Introduction

Holyoke Public Schools (HPS) is fortunate to have a strong Ethnic Studies Program. However, we noticed that many students are still not educated in school about race, racism, white supremacy, or social change. We believe that knowledge is power and we want to make sure all students have access to their history and to understanding their power to create social change. So we set out this year to try and understand how to strengthen our ethnic studies program!

In 2017-2018, Pa’lante Peer Leaders chose Racism as their YPAR project (read more about the Racism Audit). One of the recommendations was to create an Ethnic Studies Requirement. Students were excited to build on that work and look into how to make this recommendation a reality.

Methods

We decided to do some research to understand different perspectives in our community about ethnic studies, a graduation requirement, and other needs for the program. We used a mixed methods approach to gather our data. For this approach, we sent a survey out to students and teachers/staff. We are proud that 372 students and 68 staff participated in this survey. We also conducted three focus groups (School Leadership, Teachers, and Ethnic Studies Leadership) to get more qualitative data and perspectives on expanding Ethnic Studies in our district.