>> One night in 2021, the meeting lasted seven hours, one of which was devoted to making sure a man named Seth Brenzel stayed off the parent committee.
>> Brenzel is a music teacher, and at the time he and his husband had a child in public school. Eight seats on the committee were open, and Brenzel was unanimously recommended by the other committee members. But there was a problem: Brenzel is white.
>> “My name’s Mari,” one attendee said. “I’m an openly queer parent of color that uses they/them pronouns.” They noted that the parent committee was already too white (out of 10 sitting members, three were white). This was “really, really problematic,” they said. “I bet there are parents that we can find that are of color and that also are queer … QTPOC voices need to be led first before white queer voices.”
Diversity on the board is a great idea but denying perfectly qualified people the role because they don't meet a laundry list of criteria (criteria they can't change) is mad.