. Students from any attendance zone in Chesapeake are permitted to attend the IB program at Oscar Smith, as long as they are able to meet admission requirements of the program.
There are 218 students enrolled in Chesapeake’s IB program at Oscar Smith, a bit under 10% of the school’s overall population.
Despite the IB program’s small student population, and despite the fact that many of those students reside outside of Oscar Smith’s official attendance zone, Chesapeake Public Schools elected to support the students enrolled in the IB program by allocating $10,000 of CARES Act funds to pay the system’s annual International Baccalaureate subscription fee.
Not only that, but Chesapeake Public Schools pays for the testing fees of all students enrolled in the IB program, which is an annual expense of $47,000.
It shouldn’t go unmentioned that in almost every other school district, families pay for end-of-year IB testing themselves. Chesapeake stands alone in their support of the IB students’ efforts and surely can’t be accused of restricting those students’ voices.
The rest of Oscar Smith High School’s population?
All those students who likely represent at least one marginalized community?
Those students apparently were afforded no opportunities that were not afforded to all Chesapeake Public Schools students: Chromebooks, hot spots, and free meals through June.
That equity part…
How can Chesapeake’s marginalized students ever truly lift their voices without a significant financial investment from Chesapeake Public Schools?
Chesapeake Public Schools did set aside $500,000 of CARES Act funds for unemployment insurance in the event the system needed to lay off employees during the pandemic.
Perhaps some of that money, now that Chesapeake Public Schools has squarely placed itself in the “stay the course no matter who lives, dies, stays, or quits” category of face-to-face pandemic instruction, can be spent on providing relief for some of the needier families of Chesapeake.
Not a single staff member has been laid off, after all.
An obvious place to begin supporting Chesapeake’s marginalized students would be by providing increased nutritional support to families in need, since the hunger rate for some families has quadrupled since the pandemic began.
Hungry students struggle to concentrate, learn, and behave more than their well fed counterparts do (NEA Today 15), and for a marginalized student of Chesapeake Public Schools, good behavior is essential.
In the Chesapeake Public Schools, students from marginalized communities — Black students, specifically — are consistently penalized more harshly than students of any other racial demographic.
In fact, those students whose voices are lifted through an equity-promoting art exhibition will be few in comparison to those students who suffer inequitable punitive actions for stepping outside of what Chesapeake Public Schools has deemed acceptable behavior.
The racial demographics of Chesapeake Public Schools aren’t outlandishly lopsided: 44% of the system’s students are white; 32.4% are Black; 11.3% are Hispanic; 8.5% are mixed; and the representation of other racial demographics is too small to be counted on the most recent data available at the VDOE website.
However, the punitive measures that Chesapeake Public Schools administers do seem outlandishly lopsided.
The data from the VDOE show that Black students, despite making up 32% of Chesapeake Public Schools’ population, account for 60% of the students who are penalized with short term suspensions. On the other hand, white students comprise 47% of the student population but only represent 25.7% of short term suspensions.
Information about long term suspensions isn’t better: of the students Chesapeake Public Schools administrators placed on long term suspension, 56.7% are Black, while 34.3% are white.
Most dire, though, are the data that reflect expulsions: of the students expelled from Chesapeake Public Schools, 77.8% are Black. White students comprise the remaining 22.2% of expulsions.
Expulsions, unlike suspensions, don’t take place at the school building level, though. Expulsions are overseen by the Chesapeake Public Schools’ school board.
An easy explanation for Chesapeake’s disparity in punitive measures is that, well, it’s the Black students who are committing the most infractions.
Any Chesapeake Public Schools’ staff member with a conscience will tell you that’s not true.
It seems reasonable that when faced with such data, a school board would be inclined to self-reflect; to ask themselves difficult questions of intent and bias.
Not Chesapeake, Virginia’s school board. In fact, in its 2021 Legislative Agenda, Chesapeake Public Schools specifically states that they “oppose action to legislate local school discipline.”
Why, when an abundance of data indicates that one group of children is being disciplined disproportionately, would a school system declare they “oppose any legislation that would lessen the power of local public school boards when imposing school discipline”?
Chesapeake Public Schools states their system believes that disciplinary “matters should remain at the local level and not be mandated statewide,” but it appears the entire system, from the school board down, would benefit from an outsider’s oversight.
Students — particularly Black students — would benefit.
Chesapeake Public Schools is set to receive another 23 million dollars in CARES Act funding. Where will the system see fit to allocate these funds?
The buildings need to be safe for staff and student return. Virus mitigation needs to be at the forefront. But COVID-19 isn’t the only virus Chesapeake Public Schools is contending with.
COVID-19 has exposed in Chesapeake Public Schools another virus that it likewise revealed in many other American school systems: what looks to be a deeply rooted system of real and destructive inequities.
To cure our system and relieve our students’ suffering of those inequities, Chesapeake Public Schools’ Equity Council must be provided broad latitude and a tremendous amount of funding to allow Chesapeake’s marginalized students real opportunities to lift their voices.
Long term after school programs where teachers are paid to provide academic support at satellite locations convenient for students in need; training for teachers and administrators to help them understand the tremendous strain their marginalized students are under; and regular audits of disciplinary actions that result in teachers and administrators having to face consequences for inequitable punishments themselves would be a start.
A start.
The families and students who struggle in a system they did not create are not the problem. The problem is that Chesapeake Public Schools seems to be unwilling to develop real solutions for the troubling system it created.
Yes, Chesapeake Public Schools has all their students’ best interests in mind by establishing an art exhibition designed to Lift Every Voice.
However, if Chesapeake Public Schools is truly committed to lifting every student’s voice, then the district needs to heavily invest in singing lessons for the students who have been previously unheard.
Meaningful and aggressive CARES Act funds allocation to relieve Chesapeake Public Schools of both viruses it is contending with would be an exhibition of the finest art, indeed.
❤ again, thanks to Cerise Canzius, Joy Gavin, and a special friend and her mom for their guidance and advice. also thanks to my own mom, linda, and malia for their thoughts ❤
Cotton, Jared. “Family Update.” 15 Jan. 2021.
“Legislative Agenda.” Chesapeake Public Schools, 2021, p. 5.
Litvinov, Amanda, and Cindy Long. “Child hunger is exploding — and public. schools can’t fix it alone.” neaToday, Jan. 2021, pp. 14–15.
“NAACP History: Lift Every Voice and Sing.” NAACP, www.naacp.org/naacp-history-lift-evry-voice-and-sing/.
“Policies and Regulations The School Board of the City of Chesapeake.” Chesapeake Public Schools, 2021, p. 90.
“School Quality Profiles.” Virginia Department of Education, schoolquality.virginia.gov/. Accessed 24 Jan. 2021.
