Education Without Borders

Students, parents and community members toting rally signs marched to the Fresno County Jail and to the Fresno Unified School District in downtown Fresno on Wednesday May 11. The demonstrators celebrated Fresno’s diverse culture and commended Fresno Unified for taking significant steps to include the histories, struggles and accomplishments of people of color in FUSD curriculum. In an effort to increase awareness about the lack of culturally relevant material, students shared testimonies on how their education affects their lives and how seeing their culture reflected in their studies would encourage them to stay in school.

The march was one of several by Californians For Justice (CFJ), a student-led statewide non-profit organization working for racial justice and the educational rights of low-income youth and youth of color. In past years, CFJ has led several efforts to bring attention to Fresno Unified’s dropout rate. According to statistics from the California Dropout Research Project more than 33% of all Fresno Unified students do not finish high school, leading to higher rates of unemployment and criminal behavior, as well as over half a billion dollars in economic losses over the students’ lifetimes. This number hasn’t changed much in more than half a decade, and the dropout rates are even higher for Latino and African American students. It is time that youth, parents, teachers and local decision makers worked together to prevent more dropouts; and including ethnic studies classes in all high schools is a fantastic way to combat these dismal rates.
In 2006 and 2007, Fresno youth leaders fought for and won more counselors district-wide as well as more bilingual counselors to better serve English Language Learners. Student organizers also took the lead in designing new colorful, youth-friendly A-G posters and ensuring that one was placed in each high-school classroom. Members of CFJ believe that every student, regardless of ethnicity or income, should have a decent opportunity to graduate high school.

This event marks the third rally in CFJ’s latest campaign: “Educacion Sin Barreras/ Education without Borders,” which aims to prevent and reduce high school dropouts in Fresno. CFJ intends to bridge the community and it’s local representatives together to tackle the root causes of FUSD’s dropout crisis, then adamantly work to fix them.