During the month of February, Montpelier High School will fly a Black Lives Matter flag outside the school.
Montpelier Superintendent of Schools Dr. Brian Ricca says the school board made the decision unanimously after working for a year with the student-led Racial Justice Alliance.
Ricca says the alliance shared “some very candid — and quite honestly — very difficult things that they heard” as students in Montpelier Public School. “As a result, we began conversations as adults about how to address that.”
According to Ricca, the decision to fly the Black Lives Matter Flag is part of a larger process that includes training for administration and staff in implicit bias and cultural competency.
"We want to recognize and honor that systematically the experience of our students of color — our black students — is not the same as our white students" - Superintendent Brian Ricca
By flying the flag, Ricca says, “We want to recognize and honor that systematically the experience of our students of color –our black students – is not the same as our white students.”
In a letter to the Montpelier High School board, the Racial Justice Alliance said,
We will raise the flag with love in our hearts and courage in our voices. We reject any purported connections to violence or hate that may or may not have occurred under the Black Lives Matter Flag. We recognize that all lives do matter, but in this same spirit not all lives are acknowledged for their equal importance until black lives have been.
Ricca says community input wasn’t formally sought but he did reach out to state police and the Montpelier Police Department.
“I know that there are some that are going to make the claim that the Black Lives Matter Flag is inherently anti-police,” he says.
He hasn’t yet received a response from Montpelier Police, but in an email Lt. Garry Scott, director of Fair and Impartial Policing and Community Affairs for the Vermont State Police says his organization, “fully appreciates the work that the Montpelier Public School system is trying to accomplish in collaboration with its students.”
Ricca acknowledges that some in the community will disagree with the school board’s decision.
“I’m not going to be naive, but it’s important to us that we are taking the appropriate steps to try to engage in this conversation thoughtfully,” he says. “For our students and our community, it’s important to know that we still have work to do."
