This wasn’t the 1st time embattled Park Hill teacher used the N-word, students say
Park Hill High School teacher Stuart Sullinger sparked daylong student protests earlier this month after repeating the N-word when it was spoken by a Black student. Now, some students allege that it wasn’t the first time the white teacher used the slur.
In the latest incident, Sullinger, a math teacher and basketball coach, was placed on administrative leave after he repeated the N-word, leading to a heated argument with the student who first said the word. A video shared with The Star shows Sullinger standing in the doorway of a classroom, nose-to-nose with the student, who is repeatedly telling Sullinger not to use the slur.
Roughly 80 students held a sit-in in the school gym, calling for Sullinger to be fired. A Change.org petition for their cause has garnered more than 1,700 signatures.
Now a parent and three students have come forward, alleging that a similar incident happened in 2019.
Danielle Griddine said that during her freshman year she was talking to a friend in the hallway at the school in Kansas City, North. Her friend, she said, had just finished basketball practice.
“I had said to my friend, ‘Damn N***a, you sweaty,” Griddine said. “Mr. Sullinger comes rushing out to the group of people I was standing with by the locker room. And he said, ‘Who said N****r,’ knowing none of us used that word. And then when we told him not to say it he kept trying to use the excuse he heard someone say it.
“I said I had said, ‘N***a,’ not ‘er.’ He then proceeded to scream it five or more times in all of our faces, and most of us were of color.”
Both Griddine and Park Hill parent Bianca Fennix claimed they had told school administration about it, and were angry that Sullinger remained employed with the district. Fennix, who is Black, claimed she reported the incident to Principal Brad Kincheloe via email.
In her email dated Jan. 27, 2020, which she shared with The Star, Fennix said she heard Sullinger was “involved in an extremely inappropriate encounter that involved him using ‘the n word’ multiple times while engaging with a student last semester.”
“Although I am shocked and outraged that foul and racist language was used to communicate with a child, I believe it comes without saying that such inappropriate behavior and language has no place in the district, let alone from a teacher to a child during school hours. Such language is not only inappropriate, but it opens the door to hostile learning environments for students who were subjected to, witnessed or heard about Mr. Sullingers’ (sic) behavior.”
Sullinger did not answer The Star’s multiple requests for comment.
Park Hill district officials declined to provide the name of the employee they placed on leave earlier this month, although several students and parents have told The Star and said on social media that it was Sullinger. When asked about both the recent incident, as well as the allegations from 2019, a district spokeswoman said, “I cannot legally share details about an ongoing investigation into a personnel issue.”
“We really want to see Sullinger fired,” Park Hill junior Vanessa Grigsby said. “A lot of us said at the protest that we felt our safety was at risk. We also want to see a lot more training. It’s 2022 and we still have students being discriminated against. All of that discrimination and prejudice should have been left hundreds of years ago. We want an apology from the school for having to put up with Sullinger, after the complaints we made about him in the past.”
‘This should not be tolerated’
Grigsby, who is multiracial, said she had Sullinger as a teacher her freshman year and alleged that she witnessed the incident in the hallway in 2019. She claimed she heard Sullinger repeat the N-word several times in front of the group, most of them Black girls.
“That is why we were so upset when it happened again. That it even happened the first time,” she said. “It was reported and they didn’t handle it. We were all so upset. Like you need to handle it this time because we’ve seen this happen before.”
Fennix said that her daughter also had Sullinger as a teacher in the fall of 2019. Her daughter did not witness the alleged incident, but heard about it from classmates and came home and told Fennix about it.
Her daughter felt hurt.
“She just hated going to school every morning. The beginning of her day was facing this teacher every day. You can understand how disheartening that is as a parent,” Fennix said in an interview.
Griddine alleged that she and other students told Sullinger about how the incident hurt them. She said the students “tried pressing the principals about (the) situation. But then again nothing happened.”
Fennix claimed that in response to her complaint, she received a phone call from school administration, although there was no record of that available. She has remained frustrated at the district for keeping Sullinger employed.
“As a parent/guardian of a student at Park Hill High School I am both disgusted and disturbed by not only this incident but how the school district has in the past and now presently chosen to handle this inappropriate behavior,” she said in an email to The Star. “Our children deserve a safe, hospitable, nontoxic learning environment from … faculty and the message they have received loud and clear is ‘SO WHAT.’ No child should be subjected to this, and this should not be tolerated from our community.”
‘It’s racist’
Earlier this month, a video began circulating among students, showing Sullinger arguing with a student after he repeated the N-word.
