22-04-2025
Richland school leaders consider rejecting controversial ‘race and curriculum' policy
A controversial policy on race and curriculum adopted three years ago by the Richland School Board could soon be eliminated.
On Tuesday, the board will consider cutting Policy 2360 — titled 'Race and the Curriculum' — because it's not backed up by any Washington state code or laws.
The policy was championed by former school board members Semi Bird, Audra Byrd and Kari Williams before they were removed from office in a recall in 2023 for voting to violate the state's COVID mask laws.
The neighboring Kennewick School Board adopted a similar race policy months earlier as a way to take a stand against the issue of 'critical race theory.'
That was done despite Washington school leaders being adamant that school districts are not teaching critical race theory to students or teachers.
The Richland policy that was adopted said the Richland board believed the history of all races should be valued, and that students should not be taught that their race, economic status or skin color determines their success or moral character.
It also says students must learn 'factual history' from a nonpartisan stance, free from political biases; that materials should be 'free of all forms of indoctrination;' and 'while students are taught that racism exists today, they will not be indoctrinated in the belief that the U.S. is fundamentally or systematically racist.'
Bird, then the board's lone Black member, said at the time of adoption that the policy would be 'setting students up for success.'
But others who spoke at the meeting said the policy's tone was harsh on teachers.
Krista Calvin, an elementary teacher and president of the district's teacher union, said at the time it painted teachers with a 'very broad brush' and furthered a 'nationwide agenda' to villainize teachers.
The 'critical race theory' term emerged in the 1970s in legal circles as a way to examine the law on how it serves the interests of people in power at the expense of others.
Conservatives in recent years have used 'CRT' as a broad umbrella term to encompass progressive ways of re-examining the U.S.'s troubled history with slavery, racism and civil rights.
