Community forum: ACSD is taking concrete steps to fight racism

We hear community members calling for us to do better and to respond. We want to share with certainty: We have moved beyond acknowledging the problem. We are committed to doing the work that will make change within our schools. 

Esther Charlestin was incredibly helpful to us last year in helping our son (and us) adjust to Middle School and creating a 504 plan. I know it wasn’t always easy! As a family, we are deeply saddened by the experience that she had, but not surprised. 

I am writing in support of Esther Charlestin, the previous Dean of Climate & Culture at Middlebury Union Middle School. I am asking our community to hear the truth about racism in Vermont and acknowledge her concerns about lack of support. 

The Addison Central School District has announced new and ongoing efforts to battle racism and intolerance in wake of the recent resignation of Middlebury Union Middle School Dean of Climate & Culture Esther Charlestin, who cited two racially-charged inci … (read more)

Middlebury Union Middle School’s first-ever dean of climate & culture has resigned from her job after only one year.

I share my story for those who feel invisible, who can’t speak because it could jeopardize their jobs, for those whose BIPOC children are struggling and they have no choice but to keep them in our public schools, and for those who have been silenced.

Two weeks after a student of color at Bristol Elementary School was twice called a racial slur, around a dozen community members stood before the school board on Tuesday and called on school officials to take immediate and extensive action in addressing r … (read more)

Before the girls’ basketball game at Middlebury Union High School between the Tigers and visiting Enosburg Tuesday, two members of each team took turns reading a prepared statement condemning the racism that students around Vermont have faced in a series … (read more)

Members of the MUHS girls’ basketball team chose not to travel to Enosburg Falls High School for a game this past Thursday citing a history of racist harassment of Tiger athletes there.

A majority of Middlebury residents believe their community is a great place in which to live and raise children, but some believe the town should do more to address both overt and subtle forms of bias that people of color continue to experience.

At its September board meeting the Counseling Service of Addison County Board of Directors unanimously voted to issue a statement affirming CSAC’s commitment to becoming an anti-racist organization.

A white Middlebury College student who police allege took part in a racist attack on some Black students on campus this past April this week pleaded innocent to criminal charges.

When I was a teenager, after reading the “Diary of Anne Frank,” I always asked myself if I had lived in Germany in the 1930s, would I have spoken up and done the right thing. Right now is my 1930s. On May 14, 10 innocent lives were taken by a white suprem … (read more)

I was born in 1943 and in the 1960s I became aware of what racism meant.

Racism punched Vermonters hard in the face with the shotgun attack by three white night-riders on the home of a Black minister in Irasburg in the early hours of July 19, 1968.