In Lee’s Summit, saying n-word is OK sometimes. Coach should not have kept his job
Behind closed doors, after a five-hour meeting, the Lee’s Summit school board voted not to fire a physical education teacher and coach who’d used the n-word in front of two Black middle school students.
Only the two Black school board members voted to terminate Joe Oswald. The other five board members, who are white, decided he should keep the job he’s had for 27 years, despite a recommendation from Superintendent David Buck that he be fired.
Voting against Buck’s recommendation, the board said, “should not be interpreted as an admonishment,” of him. But it is.
Mr. Superintendent, the board doesn’t intend to be guided by the experience and leadership skills they hired you for a year ago, when a committee, including current and former board members, picked you from among 24 candidates. They chose you, they said, “for having skills and perspective needed to help the district and divided community heal.”
That was until Buck, who is white, took a zero tolerance stance on racist language and advocated for the Black students the racial slur offended, even though it wasn’t directed at them.
Just the same, what the board’s vote says to those students is: You being hurt by the word doesn’t matter. Not as much, apparently, as Oswald’s peers rallying in support of him as a good teacher and beloved coach. There’s no indication that Oswald is not good at his job or loved by players. Neither of those things were at issue. This was: Can a teacher use the n-word in front of students under any circumstances and keep his job?
Lee’s Summit School Board says yes.
School district has troubling history with race
The board’s vote came nearly three weeks after a nine-hour hearing during which Oswald admitted that he said the n-word. He was reading from a discipline slip he wrote up on a 13-year-old Black student he’d heard direct the word toward another student during lunch at Pleasant Lea Middle School.
Oswald testified that when he used the word he thought he was doing what he was supposed to do, following an unwritten rule that he and others had interpreted to mean that teachers had to repeat vile language back to students to confirm that they had said whatever they were accused of saying.
In the end, that saved his job, though Buck argued during the hearing that Oswald should be fired for conduct that “hurt kids.” Oswald’s attorney argued “the staff has not been trained to not say racial slurs.” They haven’t?
Lee’s Summit has a troubling history with race. Until last year, when the predominantly white community elected Megan Marshall, Lee’s Summit had never had a Black school board member. Earlier this year, Roderick Sparks, who is Black, joined her on the board.
Last June Lee’s Summit students and parents rallied against cultural bias and racism after students shared stories of facing racism, sexism, homophobia and xenophobia.
In 2019, the safety of Lee’s Summit’s first Black superintendent, Dennis Carpenter, was threatened and he left his job abruptly after the board and the community fought his efforts to bring in equity trainers. The board eventually did hire equity consultants, and members say teachers have been trained. Yet that didn’t keep a teacher from saying the n-word or help him understand it’s hurtful for a Black child to hear that word repeated back to her by her white teacher.
Lee’s Summit either needs more training, new trainers or both. The district definitely needs to abandon its rule on writing disciplinary slips and put zero tolerance for racist language in writing. Maybe even hang it on a wall in every school so if there ever is a next time, there will be no excuse.
