“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” 
~ Margaret Mead

Interested in Lasting Change Within Our Tacoma Community Surrounding Race?

Vibrant Schools hosted two Undoing Institutional Racism (UIR) Workshops with facilitators from The People’s Institute Northwest. These workshops were August 28th-29th and September 18th-19th.  Each workshop session had 40 participants.  The August session was for community and civic organizations.  September was dedicated to educational organizations and institutions.  In October we brought together ALL participants from the August and September workshops for information sharing and development of action steps as a result of the UIR training.  Those involved in the workshops have been asked to continue on as a cohort looking at collective action within our Tacoma community to address issues surrounding equity and race within their own institutions.  Everyone who participates in our quarterly workshops will have the opportunity to share the anti-racist and equity work they have done at the 2014 Race and Pedagogy Conference.  These initial workshops would not have happened without our sponsors: Tacoma Public Schools, Race and Pedagogy, Solutions for Humanity, Community, and the Environment, League of Education Voters, and Asia Pacific Cultural Center. If you have been through an Undoing Institutionalized Racism workshop through The People’s Institute Northwest, you qualify to attend our quarterly events and be apart of this work. We still have our quarterly workshops that we are looking for sponsors and volunteers for. In order to keep momentum with this work we wanted to have each institution and organization take on an anti-racist and equity project for 2014. For more on these quarterly workshops, please check out: Undoing Institutionalized Racism Workshops & 2013/2014 Cohort. To be a participant, volunteer, or to sponsor these events, please contact us at:.

 

Who is Vibrant Schools?
Our coalition is comprised of long-time community members and public education supporters. We send our children to Tacoma Public Schools, volunteer in the classrooms, tutor in after-school programs, knock on doors for school bonds and levy campaigns and employ the graduates. We unite together to advocate for our children and support teachers as professionals through a constructive and collaborative approach. We do this because we care about our youth’s education and their future!

Mission
“Vibrant Schools Tacoma is a diverse coalition of community organizations, businesses and individuals committed to ensuring that Tacoma students of color and students impacted by poverty graduate high school college-eligible and career-ready. We carry out this mission by advocating for and supporting system change and leadership that will increase academic success for our students by supporting effective leadership in the community, district, schools and classrooms.”

Vision
“We envision an empowered and informed Tacoma that leads and sustains the best school district in the nation in terms of college eligibility and career readiness for children in communities of color and children impacted by poverty.”