Mountain Brook Schools Alumni for

Diversity

Open letter to the Mountain Brook Schools Board of Education

June 30, 2021

Dear Dr. Barlow and Members of the Mountain Brook Board of Education:

We write as alumni of Mountain Brook Schools to express our enthusiastic support for the
recommendations of the Board’s Diversity Committee and our belief that MBS employees (like all
professionals) need diversity, equity, and inclusion training. We also write to express concern over the
decision of the school system to disassociate from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL)–a widely
respected, international organization founded in 1913 that has successfully worked with hundreds of
school districts–in order to appease an extremely vocal minority of community members. We emphasize
that MBS should remain committed to improving diversity, equity, and inclusion and that this work can only
be done successfully if done in partnership with outside organizations with expertise and experience in
these areas.

We represent several generations of MBS Alumni. Some of us live in Mountain Brook and have children in
the school system, and some of us live and work elsewhere, including as educators. As alumni, we
benefited from the important emphasis that the school system has traditionally placed on academic
achievement, critical thinking and analysis. However, in line with the commitment to developing critical
thinkers, we believe MBS could do much more to make the schools a welcoming and inclusive learning
environment for all individuals and to prepare students for the world outside Mountain Brook. We stand
united in attesting that the education we received in the areas of diversity, equity, and inclusion in MBS
was limited and in need of profound transformation. We applaud the initial efforts of the Board’s strategic
plan to “develop structures to ensure that the school district honors diversity and that all who are
associated with the school district are treated with respect,” and we are alarmed by any decision to
reverse such efforts or attempt to create an in-house approach, without the consultation of organizations
and experts that have been working on these complex challenges for decades.

After a serious 2020 anti-Semitic incident involving MBS students, the MBS Diversity Committee
appropriately requested the help of a national organization with long-standing experience working in
schools. Based on our own experiences at MBS, we affirm that the 2020 incident was not an isolated
incident and that these issues have long been embedded in the culture of Mountain Brook schools. During
our time in the MBS system, we witnessed or experienced instances of anti-Black racism, anti-Semitism,
harassment based on gender and sexuality, and other forms of racism and intolerance. These incidents
took place particularly among students but, at times, were perpetrated by particular faculty and
administrators. Furthermore, our education did not prepare us to appropriately address these incidents
when they occurred. We strongly believe that outside organizations with expertise in anti-racism and anti-
hate are essential for school systems to navigate these issues, and we affirm that for MBS, this work is
long overdue.

Although racism and anti-Semitism can show up as explicit instances of hate, like those mentioned above,
equally troublesome are the aspects of our MBS classroom experiences that perpetuated historical myths,
erased the contributions of non-white people, and failed to address practices that were profoundly
exclusionary. One of the primary criticisms of the Diversity Committee’s work, expressed in public
statements made to the Board and City Council, is that schools should remain focused only on “learning,”
as though the current and past curriculum of MBS has somehow been “neutral.” We attest that much of the
curriculum and culture of MBS, intentionally or not, obscured historical facts about race and racism and
 avoided addressing racial discrimination as an ongoing reality. While specific teachers made significant
efforts to address these issues in their classes, many of us encountered a curriculum that ignored the
momentous history of the Birmingham civil rights struggle and the accomplishments of especially Black
and LGBTQ individuals. Our education also failed to acknowledge the role of Mountain Brook City in
furthering the segregation of the Birmingham Metro area in the post-Civil Rights era. Beyond curriculum,
we were implicitly taught that it is normal to attend schools with nearly all white children, nearly all white
teachers, and all white leaders. As we graduated from MBS and went on to forge professional lives and
careers, we experienced the negative impacts of this mis-education (and of the lack of diversity in the
community in which we were raised), and we had to find ways to seek out the education that we were
denied.

The extremely vocal minority who demanded that MBS cease its partnership with the ADL and end its work
on diversity, equity, and inclusion are people we know. Although we recognize that a larger group supports
these efforts, the signatories of the letter sent to the MBS superintendent on June 23, 2021 includes many
people who do not presently have children in Mountain Brook schools and some who neither attended nor
sent their children to Mountain Brook Schools. We are confident that the broader majority of MBS
stakeholders desire a way forward that will continue the good work that MBS has done in the past while
acknowledging the shortcomings of our schools in providing an education that prepares students to
succeed in building communities and organizations that are diverse because they are inclusive.

We also affirm that the work of facing racism, discrimination, and inequality and finding new ways forward
is not only the responsibility of MBS, its teachers, and leaders, but extends to the broader community that
we have all called home.

Sincerely and with deepest care for the well-being of Mountain Brook’s current and future students,

To view current signatories click here:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/0/d/1qgR_PhTo_xjtk_UFd7exHNBWwuMNR-
DfF4JCnHC0A_I/htmlview

Inquiries: MBSalumnifordiversity@gmail.com

Please sign your name and provide your graduation date from Mountain Brook
Schools (e.g., Jan Thomas, MD - BWF, MBJH, MBHS, 2005)

Your answer

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