Table of Contents
At a McDonald’s drive-through in Washington, D.C., a 10-year-old Monica Manns began honing her ability to serve as a medium between diverse minorities and the rest of the population.
“Rosie, just let me order,” Manns would negotiate with her non-English speaking step-mother.
For Manns, interacting with diversity on a daily basis was simply how she knew life to be. When she wasn’t in Washington with her El Salvadorian step-mother and black father, her childhood was set in an all-black community in southwest Virginia, where she stayed with her Native American mother, who appears white, and Italian step-father.
All the while, she shared this upbringing with her openly gay brother.
“I lived diversity,” Manns said of her background.
Today, 35 years-post McDonald’s drive-through, Manns is still negotiating on behalf of diversity and inclusivity, only now as the director of the Office of Equity and Diversity for Henrico County Public Schools. As Manns passes the one-year milestone as director, she has come to the conclusion that there is a lot of talk about inclusivity within the district. As the sole member of the Office of Equity and Diversity, she has made it her mission to transform that dialogue into tangible action.
Walking through the halls of the HCPS board office, Manns exudes a vibrant personality. Her spiked, blond-tipped hair and colorful wardrobe announces her arrival almost as emphatically as the mile- wide smile and wrist bangles she wears. On March 26, 2018, she officially began her position as director, with the task of infusing her personal energy into the district’s initiative toward advancing inclusivity.
Unofficially, the creation of this position was the county leadership’s first response to the racially-charged incident at Short Pump Middle School in the fall of 2017, where white athletes were seen pinning down black peers and uttering racial slurs in a video posted to Snapchat.
In Mann’s opinion, her role is one that the county needed long before she was hired.
“The problem was, this position should have been here before Short Pump,” Manns said. “When I was here many years ago as a consultant, I actually recommended the creation of this position.”
When Manns previously served the school system as an outside consultant, she was brought in to address the disproportionality in how discipline was handled.
During that time, she said, clear disparities arose in her work. They led her to recommend the creation of a position, devoted to diversity, to then-Superintendent Patrick Kinlaw.
“I think Dr. Kinlaw liked the idea of this position when I first brought it up,” Manns reasoned. “But until there is public push for something, it likely isn’t going to get done. So, when you get on the national stage for something that makes you look bad, it gives you public push.”
Of course, not everyone in the community believed that the position was a necessary reaction to Short Pump. Some felt it was an overreaction and an attempt to repair an image that had been damaged by negative national press.
Manns was introduced to such opinions during the listening tour that she hosted during the first several weeks of her appointment.
During one session, at the Twin Hickory Area Library, many community members gathered to echo concerns about racial, socioeconomic and cultural disparities within Henrico County schools. Some members in attendance, however, expressed the opinion that change was not necessary in Henrico.
“You’re saying there are numerous inequities in Henrico,” a man who requested to remain anonymous said. “I’ve been in this county for 40 years and I’m not aware of any of this. What do you mean when you say inequity? I don’t know what that means.”
Other members of the community have taken to social media to express similar disapproval of both Manns’ position and her appointment.
In response to the Facebook announcement about the position that was shared on the Henrico County Public Schools page, Ken Newman posted, “The diversity myth,” Carolyn Fitzpatrick wrote, “Wasted money,” and Derrick Satter questioned, “Did you even consider any white people for this job?”
To this criticism, Manns has a simple response.
“Maybe this position was an overreaction to Short Pump, maybe it wasn’t, but I can tell 100 stories that are far worse than Short Pump that just never made it to TV,” Manns said, as she appeared to drift into the recollections of her memory. “So, this is work we should have been doing all along.”
By “worse,” Manns made a point to clarify that while other instances of inequity within the county may not be as derogative, they are equally hurtful and impactful.
She described a situation in which a Muslim student was bullied and picked on to the point that her mother feared for her safety and moved her to a private school.
“Really the only thing that Short Pump did was bring to light an issue that was already here,” Manns emphasized.
In spite of her candor about the growth she believes is required in Henrico County in order for the schools to be fully-inclusive environments, Manns is enthusiastic about the work that lies ahead because of her belief in the community.
“When I first came in, I was given this great job, but nobody really knew what the position was supposed to do,” Manns admitted. “But thankfully, what I heard in my listen-and-learn sessions has truly guided all the work I’ve done since I’ve been here.”
In an interview in a spare conference room inside the HCPS board office, Manns frequently expressed a belief that for a long time, there have been many people willing to engage with the issue of diversity in Henrico County, but that that willingness has lacked direction.
In her first year in the role, Manns has made a calculated effort to serve as the current that guides that willingness towards change.
As a one-woman office, Manns knew right away that the kind of change she envisioned for the district would be impossible if she were the only person advocating on its behalf. And so, she created the Equity and Diversity Advisory Committee shortly after she assumed her position.
The Advisory Committee was designed to serve as a point of connection between the Office of Equity and Diversity and the rest of the community. In order to best fulfill that purpose, Manns felt it was necessary that the demographics of the committee directly reflect the demographics of the county at large.