Sophomore Said Mosis, who is Black, told The Star that he was the student on the video. He claimed he was in a different teacher’s class when Sullinger came in the class. As teachers were telling the students to get to their next class, Mosis said he felt someone push him and asked, “Why did that N***a push me?”
Sullinger, he said, “repeated what I said, and he said, ‘Why are you calling him a N***er?’ And I told him he couldn’t say that.”
A student started recording the tense exchange that followed.
“You said N*****, bro. You said N***** with the ‘er,’” Mosis says in the video, raising his voice and visibly upset.
“You don’t say that sh*t.”
“You called me that,” Sullinger responds, saying he repeated the word while questioning the student.
“You’re laughing right now,” the student says. Mosis said in an interview that Sullinger laughed during the exchange, and he felt Sullinger was taunting him.
The student later says, “Don’t put the f****** N-word in your f****** sentences.”
The teacher responds, “You put it in your sentence.”
The student says, “Yeah, because I can.”
“That’s illogical,” the teacher responds.
Other school employees are shown entering the shot and then escorting Mosis out of the classroom.
Mosis told The Star that was his first-ever exchange with Sullinger. In the video, he repeatedly asks the teacher for his name.
“It’s racist,” Mosis said. “Second of all, he kept on trying to justify that he said it. He kept trying to say he didn’t do nothing wrong. So him going back and forth with me, I could not tolerate that. It was in school. I had to make sure he doesn’t say it again.”
Noted experts on Black culture agree with Mosis, explaining why Black people can say the N-word while it’s offensive when white people use it.
Author Ta-Nehisi Coates, for example, has said it is normal in our culture for some groups to use certain words that others can’t, and yet some white people don’t think that applies to their use of the N-word.
“When you’re white in this country, you’re taught that everything belongs to you,” Coates has said. “You think you have a right to everything.”
Park Hill parents and students have said that while the student is far from calm in the video, the teacher should have known to try to deescalate the situation and not start “taunting” the student.
Park Hill school district officials have declined to answer questions about any discipline Mosis might have received. Mosis told The Star that he received a 10-day suspension and will meet with officials to determine if he can return to school.
As video of the incident circulated around school, Grigsby and other students said they knew they needed to protest.
Dozens of students left class and packed the gym for the day. Video of the protest shows students chanting “Black Lives Matter.”
“I went in and everybody in there was upset and very emotional and pretty enraged,” Grigsby said. “But overall it was super peaceful. Nobody hurt anyone. Nobody said any harmful words. We all just got along. I even made a few new friends there bonding over what we knew.”
She said that students want to see Sullinger fired and would like for district officials to issue an apology. She also believes staff should be given more sensitivity training on racial and cultural issues.
After the protest, Principal Kincheloe said in a letter to families that, “while most of our students were in class, we had several dozen students peacefully protesting in our gym who were upset about the incident I shared with you earlier this week. They shared how they felt about what happened. Some were hurt, some were angry, and many wanted answers about what will happen to the employee and the student involved in the incident.
“While I cannot legally share about an employee’s personnel matter or a student’s discipline, I am allowed to share about the process for addressing these things,” he wrote. “During announcements tomorrow morning, I will share with the students that the law requires us to provide due process when we learn that someone might have violated our policies, and this can take some time.
“This means that if an employee violates our policies, we must thoroughly investigate and provide opportunities for the employee to be heard. Sometimes, this can even take several weeks. This also means that if a student violates our policies, we must thoroughly investigate and provide opportunities for the student to be heard.”
Kincheloe wrote that district officials will “continue to work with the students and listen to their concerns while we are investigating this incident.”
Pattern of racist incidents
Several Kansas City area educators have been disciplined for using racist language in recent months.
In July, Harrisonville school officials fired a high school science teacher for making racist comments in a classroom. In September, a Raytown High School teacher used the N-word in front of students, leading to an investigation. The Lee’s Summit school board last summer agreed to reinstate a teacher who repeated the N-word while filing a disciplinary report about a student who used the slur in the school cafeteria.
This is at least the second racially charged incident in Park Hill this school year. Students at Park Hill South High School circulated a “Start slavery again” petition in September.
In response, the district suspended three students for 180 days and expelled another. The three were allowed to continue classes online. But the parents of the four punished students believed the school district’s response was too severe and filed a federal lawsuit against the district.
Earlier this month, a federal judge ruled against the students who sought to overturn their punishment.
Meanwhile, districts throughout Kansas City have been under fire this school year from predominantly white, conservative parents who are regularly protesting diversity and equity initiatives.
The Star’s Aaron Torres and Bill Lukitsch contributed to this story.
This story was originally published February 23, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
