The ICSD Board of Education’s challenge to the Amelia Kearney Human Rights hearing made headlines—some nationally—throughout the year, most recently when the Board dramatically reversed its position and dropped the appeal. When that hearing takes place on December 19th, public attention will understandably focus on the specifics of the case, so it seems appropriate now, before that new chapter opens, to pause and reflect on lessons we have learned so far.

1) Organized coalitions can effect change. It is inevitable that a community will organize to demand alignment between the district’s stated policies and its actions. Over many months, a critical mass of students, families, and community members from a variety of races and economic backgrounds spoke effectively with a single voice to articulate many messages about injustice, hypocrisy, equity, due process, and common sense. Their styles reflected the diversity of this community.  For the cumulative effect to be influential, everyone with something at stake needed to speak out.

2) Poor policies can unintentionally put others at risk.  The stakeholders in this situation weren’t just children and families of color or from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. At least one other group–gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender students–was unintentionally put at risk. The Board’s attempt to deny human rights protection to students, if successful, would have nullified the only state or federal law that “specifically protects New York public school students from antigay discrimination and harassment,” according to the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund. This unexpected impact should remind us all to reject the enticing notion that race issues don’t affect us if we’re of a different race, or that class issues don’t affect us if we’re economically advantaged. Reality is seldom that discriminating, and none of us should presume any degree of immunity from injustice.

3) Informed Board decisions require balanced input. How might a majority of Board members initially come to support a position that provoked such local outrage and that Lambda Legal referred to as “simply unconscionable?” The Board seems to have been guided by somewhat narrow information presented by the Superintendent and legal counsel.  Perhaps in the future there will be opportunities to involve a broader range of community perspectives so that decisions such as these can be more comprehensively informed at the outset. Board members who already have close ties to the communities most often affected by injustices will also continue to be an asset to the Board.

4) Community will fill leadership voids. Reaction to the human rights challenge included student protests at Ithaca High School. The awkward response to those protests by the High School administration resulted in latent fears of race and class being intensified, culminating in hundreds of student-days of school being missed.  Students, parents, caregivers, and community members continue to lead the district toward an understanding of the root causes of this unrest, while simultaneously forging connections between groups traditionally at odds with each other and discovering common ground. Community groups have been educated and reinvigorated by students who are seeking to resolve conflicts and address inequities in the schools. And the public continues to monitor events and administrative decisions more closely than ever before.

5) Ithaca is not an island. In the span of a few weeks, repercussions from a seemingly innocuous vote at an ICSD Board meeting echoed loudly in the pages of The New York Times. Today’s rapid dissemination of information can be a blessing or a curse. We can act intentionally to advance causes that reflect the best of who we are, or we can ignore the human impacts of our decisions, while other communities learn about our standards and values from a distance. Regardless of intent, the positions that we take–and how respectfully we take them–will influence people who are contemplating moving here, teaching here, or sending their children to our public schools.

6) It takes longer to build trust than to lose it. Perhaps the most important lesson is that it takes a long time to recoup goodwill and trust when they are squandered, as they were during the human rights challenge.  New relationships are being formed, and tentative steps toward reconciliation are being made, but the process of building trust between a school district and a community is fragile and easily disturbed even under ideal conditions. Let’s not make it any harder by overlooking important relationships and underestimating the value of goodwill.

The next chapter, which unfolds later this month, will undoubtedly teach us even more – if we are willing to learn.