So, from 300 applicants, five representatives – a community member, a parent, a student, a school leader and a school staff member – were selected in accordance with the racial and gender divides for each magisterial district.
The committee then separated into four sub-groups, and members have been tasked with specific initiatives in order to advance the equity and diversity conversation in Henrico County.
One such subgroup is called One Henrico, and its sole focus is on increasing community engagement.
The first initiative created by the subgroup has been a community- wide book club that is currently reading Overcoming Bias, a novel about the unconscious assumptions that can get in the way of well-intentioned actions.
Another sub-group, known as the Equity Committee, has spent the past year organizing a survey that has been sent to middle and high school students, recent graduates and community members with ties to the school system.
Through this survey, Jeanne Mckeon, a member of the Equity Committee and an occupational therapist for HCPS, hopes to gain a better understanding of what exactly people’s experiences with equity in Henrico have been.
Mckeon’s opinion is that the community, rather than just the school system, must be the conduit of change towards inclusivity.
“Children come to us from homes, and we only get them a very short time of the day,” Mckeon said. “I’m pretty spoiled because I think the schools that I serve are very open to promoting diversity. It’s not so much the schools that have the issue, but the community.”
Through her experiences, Mckeon has come to the conclusion that the school children are more accepting of each other’s differences than adults. Specifically, McKeon referenced her time working with children with special needs.
“I work a lot with students with autism,” Mckeon stated. “And you know, just because someone may not be as verbal as others, doesn’t mean they can’t learn. And the other kids really seem to understand that and accept them for who they are.”
Despite her charge for greater change within the community, Mckeon believes that the equity and diversity landscape in Henrico has changed significantly since Mann’s hiring.
“I think there is more open discussion about the challenges we have since Monica got here,” Mckeon said.
On the topic of how students of different experiences and backgrounds interact with each other, current Superintendent Amy Cashwell attributes much of that progress to Manns’ Student Equity Ambassadors program.
Speaking with Cashwell is like a trip down the lazy river. Even when talking about issues as dynamic as racial, gender and cultural equality, Cashwell displays an emotionally even-keeled exterior – that is, until you ask her to speak about the Equity Ambassadors and the work that Manns has done with that group of students.
“It has been really powerful to hear the students talk about how they’re mobilizing efforts around inclusivity and kindness,” Cashwell said. “A lot of the time, we focus on what adults can do about these issues, you know? But, this program allows students to think about what they can do to create action and change.”
Though motivated by the changes that have taken place, Cashwell acknowledged that there are many areas for continued growth within the county. The area in which she believes the county has the most improvements to make is cultural awareness.
“Race is a big issue for us,” Cashwell noted. “But culture goes beyond race and includes ethnicity. What I want to know is how we can adapt our practices to be more inclusive towards families who are not native English speakers. And also, how can we bring in materials that allow students to sort of look in the mirror, and see others who share a similar culture and identity as they do?”
While creating a culturally inclusive environment strikes Cashwell as the biggest challenge that faces the school district, she acknowledges that many people in the community view resource allocation between East and West End schools as Henrico’s shiniest example of inequality.
In spite of the trendiness of the topic, however, Cashwell believes the issue is more complicated than east vs. west.
“Often people will talk about resource allocation by breaking it up between East and West End,” Cashwell explained. “But I think it’s bigger than that. A lot of the time the narrative is that the East End is missing out on the resources the West End has because their PTAs can fundraise and fill in gaps.
“Then you’ll get some West End schools who may say they don’t benefit from Title 1 funding and some of these other programs that go towards areas with high concentrations of students living in poverty.”
Ultimately, Cashwell attempted to emphasize that there are needs of different varieties in all parts of the county.
“It’s a balance,” Cashwell admitted. “So, for us, that means looking at what core resources all of our students need and doing our best to make sure everybody has those resources. That’s a starting point.”
Going forward, Manns also acknowledged the importance of the east and west conversation. That issue, however, is not the one at the top of her agenda for the near future. Most important to Manns is the task of adjusting the curriculum to be more inclusive.
“I had a young girl – she was Asian – come up to me when I first took this position and tell me that she never had herself reflected in a book since being enrolled in a school in Henrico County,” Manns said. “And I don’t want that to ever be a child’s story.”
Manns’ passion about transforming the educational environment in Henrico is evident in every issue she discusses. No topic of discussion, however, conveys her sincerity more than that of her first job out of college.
“I worked at an adult minimum and maximum facility,” Manns said. “I remember seeing so many people who looked like me, but on the other side of the glass. And when I started asking why, so many times their story started in education. So many times, education could have been the stopper before the situation got out of hand.”
So, for Manns, there wasn’t much consideration when Henrico approached her with this job offer. Manns has four degrees and admitted that this position was not a forward career move. But, she firmly believes that education is the ground zero for making a difference through an equity and diversity lens.
What has motivated her in the past year, and what keeps her energized for the future?
“I just want to be part of the change.”
