{"id":6485,"date":"2024-12-03T08:00:30","date_gmt":"2024-12-03T08:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/africanamericanvoice.net\/?p=6485"},"modified":"2024-12-09T08:05:44","modified_gmt":"2024-12-09T08:05:44","slug":"black-parents-tell-santa-barbara-school-district-years-of-bullying-of-black-students-must-stop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/africanamericanvoice.net\/?p=6485","title":{"rendered":"Black Parents Tell Santa Barbara School District: Years of Bullying of Black Students Must Stop"},"content":{"rendered":"

By<\/span>Teresa Moore<\/a><\/p>\n

This is the first in a three-part series about anti-Black bullying in Santa Barbara schools.\u00a0Read Pt. 2 here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. \u2013 Sometimes Black History Month can be the cruelest month.<\/p>\n

During the same week in February 2022, at two different Santa Barbara Unified School District junior high schools, two 12-year-old Black boys were victims in painful episodes of racist bullying.<\/p>\n

SBUSD is being sued by the victims\u2019 mothers, who accuse school officials of not doing more to protect their kids in a city where African Americans have long been an extreme minority.<\/p>\n

This is a story studded with cruel ironies.<\/p>\n

In June 2020, in response to the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement, SBUSD issued a \u201cResolution in Support of Black Santa Barbara Youth<\/a>,\u201d stating, \u201cWe do not tolerate hate or racism and must respond swiftly and decisively when we encounter intolerance, inequity, and bias on our campuses.\u201d<\/p>\n

Less than two years later, a Black Santa Barbara Junior High student was assaulted by Latino classmates mimicking the lethal police attack on George Floyd, their knees pressed against the victim\u2019s neck. Within days, a Black La Colina Junior High student was bullied by a white student who made a TikTok video comparing photos of him and other Black students to monkeys and apes. The video, accompanied by an offensive song, was festooned with the N-word.<\/p>\n

In their initial court filing, mothers Leeandra Shalhoob and Katherine McCullough argued the attacks were the culmination of a pattern of racist bullying throughout their sons\u2019 years in Santa Barbara public schools. Shalhoob said that despite the district\u2019s proclamations, school officials allegedly acknowledged, \u201cWe don\u2019t know how to deal with this.\u201d<\/p>\n

Blacks make up less than 1% of SBUSD\u2019s student body, which is majority Latino (61%) followed by white students (31%). Asian American and Pacific Islander, Native American and students of two or more races account for the remainder.<\/p>\n

Shalhoob and McCullough initially filed suit against the district in August 2022 seeking reform of SBUSD\u2019s practices and compensation for the toll on their sons. Mediation efforts collapsed in December 2022. In February of this year, they filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court against SBUSD. The filing requested unspecified damages and a jury trial. The case is still pending.<\/p>\n

The mothers allege that despite the schools\u2019 awareness of racist bullying, teachers and administrators failed to intervene, protect their children, adequately inform the parents or provide prompt and effective support for their sons.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s difficult to put a dollar amount on wanting someone to do something right,\u201d said Shalhoob. \u201cI had to learn that often change comes from someone feeling like they had to pay for what they did wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n

She continued, \u201cBut more than anything, I just don\u2019t want anyone at Santa Barbara Unified School District ever again to be able to say, \u2018I didn\u2019t know what to do.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Not long after the attacks, McCullough said that Gateway Educational Services, a Black women-led nonprofit learning center, and Healing Justice Santa Barbara, a Black women-led nonprofit, organized parents and children that spring to speak out at school board meetings about unchecked anti-Black racism in the SBUSD.<\/p>\n

McCullough said, \u201cThere was a common outrage at the lack of transparency.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to complaints from other parents at the school board meetings, students talked about how regularly they were called racist names by their classmates, how they felt seeing racist slurs written on surfaces in the locker rooms, how they were mocked for their appearances and compared to animals.<\/p>\n

In response to the public outcry, school board president Wendy Sims-Moten, pushed the district to independently audit the schools\u2019 racial climate.<\/p>\n

