Manassas schools are racist, newly proposed equity policy asserts

The Manassas City School Board today was supposed to talk about implicit bias.

“It’s an important topic because it is something that everybody has. It doesn’t matter who you are, what race you are, your status… and it affects how you react to things,” said Manassas School Board Chairman Sanford Williams.

But it didn’t.

Instead, at the last minute, Williams deferred the agenda item at today’s School Board retreat, held at the newly-opened Salisbury Event Center on Mathis Avenue. He called the agenda item a work in progress and said he was unprepared to discuss the matter.

To boot, Williams told the School Board that when he was ready, he’d call a closed-door meeting of the public body to discuss the matter. Virginia law doesn’t list implicit bias training as a reason for a public body to enter into a closed session.

Williams was unprepared to discuss the agenda item due to the death of his mother this past weekend, a school division spokeswoman told Potomac Local News this afternoon.

Implicit bias is linked to critical race theory, and it had been banned in the federal workplace until President Biden reversed the ban earlier this year. A growing number of parents have filled school board meetings across the U.S. this year opposing the practice in schools.

Just this week in nearby Loudoun County, the School Board shut down public comment time, cleared the room, and, and had at least two people arrested after multiple residents spoke out against School Board policy 8040, which requires teachers to refer to boys and girls, and vise versa, should the child ask to be called by a specific gender.

Back in Manassas, the school division is creating new policies of its own to “denounced racism and all racial inequities,” and “to dismantle individual, institutional, and structural racism that exists in the division.”

The new policies dubbed the anti-racism policy, and diversity, equity, and inclusion policy were written in May and posted to the school division’s website. They were written by a taskforce of school administrators, teachers, politicians, and parents.

“It’s not a racist school division, and that’s what I told them when they came and asked me for edits [to the policy],” said Manassas City School Board member Robyn Williams.

Despite the fact that white students make up less than 20 percent of the Manassas school division, “white students have clearly outperformed black, Hispanic, and Native American, and other historically underrepresented students on state assessments, at every grade level.”

The division’s proposed equity and inclusion policy calls for hiring more teachers based on race, to not just narrow, but to eliminate the achievement gap between high and low achieving students, and to create a new curriculum that incorporates “the contributions of diverse cultural groups.” According to school officials, the school division would spend three years working to achieve these goals.

It’s important to have conversations about equity and diversity, says School Board member Robyn Williams.

“But we have to remember we are all equal, and that the school system should provide equal opportunity,” she adds.

The policy committee, which is reviewing the new equity and anti-racism policies, will meet again on Tuesday, June 29 at 7 p.m., at the school division’s central office at 8700 Centreville Road. The meeting is open to the public.