The ESG sector has a new buzzword: climate-quitting.

In a accurate survey, KPMG UK found that environmental, social and governance factors are influencing where UK office workers want to work. Some 20% said they had turned down a job because the company’s ESG commitments were not in line with their values, a number that rose to one in three for 18- to 24-year-olds.

As companies look for ways to turn sustainability commitments into action, finding and keeping the right talent and expertise is a big part of the challenge.

Another one is determining what ESG ‘expertise’ should look like in a financial context.

KPMG has also just announced the launch of its ESG expert training programme for auditors and consultants across Europe, Middle East and Africa, in partnership with EBS Universität in Germany.

“Upon successful completion of the certificate programme, KPMG colleagues will be accredited with the title ‘ESG Expert (EBS)’, awarded by EBS University,” the press release states.

What can banks do to make sure that they attract and keep such experts?

Adopting the principles of responsible investment can mean a fundamental reorganization of how a bank is run. From team structures to executive board appointments, the demands of sustainability have affected not only how business is done but operational structure and governance too.

New role, new title

There is no one-size-fits-all approach to building a sustainable bank. There is, however, a common challenge in most banks’ sustainability journey: creating and filling leadership roles.

To be successful in implementing ESG strategies, financial institutions have had to rewire some of their decision-making structures to align with a new set of targets. In most cases, that means hiring a chief sustainability officer (CSO) or equivalent, a role that embodies group-level commitments to sustainability.

The CSO must demonstrate expertise in how the organization works and its business priorities, and must also have a granular understanding of sustainability, so it is no surprise that the talent pool for this kind of role is relatively shallow.

Sometimes it is best to design the role with a candidate in mind. Research from Deloitte found that 80% of surveyed CSOs were recruited internally, and 82% were headhunted for the role. When the appointment isn’t internal, banks often poach from one another.

Deloitte's report lists some of the conditions that prompt an organization to appoint a CSO, a way for banks eager to demonstrate that their ESG strategy goes all the way to the board.

Firms usually hire for three reasons, Deloitte says: because the external ESG environment is evolving more quickly than it is within the organization; when external stakeholder scrutiny intensifies; and/or when the firm acknowledges that ESG risks are substantial and strategic.

Crédit Agricole has long prided itself in being one of Europe’s greenest banks, and the links between the executive board and each of the group’s business lines is a defining operational feature. It has built a decentralized ESG team that cuts across all siloes.

CACIB is well known for being a green bond powerhouse. Its sustainability journey started in 2003 with the launch of the Equator Principles to assess the environmental and social risks from corporate financing for project construction and expansion.

Back in its Crédit Lyonnais days, the bank’s chief executive worked with Eric Cochard to establish a strategy.

Cochard is now head of sustainable development at CACIB but back then led project financing in metals and mining.

Eric Campos, CredAg’s director of the societal project and managing director of Crédit Agricole transitions and energies, says: “Our model is decentralized, but these big themes within sustainable development are treated in unison. We are constantly liaising and working side by side.”

Pushing for synergy across financial services groups is a common aim.

At UniCredit, the desire to embed the sustainability strategy across the organization was part of the impetus for a board restructuring.

Fiona Melrose, head of group strategy and ESG at the firm, says: “A new executive committee was formed May 2021, and the CEO office was set up to incorporate the subjects that are closest to the executive strategy, including ESG.”

For Melrose, this ambition goes beyond sustainability.

“As a bank, we push for simplification in working together as a group,” she says. "We have the advantage of doing things at scale, while at the same time being embedded in the communities via our local banks."

In corporate and investment banking, the reality of any sustainability strategy is measured in capital allocation, so the role of the sustainable finance lead is in the spotlight.

“The rise of the CSO in banking is a really interesting question,” says Barclays’ new global head of sustainable finance, Daniel Hanna. "The link between sustainable finance and the CSO is still a work in progress in many firms."

Hanna joined Barclays in November last year, having spent over five years building Standard Chartered’s sustainability strategy from the ground up. Things have certainly changed in that time.