The district hired an independent auditor to conduct the assessment using surveys and 24 focus groups. The study participants included 585 district and school staff, 888 families and caregivers and 4,694 students. At the time of the audit, from October 2022 to February 2023, there were about 12,500 children enrolled in the district.<\/p>\n

Among the April 2023 report\u2019s key findings: students said school staff ignored and therefore normalized racist bullying. \u201cIt\u2019s kind of normal to come to school and feel like it\u2019s going to be a racist day today,\u201d a student remarked in a focus group. \u201cStudents get in trouble for cursing, but not for using the N-word,\u201d another said.<\/p>\n

Staff said they had no clear guidance for how to handle racist incidents. \u201cSanta Barbara staff stated their immediate reaction in response to directly or indirectly encountering racism was to report the event to an acting administrator or supervisor rather than hold space to serve as the first line of defense against racism and anti-Blackness,\u201d the report noted.<\/p>\n

Shevon Hoover, who says anti-Black racist incidents have been an \u201cannual occurrence\u201d for her son the past six years, helped organize the push for the climate survey. \u201cThe only people that were really surprised , I think, was the school district and the administrators, and quite frankly, the white teachers who are completely disconnected,\u201d Hoover said.<\/p>\n

About 67% of SBUSD\u2019s teachers are white. According to a focus group summary of school professionals, many \u201cexpressed an uncertainty for whether or not their race or whiteness dis\/qualifies them as an individual able to lead anti-racist and pro-Black efforts in the district.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since the report\u2019s release, the district has been working on several reforms, including an app where students can file reports as soon as something happens and staff training on how to effectively \u201crecognize, respond and report\u201d racist offenses when they happen.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe now have a policy,\u201d said Sims-Moten. \u201cWe have an oversight committee that is helping us guide many of the policies and the responses. And for the first time, we now have a procedure that talks about here\u2019s how you respond. And here\u2019s also how you follow up with families so that they don\u2019t feel left in the dark when these incidents occur.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, for Shalhoob and McCullough, these efforts are too little, too late.<\/p>\n

McCullough\u2019s son, who has dyslexia and anxiety, has struggled with serious depression since the racist TikTok video. She said his condition has changed the family dynamic with everyone on edge \u201cbecause we know that not a hundred percent stabilized mentally and emotionally because of the effects of this.\u201d<\/p>\n

Two years later, the kid behind that devastating video, and McCullough\u2019s son are both at Santa Barbara High School. So are Shalhoob\u2019s son and the kids who bullied him.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s one main hall at Santa Barbara High School and for a couple of weeks he was dodging the main hall because kids would say, \u2018I can\u2019t breathe\u2019 when he walked by,\u201d Shalhoob said. \u201cAnd still nobody\u2019s doing anything.\u201d<\/p>\n

Worst of all, Shalhoob feels she\u2019s failed her child.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like it\u2019s just taught him like, yeah, that adult might love you to death and might want to make things better for you, but it\u2019s just shown him how, excuse my language, but how f-up the system is.\u201d<\/p>\n

The idea that teachers would need special training in how to protect Black kids from obviously damaging situations, like getting called the word that everyone knows is so bad it has its own euphemism or dismissing kneeling on someone\u2019s neck as \u201chorsing around,\u201d enrages her.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that\u2019s what brought me the most anger is because I don\u2019t think you need training to deal with it,\u201d she said. \u201cYou just need to be a human.\u201d<\/p>\n

This resource is supported in whole or in part by funding provided by the State of California, administered by the\u00a0<\/em>California State Library<\/em><\/a>\u00a0in partnership with the\u00a0<\/em>California Department of Social Services<\/em><\/a>\u00a0and the\u00a0<\/em>California Commission on Asian and Pacific Islander American Affairs<\/em><\/a>\u00a0as part of the\u00a0<\/em>Stop the Hate<\/em><\/a>\u00a0program. To report a hate incident or hate crime and get support, go to\u00a0<\/em>CA vs Hate<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Source: Published without changes from Ethnic Media Services<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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