By Kelly Fraenkel
Staff Writer
Manhattan Beach Unified School District (MBUSD) reaffirms its commitment to prioritizing diversity, inclusivity and equity for the 2020-21 school year.
MBUSD’s Inclusion Stand Up Commitment is one of the methods used to make sure the goal of inclusivity and diversity for this school year is met. To ensure this, Costa’s English Department is diversifying its curriculum for grades 9-11 by including at least one core text by an author of color. While the new curriculum is being finalized, teachers are supplementing their current curriculum with poems, short stories and other works by authors of color.
“Diversifying our curriculum is actually our primary goal for this school year,” English Department Co-Chair Nicole Wachell said.
By next school year, the English Department hopes to include a work from an author of color in English 9, English 10 and English 11, according to Wachell.
“We are in the process of considering new literary works to add to our core,” Wachell said.
Along with diversifying the curriculum at Costa, the purpose of the Inclusion Stand Up Commitment is to provide students with safe environments to speak out about issues regarding inclusivity, and to ensure all voices are heard, according to the commitment.
“We have been looking at ways to diversify our curricular offerings for some time now,” Wachell said, “but the events of this summer brought new urgency to our cause.”
The Social Inclusion Grant Program is another way the district is expanding its goal of inclusivity throughout the community. This program, which is a partnership between the Manhattan Beach Education Foundation (MBEF) and the Clinton family from Manhattan Beach, funds projects that teach the community about diversity and facilitate inclusive environments in schools. This year the program will award a total of $15,000 in grants within the district to further spread the message of inclusivity and aid the English Department in its change of curriculum.
“At every grade level, most teachers are incorporating shorter works from diverse authors to supplement the more traditionally canonical core works,” Wachell said. “It is not an easy task, and we’re working as best as we can to make progress, even if that happens incrementally and slowly by necessity.”
Social Inclusion Grant applications closed Oct. 1. District leaders, teachers, parents and students applied for grants to fund programs following a set of criteria. The criteria for programs funded by the grant includes helping students to understand the principle causes of inequalities based on one’s race, ethnicity, sexual or gender orientation and religion. The grants also aim to help students facilitate actions to make the community more inclusive and fair.
“I like the current curriculum, but I would like it if it was more diverse,” junior Aashna Patel said. “I think that it is a great idea that the English Department is diversifying its curriculum because the students will be able to hear about different perspectives if they read about authors from different backgrounds.”
After the Social Inclusion Grants Committee, composed of three MBEF board members and three advisors, evaluates all applicants, it will announce the winners on Oct. 31. Winners can receive up to $5,000 in grants for collaborative ventures within the district.
“Systemic racism has deep roots in our country, and we want to use our educational tools to dismantle some of that damage,” Wachell said. “In the name of inclusivity, we want to make sure that our curriculum values more than one perspective or voice.”
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