“In my first job as a head of sustainable finance, I started with an intern, double-hatting another role,” he says. "By the time I left, we had hired just shy of 100 people and we had built a central team with all sorts of capabilities across the bank."

The idea that all ESG teams orbit around an almighty CSO is not altogether farfetched. For financial institutions that are looking to build a fully integrated strategy, leadership is essential.

There is also a question of qualification and expertise. With growing scrutiny of the legitimacy of claims made by banks of their sustainability credentials and commitments, CSOs and sustainability heads need to meet public expectations on credibility and expertise.

Their roles are designed to ensure that the ESG strategy is embedded across the business, so banks need to invest the resources to make that happen.

Skills gap

“There is a lot of jeopardy around the PR of hiring someone who’s really well regarded in the world of sustainability into a bank and then they leave because they don’t have the right platform to get stuff done,” says Ian Povey-Hall, global head of sustainable finance and impact investing at Acre, a leading recruitment firm.

Equally, an established banker might not have sufficient sustainability chops for the role.

“Having a CSO that has got more of a banking background than sustainability is not necessarily a form of greenwashing,” Povey-Hall says, "but not backing them up with a strong enough team that can deliver the additionality we are looking for to actually engrain the changes across the organization, that is where banks are often not doing enough."

Povey-Hall advocates investment in multi-layered teams.

But embedding an ESG strategy across teams is a complicated task, especially when it isn’t clear what depth of knowledge is required.

The banking industry has been facing an ESG skills challenge for some time now, as regulators and the public at large expect bank sustainability strategies to do more than just apply an exclusion feature to stock selection.

To remedy this, banks have outsourced scientific expertise at all stages of their operations, from project-level consultants all the way up to board appointments.

CredAg, for example, has had a scientific committee since 2019, with 10 experts including Jean-Charles Hourcade and Hervé Le Treut, who has co-authored IPCC reports, and Sylvie Lemmet, who was ambassador for biodiversity during COP15 in Canada.

But when it comes to day-to-day operations, having a lead for every niche sustainability subject on every deal is just not feasible.

UniCredit's Melrose says: “At project level, we may involve scientific experts to measure the impact; whether you need them inhouse depends on how much you work on these projects.”

Improving ESG skills within teams is key, and banks are prioritising inhouse education. This has fuelled the creation of ESG academic programmes in several investment bank universities.

Melrose adds: “It is becoming more and more of a requirement that some of our client-facing staff and relationship managers gain a level of proficiency on ESG-related topics.”

The Italian bank inaugurated its own university in May 2022 to deliver not just courses on the fundamentals of ESG, but also high-level training.

“We stepped up our expert training last year, aiming to reach around 600 employees between the end of 2022 and H1 2023," Melrose says. "We have a programme with SDA Bocconi and Politecnico di Milano Graduate School of Management in Milan – it is a key part of the strategy.”

Barclays is also rolling out its ESG academy.

“We will put all our corporate bankers through it to embed sustainable finance in our client engagement,” says Hanna.

At CredAg, the investment bank is integrating an ESG course into the group’s university, Ifcam, that will be adaptable to an employee’s current level of understanding and job requirements.

Tanguy Claquin, global head of sustainable finance at CACIB, points out: “We opted to include ESG elements in the required mainstream training programme for most of our staff.”

For many financial services companies, however, the need to upskill has also led to higher demand for external partnerships with international universities and colleges.

Information flow

Now that most financial institutions have made public commitments on sustainability, they must focus on the training needed to achieve them. Many are having to find ways to bring both senior leadership and staff up to speed.

“We realised that many of the niche insights we are seeking don’t exist,” says Thomas Höhne-Sparborth, Lombard Odier’s head of sustainability research. "So, we established parallel partnerships with academic institutions, including the University of Oxford and E4S [Enterprise for Society Center], and with industry coalitions as well."

External partnerships like these are creating a flow of information from the science community to the financial sector, giving financial institutions the latest and most refined information on some of the key sustainability topics.

“Financial institutions need access to the latest thinking on key social and environmental trends, their commercial implications and what other corporates are doing to respond,” says Thomas Vergunst, programme director for finance sector education at Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL).

