Cheerleading coach accused of saying ‘white power’ on Snapchat loses job, school says

A Massachusetts high school will not invite its cheerleading coach back this year after a Snapchat video clip that allegedly showed her saying ‘white power’ made the rounds on Facebook.

“I’m like, ‘Is this serious right here?’ Unfortunately, she did it on social media,” Jarod Dennis, a youth football coach in town who made the clip public, told NECN in Newton, Massachusetts.

Stephanie Cuevas is the cheerleading coach at Lynn English High School and a board member of the youth football league where Dennis coached, NECN reported.

“There’s interracial kids, there’s Asian kids, there’s black kids on the team,” Dennis told the TV station.

Lynn Public Schools officials launched an investigation into the video after it surfaced, according to the Boston Globe.

Superintendent Patrick Tutwiler watched the video after parents and residents contacted school officials, The Daily Item newspaper in Lynn, Massachusetts, reported.

The brief clip, according to local media, reportedly showed Cuevas saying “white power” while lifting her fist, then laughing.

“All coaches in the Lynn Public Schools system are only employed during the season for which they receive an agreement, so once the season is over they’re no longer employed,” Tutwiler told The Daily Item.

“I’ve received a lot of questions around whether or not she is going to be fired and I could only fire her if it was during the fall season, but we have concluded she will not be extended an agreement to coach with us this fall.”

NBC 10 in Boston reported that Cuevas wrote an apology, now deleted, on Facebook.

“If the contents of the video offended anyone, I offer my apologies,” she wrote, according to the NBC station.

“The fact is I was making fun of myself in the video because that’s my personality! And for the record, I’m white power, black power, Mexican power and human race power period.”

Tutwiler told The Daily Item that he doesn’t know Cuevas but has heard that students like her and that the decision to not hire her back is “not a comment on her character.”

“The sad part is there is a lot of press on Lynn Public Schools right now and it’s all around an issue that I think we managed really well, given our core values,” he told The Daily Item. “But the media stories aren’t giving that impression.”

In an email to the Boston Globe, Tutwiler called Lynn’s public schools a “wonderfully diverse community with a longstanding tradition of inclusivity and deep respect for the differences among the students and families we serve.

“Any comments or behaviors that depart from this tradition are in fact an assault on our core values. We are taking this matter seriously.”

Tanisha Sullivan, president of the Boston branch of the NAACP, said the district should have “deep conversations” about race, she told NBC 10.

“What do we do when young people who she’s working with decide to follow her lead and put up their fist and start saying white power?” she told the NBC station.

Dennis told The Daily Item that, given her position, Cuevas — who he does not believe is racist, he said — did a stupid thing.

“There is a lot of talk out there about this being a teachable moment and I think the message I want to make clear to my students is about being responsible with social media because there can be grave consequences when you aren’t,” Tutwiler told the newspaper..