Parents, students and slunae/alumni swelled attendance at the Highland school-board meeting July 7 to share personal experiences of what it has been like to be a person of color in a white-majority school district. They asked the school board for changes in order to ensure greater racial equity and a more inclusive and supportive school environment.
HHS graduate Celia Gottlieb (Class of 2017), now a student at Middlebury College, was home during the Covid 19 crisis, sheltering in place, when a former classmate of hers, Dean Riley (Class of 2016), posted a letter to the school district, “condemning them for not coming out with a statement that supported Black Lives Matter after the murder of George Floyd,” a black man who died while in police custody in Minneapolis this May. “He addressed the letter to the superintendent and received no response. It bothered me that our school was not reaching out and saying, Here’s how we are supporting our students.”
Gottlieb, Dean and classmate Alicia Wilk put together a questionnaire, similar to ones that they’d seen being used in other school districts, asking students to recount what their experiences had been like in the Highland district based on their color, gender and sexual identity. “We had it out on social media for two weeks, and had more than 100 responses,” said Gottlieb. “It was overwhelming. It was a fully grass-roots effort that was really energized by a black female high school student who helped to organize the protest [against police brutality] in Highland and reached out to her classmates to respond to our questionnaire.”
Free speech, hate speech
Many of the students chose to remain anonymous. Here is what some of them who chose to speak on the record said:
Kayla Fennell, soon to be a senior, said that her experience has been “rough dealing with racial issues in Highland High School. Throughout the halls I would be called names like tar, porch monkey, slave and many more. Not only that,” she added, “but having my hair pulled by others because it’s too rough or slavelike, or not like everyone else’s. Being called a nigger because of my skin color. It’s disgusting.” Too often the response she has heard is that it has to do with “freedom of speech” when kids use the N-word. “There’s a difference between freedom of speech and hate speech,” she said.
“Kids in the Middle School were asking black students if they were jigaboos,” said Najira Hanson from Highland. “I was told not to wear black nail polish because I’m already black and dark. This kid was saying ‘nigga’ in class and I wanted to hurt him, but instead I went to the principal, who said it wasn’t a big deal because the kid only said it once.” Hanson said she became so distraught in Middle School that she came home crying, asking to go to a school with more black students. Her suggestion now is, “Listen to what we’re saying. Tell the truth about black history. I shouldn’t have to learn more about black history on TikTok than in school.”
Aliyah Thomas, a 2020 Highland graduate, said that she has been “compared to a poodle because of my hair and asked if it was real or a wig by teachers and students. My friends and I were labeled as monkeys by a student. I’ve heard students (who are not black) use the N-word, and teachers did nothing about it but laugh.”
SheRee Mills (Class of 2018) has a distinct memory of being uncomfortable when “multiple kids would be wearing the Confederate flag on hats, shirts, flying the flags proudly on their vehicles on Highland School District property, and not a word being said to them. They allowed it every day for four years, which leads me to believe that it’s something our district stands for. There was more concern over crop-tops than the values that flag holds.”
Minorities are 31 percent
Throughout the testimonials there are common threads of racial slurs being thrown casually and without disciplinary measures following. Not just the wearing of the Confederate flag on clothing, hats and jackets as well as cars, but also a dearth of information on black and Latinx history and heritage, and the absence of people of color in such roles as educators, administrators and coaches.
Tiffany Ward, a mother of children in the district, offered to join a committee. Her sister, who helps to consult colleges on how to create greater curriculum diversity and racial equity in their classrooms and campus culture, said that she’d be willing to help counsel the school district. “As of 2018/2019, 31 percent of your student population is either black, Latinx or Asian American, and yet we do not teach any history that is relevant to them. All we teach is that black people were slaves, when they were queens and kings and doctors and lawyers and so much more.”
Though students, alumni, parents and teachers had filled the meeting space at the board meeting, they were not allowed to speak until nearly two hours into the meeting. Once they did speak, their message was unanimous:
Recommendations, reactions
More needs to be done, starting with hiring of people of color, the creation of a racial equity committee, a dress code that bans Confederate flags and other symbols of white supremacy, diversity training, a statement that supports the BLM movement, and the inclusion of a greater breadth of black, indigenous and Latinx history and culture in the school’s curriculum. Fourteen specific recommendations were made, several of which could be implemented immediately.
School-board president Alan Barone thanked everyone for coming out and peaking and being “yourselves.” He said that the board had “to take some time to digest all of this, but we will come back and consider some of the recommendations you’ve proposed here.”
Board member Michael Bakatsias concurred on the need to “digest the information” and for the board to discuss the recommendations. He asked for help from the people in attendance to suggest people of color for jobs as educators or administrators in the school district.
School trustee Camille Adoma took off her mask and paused for a moment before speaking. “I have two sons in this district,” she said. “And I did not move here from the South so that my children would experience this racism. It hurts my heart to hear what some of these children have had to go through. Excuse me if I’m a little emotional, but we do not need to wait until August. We need to set a date and a time and address this now. Enough is enough.”
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