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Important message from Superintendent Deborah Bettencourt
Dear Folsom Cordova families and community members:
As our students, staff, and families begin their hard-earned home stretch to Winter Break, I want to close this week by encouraging all of us to take the time to pause and reflect on recent events that have created difficult - but necessary - conversations in our school district.
For those that did not hear our Board of Education president last night, I want to first echo Mr. Ford’s remarks about the recent inappropriate lynching analogy made by a Sutter Middle School teacher, an incident that has been highlighted in recent news coverage: Put simply, it was wrong, and we are sorry. Racist statements - or any behavior that makes a student feel unsafe or singled out - have no place in our schools.
I am proud of the efforts of our schools and families to create safe, inclusive learning environments, and I know we will rise to the challenge. But can we also identify weaknesses in our system to better prevent something like this? In what ways can we make our teaching and leadership practices more culturally responsive? Are there barriers to closing the achievement gap that we have yet to examine?
For solutions, we must listen to input from our school communities. We heard many good ideas from concerned and caring community members at last night’s Board meeting. I urge you to reach out to me directly with your ideas, too: dbettenc@fcusd.org.
We are not a school district that shies away from the hard work needed to best serve our students. Thank you for your continued partnership and commitment to educational excellence.
Sincerely,
Deborah Bettencourt
On Thursday, Dec. 8, FCUSD Board of Education President Zak Ford also addressed community concerns and apologized for recent inappropriate statements made by a middle school teacher. Here is a transcript of his comments, in full:
"On behalf of the board, I know that one of the reasons people are here is because of a personnel matter. And to be blunt, to be candid, what was said, regardless of context, was not just insensitive, but very inappropriate, and flat out stupid and repulsive.
And that behavior - no student should feel uncomfortable in their classroom, whether it be a teacher that says those comments, or a fellow student or administrator. No student should be exposed to those comments, to that environment.
On behalf of the Board, the school, the entire District, I would like to apologize for what was said. It was, again, regardless of context, it was very inappropriate and repulsive. Those forms of comments have no place in our schools. And we cannot have and we cannot tolerate behavior that makes our students feel unsafe.
We do try to make sure our students do have a safe atmosphere, but we do need to make sure we address these matters, that we continue to work on making sure all students do feel safe and comfortable in their classrooms, and we do have work to do, obviously.
I do welcome community members who will be expressing their concerns with the District, with the Board, and the District is willing to meet with representatives from the community to see how we can partner on solutions to make sure this doesn't happen again."