BERKELEY — A task force is recommending Berkeley schools consider providing financial payments to students who are descendants of slavery in the U.S. as part of a larger reparations program that could be funded by corporations, philanthropic foundations or a new city parcel tax.
In a presentation to the Berkeley Unified School District board Wednesday, the 18-member Reparations Task Force also called for developing additional curriculum on the history and legacy of chattel slavery. The ideas are part of a 54-page report detailing various types of amends the district can make to right wrongs committed against descendants of chattel slavery in the school district.
“Reparations is one of the promises that we need to intend to keep,” Kad Smith, a Berkeley High School alum and task force facilitator, said during the board meeting. “The school district has an opportunity in this particular moment to show that we intend to keep our promises to the students who are descendants of slaves.”
The task force compiled 15 types of possible reparations and identified 12 possible funding sources, although only three ideas in each category are recommended.
For types of reparations, the task force is recommending the district pay students whose ancestors were enslaved for educational purposes, though that could be defined broadly to cover vital living costs like housing. They also recommend creating a harm report documenting the impact of segregation, discrimination policies and other legacies of chattel slavery in BUSD, along with creating new lessons on the subject.
To fund the district’s reparations program, the task force recommends the district pursue philanthropic and corporate donations and initiate a lawsuit against private entities that benefited from the legacy of chattel slavery and led to reduced funding for the school district. A third idea to place a new parcel tax on the ballot would need to be pursued by the public and not the district since the threshold for a city initiative to pass is only a simple majority, compared to the two-thirds vote needed for a district measure, the group noted.
The country has a history of paying out reparations to mistreated groups, task force co-chair Adena Ishii said. Her family received financial compensation after being among the roughly 120,000 Japanese Americans placed in internment camps during World War II.
“I think it’s so important as a Japanese American, as an Asian American, that I stand here in solidarity,” Ishii said.
The district established the task force in 2023 after a community group independently conducted substantial research into reparations and community support for the initiative from 2020 to 2022, according to the task force report. That work culminated in a letter to the school board requesting they formally establish a task force.
The report received strong support from those in attendance at Wednesday’s board meeting, with some holding up signs reading “Berkeley supports reparations” and cheering whenever the work was mentioned. In the audience was Kamilah Moore, chair of the state’s Reparations Task Force and a reparations legal scholar who was among the many experts tapped to contribute to BUSD’s task force work.
Board Director Laura Babitt became emotional during the presentation, reflecting on the harm experienced by Black Americans and what she described as a political risk to her, Superintendent Enikia Ford Morthel and other district leaders who were interested in pursuing the equity initiative.
“I think about how I teach my children that you are the hope and the dream of an enslaved and you have a responsibility,” Babitt said about pushing her children toward success. “We stand on shoulders and we have no excuses not to succeed because perseverance is in our blood.”
Board Vice President Ka’Dijah Brown said the report was timely given that next Wednesday is Juneteenth, a holiday that commemorates when the last group of slaves in Confederate territory were informed of their freedom. It was also noted multiple times that the report was presented on the same day the Oklahoma Supreme Court dismissed a lawsuit brought by two survivors of the Tulsa Race Massacre, a 1921 attack by a white mob on a thriving Black community that left about 300 people dead and many others displaced.
A survey conducted between December and January showed support for providing various types of reparations. Of the nearly 2,300 community respondents, 85% were in favor of financial reparations for educational purposes, 69% were in favor of adding additional curriculum about the history and legacy of chattel slavery and 63% were in favor of documenting harms caused to decedent students.
The school board directors acknowledged the community’s support for reparations, lauded the task force for their work and strongly affirmed their commitment to exploring the recommendations within the report in the fall.
“We know there isn’t anything that will repair that harm,” Brown said. “But we know this is a step in the right direction.”
