by Emily Siansky ‘22

From March 1 to March 31, MCPS students from fourth to twelfth grade completed a survey as a part of the greater MCPS systemwide Anti-Racist Audit. The exact date the survey was taken is up to the discretion of each school, and Sherwood students completed it during homeroom on March 10. Students were offered the option to opt out of taking the survey.

The goal of the audit is to address and examine racism in schools across the county at all levels. While the audit has been ongoing for about a year, the survey will help the county collect data for each individual school.

The Anti-Racism Stakeholder Survey gathered information and data to answer the question “‘To what extent does MCPS support racial equity and disrupt systemic racism through its policies, procedures, structures, and practices?’”

Six stakeholder groups were surveyed: students, teaching staff, support professionals, school administrators and administrative staff, district administrators and administrative staff, and parents and families. When taking the survey, all stakeholders were asked to reflect about their experience at MCPS. The survey has a series of statements with the option to select strongly agree, agree, disagree, strongly disagree, or ‘I don’t know’ as their responses.

The survey is divided into sections, which allows the evaluators to collect data from different aspects.

The Mid-Atlantic Equity Consortium (MAEC) created a list of focuses that the collected data will help reveal. Having the criteria allows both survey participants, administrators, and evaluators to be on the same page in terms of what the intended purpose of the survey is. The survey will help to find students’ general feelings about school and learning, students experiences with learning about race in schools, school climate and safety concerns. The middle and high school surveys will also evaluate the enrichment classes, career readiness, and college materials within the secondary schools.

Over the past few years, there has been a nationwide effort to talk about racism in schools and discuss the institutional racism many schools and districts have encountered. MCPS Superintendent Monifa McKnight explained the purpose of the survey and how it fit into the larger investigation in a February newsletter. In the newsletter, she addressed how MCPS will improve from the survey and audit as a whole, but also acknowledges the flaws to the system in general. Writing the newsletter from the Carver Educational Services Center, where Black students used to have to attend school, also reminded McKnight about the more historic issues MCPS had with racism.

“This fact reminds us that racism was built into our core structures. However, we are sitting in this building as leaders of a district that is now one of the most diverse and successful in the country. We are hopeful that we can use this audit to re-envision a school district where all students, families, and staff feel safe, valued, seen, heard, and successful,” wrote McKnight.

Findings from the audit will be made public in June. MCPS will share updates on its website. MCPS offices and schools will then create plans to be set in action over the summer to implement for the 2022-2023 school year and beyond.