Park Hill appeals to expert after racist student petition

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The Park Hill School District will hire an expert to help create an action plan to tackle racism, after students circulated a petition calling for a return to slavery, officials said.

In a video message Monday, Superintendent Jeanette Cowherd said that after years of working to improve culturally relevant education, access and inclusion, the recent incident made it clear that we need to accelerate our efforts.

Students at Park Hill South High School circulated the racist petition online earlier this month. District officials shared few details about the petition, calling it a disciplinary incident. It is still unclear how many students were involved or the details of what happened.

Last week, several parents and community members spoke at the Park Hill School Board meeting, calling on officials to take action and protect their children. Several families of color have expressed concern that their children may be in danger at school.

After the public comment portion ended, some members of the crowd continued to voice their demands, shouting at the school board members as they attempted to run the rest of the meeting, arguing that such an incident requires urgent attention.

In the Monday video message, Cowherd said the districts’ immediate response was to identify the students involved in this matter and to follow our board policies and state statutes in discipline for this incident. . We also provide counselors to support and care for students who have been injured by this.

She continued: In the future, we have two options. We can respond or we can respond. We choose to respond, to produce a long-term solution that best meets the needs of our students, staff, families and community.

Cowherd said the district was listening to the community, to fully understand their experiences, to better understand the problem and to set aside our own assumptions.

Spokeswoman Nicole Kirby said officials were interviewing local experts and would hire someone to advise the district. She said the information gathered from the community and experts will help the district develop an action plan for Park Hill.

We will face this challenge ahead of us and we appreciate the support of our community as we work to make our schools safe and welcoming for every member of our family in the Park Hill District, said Cowherd.

It was just one of several racist incidents that plagued Kansas City-area schools in recent months.

Last year, Kerrie Herren, manager of Park Hill South, asked members of the volleyball team to remove the warm-up t-shirts that said Together We Stand Up. The shirts were a symbol of racial equity and inclusion. Herren later apologized.

After the racist petition aired this month, Herren said in a statement to students: We are outraged, hurt and saddened that this has happened.

In Johnson County over the weekend, a photo circulated of a white student at Olathe South High School asking a white St. James Academy student to return home using a racist sign, triggering the indignation. The sign said: If I was black I would choose cotton, but I am white so I choose you for HOCO.

Officials from both schools said they were investigating.

In July, the Lees Summit School Board reinstated a teacher and coach, going against the superintendents’ recommendation to fire him. When filing a disciplinary report, the teacher repeated a racial insult to a student, which he wrote for using the insult.

Around the same time, a science teacher at Harrisonville High School was fired by the school board after being accused of making several inappropriate and racist comments.

Last spring, the Olathe school board unanimously agreed to fire Olathe North high school baseball head coach Pete Flood after he allegedly used a racial slur against a black player.

The latest acts of racism have come as schools face debates over how to teach students about slavery and racism in American history. Some parents have scrutinized the academic concept known as Critical Race Theory, even though it is not taught in Kansas and Missouri K-12 schools.

Critical Race Theory, which examines the role of American institutions in perpetuating racial inequalities, has become a catch-all term for school teachings on race, diversity, and equity and the target of some parents and politicians. conservatives who say the concept itself perpetuates racism and division. .

At school board meetings in the Kansas City subway this summer, a minority of parents fought against all diversity and equity initiatives.

Others have said that recent incidents in schools underscore the need for precise, nuanced and in-depth teaching on the history of race and institutional racism.

With another racism scandal in a school in the area every week, it is quite clear that instead of removing race from education and marginalizing the history of everyone in our area, we must de critically empowering our students to fight and call racism, Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas wrote on Twitter.

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Sarah Ritter covers K-12 education for The Kansas City Star. Formerly a reporter for the Quad-City Times, Sarah is a graduate of Augustana College.

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