As we honor Juneteenth, the oldest celebration of the end of slavery, we are moving forward swiftly to support the demands of local black and other students of color. We have heard their calls for equality, justice, and the end to systemic racism within our district: from the thousands who marched to our district office, the hundreds who have sent emails, the dozens who spoke out at our last meeting, and the student leaders we met with for hours earlier this week. And now we are prepared to act.

At our next school board meeting on Tuesday, June 23, we will be taking action on each of the six demands, listed below. We are also voting to approve a Black Lives Matter resolution declaring racism as a public health emergency. We will meet again with student leaders following the meeting.

We look forward to continuing the start of this honest dialogue with these students and others, one that is not meant to simply smooth things over but fundamentally make progress on eliminating the structural racism that for too long has created educational, economic, and social disparities in our district.

We demand ethnic studies classes with culturally relevant curricula.
We demand SBUSD implement equitable hiring practices and recruit culturally competent teachers of color for ethnic studies and all classrooms.  
We demand SBUSD have student resource officers complete bias training classes before being allowed to work on campus in addition to improved de-escalation training and protocols.
We demand SBUSD publicly condemn the school-to-prison pipeline.
We demand SBUSD allocate funds to rehabilitation and mental health services for at-risk youth as an alternative to probation and/or juvenile hall.
We demand SBUSD adopt a resolution declaring racism as a public health emergency and allocate resources to implement restorative justice practices to deal with hate crimes.

Sincerely,

Santa Barbara Unified Board of Education
Laura Capps, president
Jacqueline Reid, board vice president
Rose Muñoz, board clerk
Kate Ford, board member
Wendy Sims-Moten, board member