Park Hill punished boys for slavery petition because it upset school and was racist
The online petition to bring back slavery, started and promoted by four Park Hill South High School students, caused more disruption in school than Superintendent Jeanette Cowherd said she had ever experienced in her 40 years in public education.
That is according to a motion filed Monday in federal court by the Park Hill School District, opposing a lawsuit filed by the parents of the petition-writing students because they think expulsion and suspension are punishments too severe for their 14 and 15-year-old sons’ racist conduct.
If Cowherd’s statement is no exaggeration, then surely students responsible for that great an interference with the daily education process should be dealt with in some significant way.
The parents of the four ninth grade football players, in their lawsuit, claim the petition was all a harmless joke — “friendly banter” — and their kids should be off the hook and back in school. They see punishing the teens as violating their right to free speech.
Of course district leaders disagree. Their response says that “many federal courts have upheld the discipline of public school students for racially divisive speech,” when it substantially disrupts school. That slavery petition was neither funny nor harmless, and “caused massive disruption” to the entire district.
The district’s motion says it “stirred up deep and disruptive racial tensions in precisely the same way they would be stirred up if a student walked down the halls of Park Hill South waving a Confederate flag.” Obviously, anyone doing that should be stiffly disciplined. And any school district failing to do so would deserve the major backlash that I expect surely would come from parents and community members.
One day after the petition was drafted on Change.org and circulated on social media, a teacher sent an email to Park Hill South Principal Kerrie Herren, asking for help because “her class was in an uproar and that several girls in her class were crying or scared.” After learning about the petition, they did not feel safe. That is not OK. School is supposed to be a safe space for all children.
Substitute teachers declined assignments at school
News of the petition was reported nationally. Substitute teachers refused to accept assignments to Park Hill South. The district motion implies that they did not want to teach, even temporarily, at a school in the midst of racial upheaval.
The district also says in its response that teachers, principals and counselors spent hundreds of hours talking with students about the petition and how it made them feel.
None of this sounds as though the “whole thing has been blown out of proportion,” which is what the parents’ attorney, Arthur Benson, said about it. Letting the boys back in school, the district claims, would reignite disruption that’s started to die down.
Both the parent suit and the district document say the petition idea began on a school bus en route to a football game.
After a Black player was talking about not being able to get a job, and laughed at the suggestion that his job prospects would definitely improve if the country would “start slavery again,” a different student drafted the petition.
The biracial student who wrote the petition later posted it. And according to what other students told school officials, he refused to delete it even after some of his teammates asked him to.
Instead, he “just laughed it off and acted like it wasn’t a big deal,” one teammate told school officials. “We had warned him and told him to delete it and he didn’t care.” And if this is what happened then parents saying he didn’t know it was offensive and thought it funny can’t be true.
The boys were disciplined after a district hearing. The Park Hill school board, following rules prohibiting harassment, expelled the student who wrote the petition and suspended — for 180 days — three other boys who commented on it. “I love slavery,” “I hate blacks,” and “I want a slave,” were their comments.
The four boys got put out of school, but the district arranged for them to continue classwork through an accredited online public school. So the parent suit is not about their boys missing their education.
It’s natural for parents to be protective. But they’re not only suing the district for stiffly punishing their kids. They’re also blaming school leaders for not teaching students that racist language and behavior are no jokes. That should also be taught at home, of course.
Whether or not the punishments stand, it should not save the district from having to teach that racism won’t be tolerated. That’s not disruption — it’s education.
