By Taylor Johnson | OBSERVER Staff Writer
Community leaders Carl Pinkston and Darryl White Sr. heard about an incident at a charter school involving an 8-year-old Black student expelled at school over test scores around 2008.
Pinkston and White went to the school to talk to the principal, offering support to the parent who reached out to them about the situation. At first, the pair were escorted off of campus by the school officials.
When Pinkston and White reached out to the principal’s boss and returned to the campus, the pair was welcomed, and the school decided not to expel the student.
This story typifies Pinkston and White’s advocacy on the Black Parallel School Board to assist and fight for Black families in the Sacramento City Unified School District and elsewhere in Sacramento County, which has some of the highest Black suspension rates in California.
“We are unapologetically focused on Black students,” Pinkston says. “We will fight like hell to make sure that Black students receive the highest quality of education.”
Inspired by Oakland’s Black Parallel School Board founded in the 1960s, the Sacramento Area Black Caucus established a similar organization in 2008 to address issues in Black students’ education. Currently, there are eight members of the organization, which takes around 120 cases a year.
Although they primarily focus on Sac Unified, last year they received 92 calls from parents concerned about their students from across the city and other parts of California.
“But we’re not just getting calls about Sac City Unified School District. We get calls for Folsom Cordova, Natomas, Twin Rivers, Elk Grove, Galt…” Pinkston says.
Pinkston says they have even been contacted by parents in Kern County looking for help to advocate for their children. They also have a chapter of the Black Parallel School Board in Merced.
With their members having expertise and experience in various industries, the Black Parallel School Board focused on making board meetings at Sac Unified more accessible and responsive to community concerns by advocating for proactive changes rather than reactive measures.
White, the organization’s chairman, was a principal for more than nine years. He currently serves as an education consultant and the CEO of the Sacramento Independent Learning Center.
Pinkston, who works as the director of operations, is a member of the Sacramento Area Black Caucus and former board member of the Institute for Social and Economic Studies.
The pair and others at the BPSB have influenced Sac Unified policies, including ending a contract with the Sacramento Police Department as campus monitors.
In 2019, the BPSB sued Sac Unified over its handling of Black students in special education programs. The district settled in 2023 and developed an action plan to address such concerns.
Before the lawsuit, White says the district failed in its responsibility to African American children based on disproportionality of information in data procedure due to kids being placed in special ed more and individualized education programs, or IEPs, not always up to date.
“The process used for African American children is not always as clean as it should be,” he says.
Pinkston and White say they have commended the district for addressing some of their concerns through the action plan, but recognize there’s more work to be done. Through the action plan, there are more than 160 directives and activities to address some concerns.
Sac Unified officials say that since 2008, the student experience within the district has improved thanks to the collaborative relationship with the BPSB, the insights of which have helped address systemic problems and maintain focus on student outcomes.
“This work is nowhere near completion, but we believe that our district is making progress in the right direction to serve our community, especially our BIPOC families,” officials say. “The Black Parallel School Board’s partnership within Sacramento City Unified serves as a great example of what is possible when community groups engage with local schools and work toward a shared goal.”
The board’s current concern is over the anti-DEI rhetoric from the federal government and its impact on local school districts, such as free or reduced lunch, funding for students with disabilities, and staffing in schools.
Last week the BPSB sent a press release urging California congressional leaders and local education leaders to stand firm and united against efforts to abolish the Department of Education, close regional offices of the Office of Civil Rights, or implement federally funded school voucher programs that lack enforceable protections for students of color and students with disabilities.
“We just have to keep fighting. If we give up every time something just collapses in our face, we will never get anywhere,” Pinkston says.
Parents who wish to contact the Black Parallel School Board can call them at 916-484-3729 or send an email. Its next board meeting is 10 a.m. Saturday, April 5.
Support for this Sacramento OBSERVER article was provided to Word In Black (WIB) by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. WIB is a collaborative of 10 Black-owned media that includes print and digital partners.