Education Justice

Education in the United States is touted as the great equalizer, helping to mitigate the effects of poverty and other societal injustices. However, we know that the reality on the ground is that these injustices are deeply ingrained in our education system as well. Funding inequities, beliefs about which young people will succeed, policing in schools, and lack of socioemotional, extracurricular, and academic resources all combine to create an educational environment in our predominantly Black, Brown, and immigrant schools that fails our young people. We have seen this firsthand in the severe lack of funding for schools in Reading PA and a failure of the school to devote even limited resources to programs for bilingual and ELL students that make up 25% of the school population. 

 

MRPA has organized parents for years to change the conversation about educational resources and funding in the state to center Black, Brown, and immigrant families. We have weekly committee meetings made up of parents, mostly mothers, who share their experiences trying to navigate the education system, the struggles they and their children have faced in trying to get a quality education, and how these struggles are connected to a larger system that underfunds schools where many BIPOC students attend. Recently, our parent committees successfully organized to ensure money from the American Rescue Plan has been used to fund the poorest districts in PA.