Season 4, Episode 16: The "Break" Explanation and History of North Kitsap School District Latino/a/x Movement

LINKS to ARTICLES

https://www.kitsapsun.com/story/news/2022/11/26/latino-parents-students-discrimination-racism-at-north-kitsap-high-school/69673972007/

https://www.kitsapsun.com/story/news/2023/02/06/latino-parent-group-meeting-with-north-kitsap-schools-over-race-issues/69864128007/

https://www.kitsapsun.com/story/opinion/columnists/2023/03/10/parent-group-offers-steps-toward-safety-inclusion-in-schools/69987422007/

https://www.kitsapsun.com/story/news/2023/05/22/eliminate-racial-violencehundreds-protests-at-nksd-for-racial-discrimination-against-latino-students/70229951007/

https://www.kitsapsun.com/story/opinion/readers/2023/05/20/we-have-no-confidence-in-nksd-leadership-to-handle-racism-bullying/70237118007/

https://www.kitsapsun.com/story/news/2021/05/07/kitsap-public-health-district-declares-racism-public-health-crisis/4984962001/

IN Partnership with KAIRE:

Kitsap Advocating for Immigrant Rights & Equality

Since late 2022, KAIRE has supported and come alongside the grassroots efforts of

Latino/a/x students, families, and community of North Kitsap, amplifying their con-

cerns and self-advocacy within North Kitsap School District (NKSD). These are broadly

stated as equal access to education for English Language Learners and pursuit of a

culture of belonging with teacher skills development in nondiscrimination. KAIRE and

Latino/a/x community have articulated these issues and proposed specific solutions,

directly communicated to NKSD in the FEB 22, 2023 "Seven Solutions" letter. For

months, NKSD has failed to meaningfully engage with individual families or respond

with a plan to implement the proposed solutions. KAIRE supports Latino/a/x

students, families, and community in their demand that NKSD meet them

on theirterms. The table must be set by community, not by the District.

Speaker 1 (00:25):

Good morning. Welcome to the Arise Podcast, conversations on faith, race, justice, gender healing. Um, sometimes we're talking a lot about the church, and you may have noticed a few months hiatus. Partly that is due to me, Danielle Rueb, Castillejo, doing this on my own, and also just in February, having a town hall and gathering the community together, which I want to talk more about and, and which this situation with the school board has not been resolved yet. So sadly, that has taken an, an honorable place of, of my time and I'm continuing to work towards that. But I thought it might be helpful to tell a little bit of the history of how that got started and, um, what happened for me and why the meeting happened in November of 2022. If you're following along, I'll put some links to the Kitsap Sun articles, uh, in the notes.  

But if you're following along with the story, there was an original meeting in November 22nd, 2022 at North Kitsap High School in the library. It was me, my husband, uh, a couple of community members I didn't really know very well. And then we had like seven to 10 days, I can't remember exactly, I could look it up in my notes to invite, uh, community members, la Latino community members. But there was things and events that preceded, um, preceded that meeting time in November. And I think those, that's part of the history that's important to know over the last three years and actually since maybe even like 2015 and right leading up to Trump's election, there were so many things that happened in the school that Luis and I, my husband, my partner and I, we just really let them slide, uh, microaggressions with the kids, bullying comments at school.  

And, you know, we semi address them, semi didn't address them, but just kind of trusted the school district to be following up on those issues. In 2016 when Trump was elected, I got a call from a friend and she said, Hey, we're not doing the celebration of Guadalupe. Everybody's afraid to meet, you know, Trump made president. This is a scary time. And if you