As Albany UU members and friends struggle with our role in White supremacy and racial inequality, we have the opportunity to hear the thoughts of a distinguished Black leader on creating educational equity, a foundation of a just society. John B. King Jr. served as the New York State Commissioner of Education from June 2011 to January 2015. In 2015, he left New York to serve as the Acting United States Deputy Secretary of Education. In 2016, he became the 10th United State Secretary of Education, a position he held until January 2017. He is now the President and CEO of the Education Trust, which advocates for the high academic achievement of all students.
Many of you may have met John King and his family. While he was the Commissioner of Education, he attended Albany UU with his wife, Melissa. His daughters, Amina and Mireya, attended our religious education classes.
Inequity in educational opportunity underlies racial and class inequality in our country. The New York Court of Appeals ruled in 2003 that our state system for funding education does not provide poor and minority children with the sound, basic education that our constitution requires. Attempts, begun in 2006, to address this issue ended with the great recession and affected districts still do not receive adequate funding.
This inequity has been exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic. Districts, like Albany, which serve the largest percentages of poor and minority children, suffer the most from cuts in state funding required by the pandemic. These same children are frequently least equipped to take advantage of on-line learning.
King’s address, the 2020 Willard M. Kiplinger Lecture on Ethics in American Society, is sponsored by the Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church. To learn more about this important topic, please take advantage of the opportunity described below.
