Education Week - June 17, 2020 - 8

After an unarmed black man died in the custody
of Minneapolis police, black education leaders spoke out
about the broader racism they saw in schools.
The public wasn't always ready to listen.
By Corey Mitchell
With school leaders across the country denouncing racism, Gale Satchel, a black superintendent in
a majority white Alabama school district, saw an
opportunity to talk about racism in education.
At a protest rally, she told the crowd about the
students who casually used racial slurs around
her son. She said that in a Facebook post, an
angry parent compared her husband, a tall black
man and high school principal in the district, to
a gorilla. That colleagues confront her about
personnel decisions, implying that she hires too
many black people in a district where more than
80 percent of the students are white.
But Satchel learned the hard way that not everybody in America is ready for the race conversation.
Satchel's speech at the rally against racism and
police brutality has sparked a sharp debate about
whether racism even exists in the Colbert County
schools, a largely rural district in the northwest
corner of the state. One school board member
told the Times Daily, a newspaper in nearby Florence, Ala., that he was disappointed with the tone
of Satchel's speech and that it "split us apart."
Less than 5 percent of the nation's 14,000
superintendents are black. But many of those
superintendents and their districts are taking a
prominent role in the push to denounce racism
in schools in the wake of the death of George
Floyd, a black man who died in the custody of
police in Minneapolis-sometimes at a high personal cost and after anguish and soul-searching.
Whether the public and other school system
leaders are ready to engage with them in that
conversation remains an open question.
"The national conversation around racism is
challenging," said Kevin Hampton, a longtime
teacher and now the executive director of communications in the Ferguson-Florissant, Mo.,
school district.
After Michael Brown, a black teenager, was
shot dead by a white police officer near Ferguson
in August 2014, the problem with police violence
in the United States captured national and global
attention. He had just graduated from the nearby
Normandy school system less than a week before.
Brown's death sparked weeks of protests in
Ferguson. But six years later as millions march
around the country in protest to Floyd's death,
racism remains a hard word for some educators
to hear and say.
For some people, " 'We want equity' is easier
to say than 'We stand against racism,' " said
Hampton, who is white.

Signs hanging on a fence
near the White House
speak to the debates
taking place across the
country this month over
the treatment of people
of color, following the
death of George Floyd
in Minneapolis.

'Moral Obligation'
In the wake of George Floyd's May 25 death during an arrest over a counterfeit $20 bill, the calls for
change came swiftly from black educators around
the nation. In California, state Superintendent
Tony Thurmond, a black man, announced plans on
June 1 to lead a statewide effort to address racism
in schools. A week later on June 8, in Akron, Ohio,
where the superintendent is black, the city school
board declared racism a public health crisis that
"adversely impacts our students, our families, and
our community."
However, others came to take a stand more
cautiously.
8 | EDUCATION WEEK | June 17, 2020 | www.edweek.org

In a speech where he struggled to hold back tears,
Superintendent Donald Fennoy II of the Palm Beach
County, Fla., schools-the nation's 10th largest district-told his school board that he, as a black man,
operates in "this world as a scared human being"
despite his position and that he often fears for the
life of his 11-year-old son because of racism.
"I hope we don't take this as another dead black
man in America and move on with our lives," Fennoy said in an interview with Education Week.
Even with a supportive school board that expressed concerns about addressing racism in
schools, Fennoy was still reluctant to discuss how
it shapes his life. His chief of staff and communications director urged him to forgo prepared remarks
and speak from the heart. In the end, he listened.
"We're in the middle of a pandemic," Fennoy said.
"Many of us are experiencing personal loss of life in
the pandemic. We've got a looming budget crisis,
there's so much going on and no one has been able
to decompress, at all. So I think the normal filters
that a person like me would normally have were just
worn down."
But a conversation with his son in the moments

before the meeting convinced him.
"What I heard him say is, people in power
shouldn't abuse their power and people in power
should use their powers for good and positive
change," Fennoy said.
"Well, who I am I? I am a powerful person in the
grand scheme of things, in terms of where I sit in this
world, in terms of this job. I have a moral obligation
to do something. That's what it boils down to. And if
I choose not to, then shame on me."

Jobs on the Line
In stark contrast, a few school leaders have denounced the protests in provocative terms, or even
suggested that Floyd was partly to blame for his
death-and have lost their jobs as a result.
The Pennsylvania Coalition of Public Charter
Schools' board fired its executive director, Ana
Meyers, who is white, after she posted on Facebook that "All Lives Matter" and that the protests
inspired by Floyd's death left her disgusted. Meyers, the wife of a retired state police trooper, later
apologized for her remarks, calling them "insensi-

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Education Week - June 17, 2020

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