Did Lee’s Summit teacher defend Derek Chauvin, or only lay out facts of Floyd case?

Witnesses to George Floyd’s murder under the knee of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin testified to their trauma at having seen such a sight. As a jury just confirmed, we all saw Chauvin kill Floyd as he called for breath and his mother. Yet students at Lee’s Summit North High School have complained that a history teacher there told them that’s not what they saw at all.

According to school staff, upset students complained to school leaders that teacher Tavish Whiting told his students that former police officer Chauvin did not asphyxiate Floyd last May. According to the student complaints, Whiting called Floyd a criminal whose death was the result of a drug overdose.

Katy Bergen, district spokeswoman, told The Star Editorial Board that’s not what the teacher said. The discussion included the standpoints of both the prosecution and the defense, she said, and confirmed that “a classroom discussion led by a teacher about the Derek Chauvin trial had made students uncomfortable.”

The district needs to explain exactly what the teacher said, and what the school did to answer the concerns of students.

If the teacher did nothing more than report the views of those on both sides of the case, that’s one thing.

But if he in any way defended Chauvin’s actions, that would be disgraceful. For a teacher to tell students that what they saw wasn’t what they saw would be offensive and disrespectful. How could students ever trust anything this teacher said after that?

(There is a simple way to prove whether kneeling on someone’s neck for nine minutes and 29 seconds is fatal, no matter the drug history of the victim. But we don’t recommend this experiment, because it’s reliably lethal.)

What is the teacher’s view of what happened, and of what he was trying to accomplish? We don’t know, because he declined to talk with us about it. “I won’t talk about that,” is all he had to say when we reached him by phone this week.

With the district unwilling to say more, it’s no surprise that rumors are filling the void. The story that Whiting’s lesson also included a reenactment of Floyd’s death was not substantiated by an investigation, Bergen said.

The Lee’s Summit School District, like other Kansas City-area suburban districts with a growing and diverse student population, has in theory made equitable learning opportunities a priority.

If that’s the case, the district will provide the public with a full accounting of what Whiting told his students.

If he’s done nothing worse than spell out what was presented in court, well, that’s what an education is all about.

If he did defend Chauvin, however, then the district owes students and parents an apology — and an explanation as to why he’s still employed as an educator of young people.

And either way, students need to be able to talk to school officials about what happened in class without fear of retribution.