Mission

Our mission is to challenge systems of oppression by advocating for culturally competent educational practices. Therefore, we believe the most effective way to triumph over systemic forms of oppression is to have an educational system that serves the historically underserved and underrepresented. This can only be accomplished if we advocate for an educational system that is positioned to provide culturally competent school professionals and curriculum, human services, and disciplinary policies, which combat: generational poverty, achievement gaps, implicit and explicit biases towards race, ethnicity, and gender.

What We Do

We believe the community we live in can benefit from an increased awareness of the educational dilemmas impacting our children. In an attempt to strengthen our communities response to these educational dilemmas we will highlight research, apply it to our children's educational experience and work diligently to inform parents and students, school professionals, and community organizations working to solve similar problems impacting children of color.

Immediately we will embark on our mission to discover the most pressing educational dilemmas affecting our children's educational experience. Our goal will be to highlight these dilemmas in an easily readable document that speaks to the reality of students. In these documents we will focus on solutions that are easily definable for parents and students, school professionals, and legislators. Also, we will create urgency and momentum through a targeted distribution of these materials to other community organizations working on behalf of our children.

Our efforts to create solutions and build community control of our educational institutions will require R.A.C.C.E. to host functions throughout the year. Ideally, we would like to have one event during the school year and one in the summer. These events will not be used to celebrate our youth but to create advocacy platforms from and for the underserved and underrepresented. These gatherings will specifically address practices that disparately affect children of color and make known the policies that can be implemented to reverse the disparities.

Our long term goal will be to gain an understanding of Waterbury Public School's performance in these areas: school readiness, reading and math proficiencies by grade level, high school graduation rates, as well as college or vocational training success rates. We believe these performance areas are impacted by both the school districts abilities to respond to the socio-cultural dilemmas of our children, and the quality of school professionals working with our children. It is imperative to understand these performance areas, as it will be part of our mission to assist parents and students to increase their awareness of whether the school district is meeting their needs.