On behalf of the staff and board of Mountain Dreamers, a nonprofit advocating for the rights of Summit’s immigrant families, I would like to thank and commend Summit School District’s teachers, administrators, superintendent, parent volunteers and the school board for creating the Just and Equitable Education policy.

The policy lays out the realities and the challenges for our schools and our Summit community: that “students of diverse identities are underrepresented in district programs,” including academics, sports and clubs. In our view, this is particularly true for the 41.6% of students identified as Hispanic or non-Caucasian in the 2020-21 student statistics.

The Summit School District, especially the superintendent and the school board, has shown great leadership and courage in bringing to light these disparities and in creating this important policy and action plan to address them. And we believe strongly that their only goal — shared by everyone on the school board and in the schools — is to provide a high-quality education to every single student.

We also agree that it’s important that students learn that it’s OK to take an unflinching look at our society’s past, both its glories and its tragedies, and then learn to think critically about them, so that they understand the mistakes of the past in order not to repeat them. Summit’s kids are going to be the ones building our American future, after all.

Mountain Dreamers supports this policy and is proud of the district for being such a strong leader in intentionally creating school environments where, finally, “all students receive the resources they need so they graduate prepared for success after high school.”