The aim of the CISL programmes is to bring employees up to speed on the urgency, what best practice looks like in a rapidly evolving market, and how financial institutions can make practical changes.

Access to such dedicated education programmes can be a big selling point for banks looking to hire ESG talent.

“We are one of the first banks to actually do more in terms of green financing than so-called ‘brown financing’,” says Claquin at CACIB. "So, for people who want to dedicate their career to this subject, we’re a desirable house."

But it is not just about attracting those who already care about ESG. Banks should be doing more to incentivise their staff to adopt sustainable banking practices.

“If you’re not incentivising your 33-year-old investment banker to incorporate a board-level sustainability strategy in their day-to-day work, the intended outcomes are not going to cascade down,” says Povey-Hall at Acre.

New teams

“Teams that are expert need to be continuously at the forefront of the latest thinking on climate science, sustainability issues, regulatory standards, as well as a market and clients’ perspective,” says Hanna.

That is quite a challenge.

There is a limit to how much technical expertise client-facing staff must have to be impactful.

“Beyond dedicated teams, engaging with employees and clients requires a set of people that can talk about sustainability in a non-technical way that is connected to the real-world consequences of these topics,” explains James Purcell, group head of sustainable frameworks at Credit Suisse.

“There is a misunderstanding that every banker needs to be a scientist,” he adds.

Many financial services companies have identified a need for hybrid teams, with bankers who can translate some of that ‘green’ expertise and connect it with the realities of how business is done.

In some cases, that has meant building strong ESG research capabilities.

Lombard Odier has armed itself with economists, engineers, data scientists, geospatial analysts and policy experts to find out what its new operating model should look like.

“A different mindset needs a new team,” says Höhne-Sparborth.

Focusing on the interconnection of sectors and feeding the information generated to investment teams also requires a one-roof policy.

“In most financial institutions, the sustainability team is separate from the investment team,” Höhne-Sparborth adds. "We were set up like that first, but when you operate in that way, there will always be some barriers between teams and things can get lost in translation."

Last summer, CACIB announced that it was developing expertise on new low-carbon tech including hydrogen; it created a number of expert roles to contribute to financing and advisory activities in that field.

Jason Moore, director for investment banking and private markets at financial services recruiting agency Harrington-Moore, says: “If you look at the makeup of an energy team’s deal flow across M&A and advisory, it used to be purely traditional hydrocarbon-focused deals. Now in some cases it includes up to 50% of transition deals, and some teams don’t even look at oil and gas anymore.”

Interestingly, Moore sees pure-play energy bankers taking on the subject of decarbonization with fossil-fuel clients and a number of new teams focused on energy transition subjects such as biofuels, electric-vehicle charging, or battery storage.

“A lot of them will come from a hydrocarbon background because they can leverage those client relations to broker deals,” he says.

The adoption of a hybrid model is more common within client-focused teams at this stage.

Povey-Hall says: “We are seeing a lot of work done in the advisory teams, hiring individuals that have deep sustainability understanding around sectors and optimal business models to help companies transition.”

It is clear that a systemic transition will require a diverse skill set among the institutions that will be financing it.

“It is important to remember that we are operating in a context of radical shift at a global and systemic scale of our economy and society,” says Campos at CredAg. “Today, our economy functions on the basic assumption that natural resources are abundant, which is scientifically and factually incorrect. If we want our economy to be sustainable, we will have to adapt our economic model and play a crucial role to accompany clients in such transitions.”

That will involve close attention to and monitoring of sector training programmes and decision-making bodies. Creating scientific advisory committees will have little impact if they don’t have the teeth to influence investment decisions. They must have the power to drive change in all sustainability labelled products, portfolios, teams and strategies that aren't aligned with the science.

Sustainable leadership

What makes a sustainable leader?

Is it enough for a head of sustainable banking or for a chief sustainability officer to have had decades of experience in banking but no academic scientific background?

“I think that having a title that starts with 'head of' implies a certain level of expertise,” says Kim Schumacher, associate professor in sustainable finance and environmental, social and governance at Kyushu University.

Surely expertise in finance is the priority?

