Letter-Writing Campaign to School Board and City Council

Dear Sacajawea Community --

The killing of George Floyd has generated worldwide protests on an unprecedented scale, and the choices our city, state, and country make today will deeply impact our children’s lives and safety in the future, especially the lives of our Black children.

We believe our students should have a voice in saying how they want to effect lasting, systemic change. To this end, the Parent Racial Equity Team is organizing student letter-writing campaigns to speak to both the School Board and the Seattle City Council. We encourage you to join us by helping your child write a letter to express their thoughts, concerns, suggestions, and/or demands to our elected officials. These letters will provide an opportunity for students to engage in civil action at a critical time for our society and democracy—an experience we hope will help spark a lifetime of civil action to fight injustice.

Emails to schoolboard@seattleschools.org must be sent by Tuesday, June 9th in order to be read before the last Board meeting of the academic year.

Letters to City Council (whether hand-written or typed, short or long), should be sent to Equity Team member John at jdelfeld@gmail.com by Wednesday, June 17 for presentation at the Council meeting the following Monday. If you need to arrange a pick-up of your child’s letter, please contact John. Letters sent to us may be posted publicly on our website, so if you do not want your child’s letter posted, please specify so in your email.

For emails to the School Board, we suggest a focus on:
SPS immediately severing ties with SPD, as Minneapolis and Portland have already done; SPS implementing restorative justice programs in every school, including training, funding for alternative suspension placements, more counselors and support staff, and connections to outside support services; and SPS transparently holding police and schools accountable for abusive behavior towards students, especially Black students.

For letters to City Council, we suggest a focus on:
Police accountability and transparency; demilitarization of the Seattle Police Department; a ban on the use of tear gas and "less than lethal" projectiles for crowd control; improved de-escalation training; a ban on chokeholds; and the reduction of police funding in order to provide more safety net services.

We hope this campaign provides a hands-on learning experience in civic engagement and civil rights and allows our students a chance to express their concerns and take control of their shared future.

In solidarity,
The Sacajawea PTA and Parent Racial Equity Team