MSAN hits Wisconsin ‘You Belong Here’ conference

According to the Multicultural Student Achievement Network website, MSAN is “a national coalition of multiracial school districts that have come together to understand and eliminate racial opportunity gaps that persist in their schools.”

MSAN school districts, which include Amherst-Pelham Regional Schools—one of the founding school districts—have student populations in their affiliated schools “between 3,000 and 33,000 and are most often located in well-established first-ring suburbs or small/mid-size cities.” Additionally, the districts “share a history of high academic achievement and connections to major research universities.”

Mary Custard, a Dean at ARHS, has been involved with MSAN since it was founded in 1999 and advises the student group that is selected each year to represent ARHS, after being nominated by their teachers. She traveled with them this fall to Madison, Wisconsin for the annual conference from November 1-4, with the theme “You Belong Here.”

Custard said in the early years, she helped nominate students. “As a staff member of color, I made connections with students of color. I knew the obstacles to their achievements and I wanted to give them the benefits of the opportunity to network with other students of color, travel, and learn,” she said. She noted that some students had never been on an airplane and this was “a great experience.”  

She would organize students from grades 10 through 12 from our school to represent ARHS. They were selected for their interest and activism in social justice and their potential to serve as leaders in their communities. “It’s very difficult to select just eight students to represent our school because there are a lot of students in our school that fulfill the nomination criteria,” Custard said.

Once students participate in the conference, they create and work on an action plan that will support and benefit greater academic achievement, focusing on students of color but benefitting all students.  This year,  the MSAN Scholar team includes Abdi Byl-Brann, Layla DaSilva Askew, Sanaa Johnson, Bonifacio Mendoza, Zoey Mordecai, Victor Nunez-Saravia, Tarakyn Shultz, and Ivanilse Rutienne Varela Vaz.

In the past couple of years, MSAN hasn’t been the same because of the COVID-19 pandemic, when all of the meetings were on Zoom. “It was very difficult to be online. We were all disappointed that we weren’t able to meet in person. The online experience was very different from the conference,” Custard said. 

But now, MSAN is rebuilding the organization, including finally dropping/changing the Minority to Multicultural, and strengthening the community it has built over the years. Students said the conference gave them a chance to network with students from all over the nation and to have important discussions about anti-racism, social justice, and achievement. 

Custard said she is eager for our district to continue making academic equity changes and improvements for all students as well as supporting students of color on their MSAN action projects.