To the editor:
I am writing this letter in response to the one written by Liz Fuller in the July 1 Alexandria Times, “An open letter to the School Board.” In it, she comments on the recent obsession with race by the School Board of Alexandria City Public Schools. She questions this tactic.
Dr. Gregory Hutchings, Ed.D, who has been superintendent for some three years now, and Meagan Alderton, who was elected to the School Board in 2018 and is now chair, repeatedly and deliberately accuse ACPS of “systemic racism.”
As Fuller points out in her letter, this action is divisive. But I would like to add that it is also, clearly, derogatory, offensive and contemptuous of the men, women and children of ACPS – from the School Board and superintendent’s office, through the administrators, faculty and staff, to the wonderful majority-minority students – and beyond, to the people of Alexandria.
However, if ACPS is truly racist, as Hutchings and Alderton claim, then they are the place to start – after all, it is their system.
-Francis Carragher, Alexandria