Chuka Umunna, head of EMEA ESG and green economy banking at JPMorgan since 2021, says: “It is important to underline that to deliver on sustainability, you cannot do that with scientists alone, you need other skills to really understand the financial risk and those underlying issues, particular if we want to see a just transition.”

Umunna is well known in the UK, where he served as an MP for nearly a decade and was spokesman of an unsuccessful new political party, Change UK, following a split with the Labour party.

An employment lawyer by trade, Umunna recognizes that the financial sector is evolving, but that should not be at the expense of high-quality financial expertise.

“I was recruited because I didn’t have a financial background, but I don’t think I would have been brought into the role if I hadn’t, as a city lawyer, been working on transactions alongside investment bankers and seeing how to get a deal to completion,” he tells Euromoney.

Umunna says that getting the terminology right is fundamental to how sustainability runs through the bank.

“We are very disciplined about our use of labels,” he says. “A lot of the media commentary has revolved around the buy side. But, under the radar in Europe, the process of doing an investment banking transaction on the sell side has changed fundamentally, in the sense that ESG is integrated into the process for clients.

“In most cases when you have a major IPO, there is a dedicated ESG and corporate governance workstream among the other workstreams – that is now the usual way to organize a team of bankers around a deal”.

Team building

Deep scientific knowledge may not be a priority in leadership roles because they are first and foremost management positions.

James Purcell, group head of sustainable frameworks at Credit Suisse, says: “In any management role, primary needs are strategic and soft skills.”

He adds that it is often the staff surrounding leaders that should have the technical expertise that feeds into the group ESG strategy.

Ultimately, it comes down to how much value is given to each category of expertise, and how that expertise is leveraged to obtain decision-making power.

Consider the energy transition and who within banking structures is responsible for putting together decarbonization pathways.

Investment banks have been very clear on their commitments to accompany their clients in their transition to low-carbon business models. This means that the overall organization will rely on client-facing teams for intelligence on how the most carbon-intensive corporates are considering transition. That information then feeds into group-level progress reports on net zero.

At Crédit Agricole, the core team in charge of the group-level transition pathway for the oil and gas sector for example, includes the head of oil and gas at CACIB, Nicolas Chapin.

There is no doubt that client-facing bankers are an important part of the equation. But if the hydrocarbon energy sector heads are conveying the views of hydrocarbon clients back to the board, the board must ensure that there are technical experts to act as a counterbalance, making sure a transition pathway does not go against the science.

“The core team that worked on [Crédit Agricole's] group-level transition pathway for the oil and gas sector was made up of bankers with two characteristics: a long-term experience in the oil and gas industry and skills in environmental issues and the International Energy Authority's net-zero scenario,” says Eric Campos, managing director of Crédit Agricole transitions and energies.

If the aim is to deliver systemic change in the banking sector, those able to challenge the status quo need to be included in decision-making committees.

The Center for Learning through Games and Simulation (CLGS) met its Kickstarter stretch goal of $19,000 on November 3, for its newest game: Rising Waters.

This Kickstarter launched on October 4 and has since received over 300 backers supporting the game. This is the second game that the CLGS has released, and is published through the CMICH Press, a board game publishing press run by CMU to produce academic games. Their goal is to help increase use of games in classrooms and promote games as scholarly endeavors that make meaningful contributions to their respective academic fields.

Rising Waters is a cooperative board game set in the 1927 flooding of the Mississippi Delta. The players work together to manage the rising waters of the flood, while dealing with racism from the landowners of the area. The game was culturally consulted on throughout its formulation, as players take on an African American perspective, forced to confront systematic racism, one of the main struggles of the game, and environmental issues associated with flood control. It’s design sheds light not only on the struggles of the African American community, but also on the ways they banded together in “invisible” resistance, through prayer, music, education, and knowledge of the land.

In addition to the cultural consultation relating to the game, it also has an intentionally diverse development team.  The tabletop game industry is largely dominated by white males, something this game moved away from in order to better represent perspectives not usually seen in gaming worlds. The game designer, Dr. Scout Blum, is a woman, and the artwork for the game has all been created by artists of color.

