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• Northern Virginia

• population ~15,000

• median household income of $146,922 in 2020

• one public school system

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• 19:1 student to teacher ratio

• ranked #7 in Virginia High Schools

• ranked #2 in Virginia for College Readiness

• 98% graduation rate

• 7.76% of the students in this school were chronically absent in the 2023-2024 school year

• International Baccalaureate program

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Meridian High School Student Breakdown by Race

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• students were predominantly white

• teachers and administrators were predominantly white

• custodians were predominantly Hispanic

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How I saw race, class, and politics, etc. play out in my schools

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How I saw race, class, and politics, etc. play out in my schools

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• school name changes

• white students overrepresented in IB classes (ironic)

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Moments in high school that shifted my perspective

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Moments in high school that shifted my perspective

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• the school board meeting where a Black mom said she didn't feel comfortable with her daughter attending an elementary school named after a man who would have enslaved her

• realizing there was one Black student in my English class when we were reading Their Eyes Were Watching God

• Black Lives Matter in 2020

• a girl in my English class reciting a poem she wrote inspired by "I, Too" by Langston Hughes

• my mom being on the school board during COVID and when the schools changed their names

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I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.

They send me to eat in the kitchen

When company comes,

But I laugh,

And eat well,

And grow strong.

Tomorrow,

I’ll be at the table

When company comes.

Nobody’ll dare

Say to me,

“Eat in the kitchen,”

Then.

Besides,

They’ll see how beautiful I am

And be ashamed—

I, too, am America.

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• SROs

• The Other School Reformers: Conservative Activism in American Education by Adam Laats