For the May session of Kingston Reads, please join us on Thursday, May 20th from 5-6:15 p.m. on Zoom for a hyper-local conversation about the intersection of racism and education.  For this conversation, we will be looking specifically at the hiring and retention of Black and Brown educators in the Kingston City School District.

According to NYSED, in 2016-2017, 45% of our students were non-white.  For that same year, the most recent year that NYSED published statistics on “Teacher Race,” our teaching staff was only 4.5% non-white.  We employed 10 Black teachers, 9 Hispanic/Latino teachers, and 5 Asian teachers out of a total of 549 educators.

We are incredibly excited to announce that we will be joined by four educators of color who will bring their unique experiences to our conversation as well as their ideas for how we might overcome barriers to hiring and retention:  KHS Assistant Principal, Angela Armstrong; KCSD instructional coach, Stevie Creft; New Paltz High School history teacher, Albert Cook; and KCSD (retired) music instructor, Mona Stovall.

The book we are recommending as background for this discussion is foundational for any conversation about racism and education, We Want to Do More Than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom by Dr. Bettina Love.  

You can purchase Dr. Love’s book at Rough Draft Bar & Books (Kingston Reads participants get a 10 percent discount—and RD also offers a pay-it-forward option, buy two books and leave one for someone else).  You can also borrow her book in multiple formats through the Mid-Hudson Library system.

Please check out our web site https://kingstonreads.org to register and for additional resources and (articles, videos, podcasts) as well as guiding questions for the small group discussions we plan to hold.

Most Sincerely,

The Folks at Kingston Reads