Dr. Blum, a history professor at Troy University, has been working on the development of Rising Waters since the fall of 2020. The game has since been blind peer-reviewed for both scholarship and game mechanics and is designed for both hobbyist and academic play. Rising Waters was play tested at the 2022 Gen Con and was previewed on gaming podcast “Beyond Solitaire” It was also recently discussed in an article by the Guardian about how board games can teach us about climate crisis. 

The CLGS is already working on their next game as well, titled Five-Hundred-Year-Old-Vampire, and hope to launch their Kickstart for that soon after the production of Rising Waters is complete. They also offer a Game Design Thinking minor, and an Applied Game Design certificate through CMU in partnership with Gen Con, the largest tabletop game convention in North America.

Rising Waters is available for pre-order and is expected to begin shipping in May of 2023.

This story is brought to you by the Office of Research and Graduate Studies.

Estimated read time: 5-6 minutes

SALT LAKE CITY — Near the end of a accurate 13-hour plus State School Board meeting, board member Natalie Cline blasted Utah educators who feel "emboldened" to "proselyte their divisive, inappropriate and highly offensive ideologies to students of all ages."

Cline's criticisms are related to a recently leaked Accuracy in Media video that includes purported statements by Utah educators on how they flout state laws and rules on teaching restricted content.

"There are some very real, very disturbing things going on in our public schools and it seems that no matter how many rules or trainings or documents have been put out, these same issues keep popping up like a never-ending game of Whac-a-Mole," said Cline, whose board district on the Utah State Board of Education includes a large swath of the Jordan School District.

People in the video are identified as educators in the Jordan and Murray school districts. Jordan and Murray school district officials have described the video as "inaccurate," "misleading" and "incomplete." Both districts are investigating, officials said.

The Accuracy in Media video depicts educators appearing to comment on how they teach restricted subjects such as critical race theory or discuss preferred gender pronouns. Some said they instruct high school seniors "who don't tell their parents" or they send home information to parents after classroom presentations have already taken place.

State School Board Chairman James Moss said the state board continues to review the situation as well.

Newly elected District 5 board member Sarah Reale said Utah educators are not feeling emboldened — rather they are "feeling a lack of trust after a lot of attacks they've taken from the Legislature and others."

Reale continued, "I don't believe that it's a reflection of our schools or teachers. We have tons of evidence of the amazing things happening in public education. And I support and trust our school districts to do proper investigations into the validity of a video that comes from a national online media organization that has a history of pushing conspiracy theories and anti-equity messages."

Educator on video apologizes

On Tuesday, one educator who appears on the video apologized to the Jordan School District Board of Education.

Michelle Love-Day, a consultant who oversees the school district's Language and Culture Services, said in the course of her work she often challenges people "to be comfortable with being uncomfortable in conversations."

"Today, I am very uncomfortable in the very uncomfortable position of acknowledging that although done under false pretenses, some of the things stated by me and my team made it sound like we disregard or take advantage of the laws and board policies and for this, we are truly sorry."

In the video, Love-Day said she used the word "loopholes." "I recognize that I made it sound as though we may be undermining state and district rules and policies. I admit it was a poor choice of words. But it was by no means a sentiment of avoiding or 'working the system.'"

Love-Day said what she was trying to say was that the State School Board rule on education equity gives school districts "flexibility to operate in a way that allows them to address their unique needs. … To be clear, we support and follow all state laws and more policies, including the right for parents to opt out if their students have classroom instruction. In my department, we are all teachers and lifelong learners. And as lifelong learners, I want to assure you that we learned valuable lessons from this."

Moving forward, notifications of upcoming presentations by the Language and Culture Services team are to be sent to parents ahead of time to give them time to discuss the subject matter with their child or opt them out of the lesson. A second notification will be sent to parents or guardians after the presentation.

Often, the grant-funded Language and Culture Services team teaches lessons at a school at the invitation of a principal or other educator because they have overheard students use pejorative language or students are being excluded or ridiculed by peers.

"So then the principal or the teacher will reach out to us and request a consultation for us to come out and talk with students about how to be kind and go beyond the 'buddy bench,'" said Love-Day.

