Students: ‘Picking cotton’ sign not the only racial problem in Olathe school district
Students on Thursday called on the Olathe school district, “in a moment of crisis,” to make schools and curriculum more inclusive, following a student’s racist homecoming proposal that went viral.
The Olathe school board met for the first time since two white students posed with a racist homecoming sign, sparking widespread outrage. Many parents and students have questioned the district’s handling of the incident, including the alleged punishment of a Black student who said he was there when it happened.
And they say it’s time to combat the deeper racial issues in Olathe schools.
“As a young Black man, I am deserving of representation in my classrooms, and I should be able to feel comfortable when I go to school,” Olathe East High School senior Jylon Hollinshed told the school board. “What makes us so undeserving of learning about our history or reading literature that is a reflection of our own experiences? Especially when we have had to sit through year after year of in-depth analysis of every white figure in America.”
Last month, a photo circulated of a white male Olathe South High School student asking a white female St. James Academy student to homecoming using a sign that read: “If I was Black I would be picking cotton but I’m white so I’m picking you for HOCO.”
Officials with both the Olathe school district and the parochial school in Lenexa have said they were investigating and determining appropriate disciplinary action. But neither school has released details, citing student privacy concerns.
The Star is not naming the students involved because they are all minors.
An Olathe South sophomore, who is Black, told The Star that he was there during the incident. He and his friend, the white boy in the photo, both agreed to make a homecoming proposal sign for the girl shown in the photo, he said.
He said, in a message to The Star, that they had seen the same “picking cotton” sign made by students in other districts and posted online. The Black student claimed that after the sign was made, he warned his white friend, that it was “f***** up, don’t do it, and that you are going to get canceled.”
“To which his response was, ‘I’ll be fine.’”
He said they presented the sign to the girl and said she used a marker to check “yes” to the proposal on the sign, and he took a photo of it. All three of them posted the photo on Snapchat, he said, which was then shared widely.
The white boy, he said, “transferred to online (school) before he could get a punishment and then they told him he can’t transfer back even if he wanted to for the rest of the year.”
The Black student said school officials told him he must transfer to the district’s virtual academy or to an alternative school program for the semester, and he has since moved to online school.
The Star was unable to reach the other students and parents involved on Thursday.
The girl’s mom, Rhonda Windholz, has faced national backlash after she gave an interview to KSHB 41, in which she claimed that the Black student carried the majority of the blame for the incident, and that her daughter was unaware of the situation until after the photo was taken.
And many have shown outrage that the Black student was apparently forced to transfer to virtual school. On Thursday, his friend, Olathe student David Brox, told The Star, “I think that the district should reconsider their decisions and in the future be more culturally sensitive toward people of color in the district.”
Superintendent Brent Yeager addressed the incident on Thursday, as well as rumors circulating about how the district is responding.
“Let me be very clear that the behavior exhibited in this situation is unacceptable and does not reflect our core value of inclusivity,” he said. “In the days following the post, there has been a lot of conversation, and frankly, blatant and unfounded misinformation circulating online about how the incident is being handled.
“We will not tolerate racial discrimination in our school district. With the current incident, we are working closely with all families involved and are honoring their wishes on how they would like the situation to be handled to best meet the safety and educational needs of their children.”
School officials have not confirmed any information provided to The Star regarding disciplinary action.
In a letter sent to Olathe South families, Principal Dale Longenecker said, “We are making sure we provide educational opportunities for ALL students involved that meet their needs during this challenging time. We are not singling out one student and we are not unfairly handling one situation over another.”
“This has been a challenging situation that is only made worse by misinformation online. While these events happened off campus and have complicated the situation, it has also spurred our students, staff and community to double down on our ongoing work with diversity, equity and inclusion. There is much to do but we are committed to the ongoing work and we need your help.”
Yeager said Thursday that, “at the end of the day, the safety and education of our students is the most important priority we have as a district.”
“It is this commitment that has led our work in addressing this situation with all families involved. What you are reading online is not a reflection of who we are as a school system, our values, our actions or how we handle tough situations.”
Many parents and students have argued that the district should be more transparent about what took place.
“The outreach that I received is like, wow, they really don’t care about us,” said AJ Jones, senior at Olathe East who said she is vice president of the school’s Black Student Union. She argued that the district should have reached out to every student after the social media post began circulating online.
“We put everything into school,” she said. “We go every day with smiles on our faces. We participate in class. We help younger children. And we aren’t given the same respect back. That’s the issue.”
Brox called it a “moment of crisis” in the Olathe school district and across the Kansas City metro, where schools have seen several racist incidents in recent weeks.
“As a community, our pleas are for the district to be more than culturally sensitive. … With numerous instances surfacing now, I’ve simply been let down by the Olathe school district’s conduct with handling issues,” he said.
Brox said he has long been treated differently in school due to his race, “from the way I was punished, to the way certain things were done, and to the way that certain staff members interacted with me solely on the basis of skin color, I have felt the imbalance and it has become quite discouraging.”
Officials have said that the district has come a long way in its diversity, equity and inclusion work, and that it must continue. Its diversity and engagement department works to provide diversity training and resources across the district, ensure district policies and practices are equitable, recruit and hire diverse candidates, and more.
Several students of color said the district must do better. They advocated for the district to ramp up its diversity and equity initiatives; to improve cultural competencies among staff and students; to provide school resource officers with cultural awareness training; and to expand curriculum so that the history and experiences of people of color are thoroughly taught.
“It’s come to a point in the Olathe district where I feel like we’re doing quote-unquote diversity lessons. Teachers are quote-unquote being trained. But we haven’t seen any data, haven’t seen any statistics. I feel like things aren’t going to change until we can actually see the progress ourselves,” Jones said.
School board member Brad Boyd on Thursday said, “I think it’s important, in this particular case, when we hear from our students of color that we first listen to them, that we validate them, that we believe their feelings because that’s their perspective and their perspective is their reality.”
“It’s important for us as a district to lean into them, to care for them and to let them know that they aren’t alone, and we are working every single day to address some of the concerns that they brought up,” he said.
Stacey Knoell, executive director of the Kansas African American Affairs Commission, on Thursday also advocated for the district to ramp up its diversity initiatives and hiring efforts.
“This is Exhibit A for why the Olathe school system needs to make diversity, equity and inclusion a priority,” she said of the racist homecoming sign. “I do believe that all children would benefit greatly from learning about a variety of peoples and cultures. Perhaps such an appreciation would have prevented the unfortunate choice of a homecoming proposal.”
“Schools are places where children are taught to know things. And an education that explores and celebrates diversity makes it clear that there’s more to the Black experience than ‘picking cotton.’”
This story was originally published October 7, 2021 at 10:34 PM.