She continued, "We want them to be able to know how to be kind and uplift one another regardless of our differences and our language."

For example, the team was invited to a school in Riverton where a girl was being made fun of because of her accent. The child speaks Spanish as her first language.

Love-Day addressed the girl in her classroom in Spanish, telling her "Tambien hablo español," which means "I speak Spanish, too."

They conversed a while in Spanish. "The kids are all like 'What are you saying?' They wanted in on the conversation. 'That's so cool.' And then, recess was completely different for her. They started to see her as another human as well," she said.

Love-Day thanked the school officials for their support.

"Again, I apologize and sincerely regret the confusion and hurt this has caused to the school community, you as board members and the superintendent," Love-Day said.

Board members push back

Despite the late hour of the state school board meeting on Feb. 2, which started at 9 a.m. and adjourned shortly before 11 p.m., other state school board members pushed back against Cline's remarks.

Board member Carol Lear cautioned against accepting the video at face value because "there's always two sides to a story."

Lear continued, "If we intend to take these things at face value and call teachers out, call administrators out, then we better have done an investigation and talk to both and all involved parties because I think we do have a crisis in terms of trust with teachers, with policymakers, and even among board members. I think we have to really decide what's our mission and if we decide that this is our mission, it will take all our time."

Such videos are "gathering momentum nationwide," Reale said.

"There are messages created to divide us and I'm focused on supporting our teachers and giving them the tools that they need to give our students the future they deserve," she said.

Most accurate Education stories

SINGAPORE: Seventeen children’s titles have been moved to sections for higher age groups since 2018 due to subjects related to race, religion, and sexuality, the National Library Board (NLB) told CNA on Wednesday (Feb 8).

Communications and Information Minister Josephine Teo had, in a written parliamentary reply on Monday, responded to questions on the number of library books that have been removed from public borrowing by NLB and the reasons for such removal.

She said that NLB had received 42 instances of feedback from the public since 2018, and 17 children's titles had been moved to sections for higher age groups.

"The 17 children’s titles cover subjects related to race, religion, and LGBTQ," said NLB in response to CNA queries.

Those titles were assessed by the board in consultation with the Library Consultative Panel (LCP) to be appropriate for higher age groups and were therefore moved to the respective sections, it added.

In its response to CNA, NLB did not disclose the names of the children's titles that were reclassified. 

NLB's collection policy takes reference from content guidelines provided by the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA), it said.

"Even as NLB brings in an average of 86,000 new titles each year for its public libraries, it will continue to ensure its collections are appropriate for the respective age groups, and review books when it receives feedback on them.

"NLB also strives to ensure that its collections are appropriate for different age groups, in line with prevailing social and cultural norms."

In 2020, a Chinese-language children’s book was moved to the adults’ section following complaints of racism over its portrayal of a boy described as "dark-skinned with a head of oily curls".

• Tubi aired a cheeky prank commercial during Super Bowl LVII on Sunday that many are still discussing. 
• The ad made viewers think the game was back, only to be interrupted by a switch to the Tubi app.
• Social media users are still cracking jokes and making serious points about reactions to the ad.

The Super Bowl has long been synonymous with multimillion-dollar advertising spends, and Tubi's investment this year seems to be paying off. 

Twitter and TikTok users are still talking about the Fox-owned streaming service's Super Bowl commercial days after the big game aired, after many say it successfully tricked them into thinking someone was controlling their TV. 

The commercial features two commentators speaking about the game, when the screen is suddenly interrupted by a channel switch to the Tubi app. Many viewers took to social media to share their reactions to the sneaky commercial, and haven't stopped talking about it since.

Viewers were left scrambling for their remotes and blaming each other for the abrupt change, and those moments were caught on camera for some while others joked about it afterwards.

"We were all yelling to change it back when we don't even have tubi," one TikToker commented.

"MY DAD WAS RAGING," another wrote.

Although most found the prank lighthearted and humorous, others got seriously upset about possibly missing seconds of the Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles game. In a now-deleted Reddit post, one user alleged she broke up with her boyfriend after the commercial caused him to throw a fit.

"My boyfriend thought I was the one changing the channel and began screaming at me violently, calling me things I don't even want to write down," the post read.

While the validity of the post remains unclear, it was screenshotted and shared by several others on social media who discussed violent and problematic reactions to the short ad. 

"The way that tubi commercial caused so many issues," one Twitter user wrote on Wednesday. "Like wym people were throwing drinks and hitting ppl over a commercial omg."

Tubi did not immediately respond to Insider's request to comment on the responses to the ad. 

RICHMOND, Va. (WRIC)– It’s the public’s turn to have its voice heard on some pressing subjects at the upcoming Richmond school board meeting. Significant discussions are on the agenda for the Monday, Feb. 6 meeting, for subjects such as the renaming of schools, changes to the school calendar and more.

John B. Cary Elementary School, Ginter Park Elementary School, Binford Middle School and George Wythe High School have been recommended for renaming amid controversy around their names. Three of the schools are named after men with ties to the confederacy while one is named after a former slave owner.

Also up for discussion is a continued push toward making the schools’ names relevant to school guidelines. Back in November, one school board member said the names needed to be changed because they set the tone for those schools.

In addition, the administration recommends schools start the 2023-24 school year on Monday, Aug. 21, and end the year between Friday, May 31 and Friday, June 7.

The administration is also recommending maintaining the current bell schedule but is working with high schools to determine ways to mitigate the concerns of high school students. Some students in a survey conducted by RPS said they were unsatisfied with the current bell schedule.

That meeting will begin at 6 p.m. Monday, Feb. 6.

A Chicago-based publishing house will offer free e-books focused on Black history after the College Board revised its Advanced Placement African American studies course earlier this month.

And Haymarket Books has Florida, specifically, in its sights.

The College Board’s revisions came after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) refused to allow the class in Florida high schools. In the revised course, the subjects of Black queer studies, intersectionality and activism, the reparations movement and Black scholars associated with critical race theory have been removed. “Black conservatism” was added as a potential research topic.

Now, Haymarket Books, a “radical publisher of politics, culture, current events,” said DeSantis and the “complicit College Board” have left it with no choice.

“The racist governor of Florida continues to escalate his attacks on the freedom to learn and teach history,” the publishing house said in a press release last week.

“We at Haymarket stand in solidarity with all those in Florida and across the country who are organizing to resist. We know that books can be dangerous to those in power, especially when they are in the hands of folks who are organizing to fight for liberation. That’s why we publish them. That’s why they’re trying to ban them,” the company added.

Haymarket Books will offer the following e-books for free to download: “From Black Lives Matter to Black Liberation” by Keeanga Yamahtta, which explores why the Black Lives Matter movement is necessary; “Black Lives Matter at School: An Uprising for Educational Justice,” edited by Jesse Hagopian and Denisha Jones, which details how the Black Lives Matter movement has challenged institutional racism; and “1919” by Eve L. Ewing, a collection of poems depicting the Chicago race riots of 1919.

“Black people have always figured out ways to teach our history in spaces beneath, beyond, and betwixt the machinations of people like Ron DeSantis,” Ewing said. “The only thing he ever got right in his life was understanding how insurgent our stories really are, how threatening to the status quo of a nation built on theft.”

The company is also looking to provide Florida residents with more “radical books” to distribute to young people in the state.

These books could include any Haymarket-published works, which range in subjects from abolition to Black politics to police and prisons to socialism and Marxism. 

“The struggle is long, but we are many,” the group said.

The College Board has been under heavy criticism for its revisions to the African American studies course, which it released on the first day of Black History Month.

Though David Coleman, the head of the College Board, told The New York Times that the changes were not made to bow to political pressure, DeSantis’s administration took credit for the move. 

“Thanks to @GovRonDeSantis’ principled stand for education over identity politics, the College Board will be revising the course for the entire nation,” DeSantis press secretary Bryan Griffin said on Twitter.

Florida’s Department of Education is now reviewing the revisions to ensure they follow state law, which restricts how subjects such as racism can be taught in schools and prohibits any instruction that could make someone feel “personal responsibility” for historic wrongdoings because of their race, sex or national origin.