Anderson Union High School District President Responds to Allegations of Unchecked Racist Speech in Local Schools

10.19.24 9:58 am: We have updated this story to include the names of the individual organizations responding to parental concerns in Anderson schools.

Attendance at this week’s AUHSD board meeting was somewhat sparse despite the grave nature of one of the agenda items: racism.  

The topic was prompted by ongoing grievances by parents who have accused Anderson Union High School of turning a blind eye to the use of racist hate speech among its student body, and at times trivializing the accounts of victims when they attempted to inform school faculty about their experiences of harassment.

After parents reported to a coalition of antiracist advocates that at least one high school within AUHSD has repeatedly failed to meet the requirements of both California state law and AUHSD’s own anti-discrimination policy, the group, which includes advocates from 9 different organizations, felt compelled to approach the Board directly, something which first occurred during the Board’s last meeting on September 17.

During this week’s AUHSD Board meeting, board member Darin Hale read a letter signed by the President Jackie LaBarbera addressing those concerns. Given the lack of any public Board discussion on the topic, the letter appeared to be a unilateral response from LaBarbera to advocates, parents, and affected students.

No conversation or reflection between board members followed Hale’s reading of the letter which occurred during a portion of the meeting that lasted only two minutes in total. LaBarbera, who drafted the letter, was absent. She did not respond to a request for comment from Shasta Scout asking why she missed the meeting. 

While LaBarbera’s letter began with a commitment to fostering a safe learning environment for all students, she continued by claiming  that the AUHSD Board is incapable of acting if issues of racist bullying are not brought to the attention of the right people.

“ . . . our ability to address discrimination or hate is contingent on being informed—any incident of bullying or hate must be reported to the appropriate District officials,” Hale said, reading from LaBarbera’s letter. 

 While the letter appears to place the onus to navigate reporting procedures on victims, under District policy, once any employee of the school or District is made aware of  hate-motivated behavior, they are to immediately inform “appropriate district officials” to ensure students are protected.

According to Carla Baxter, who described herself as an advocate for students and parents affected by racism, that’s not yet happening. She outlined details of recent incidents in which students were called the N-word multiple times, and had reported it through proper channels without sufficient response. Due to the schools’ lack of real action, she said, students have stopped informing the adults whose job it is to protect them. 

“The students wrote incident reports, and the vice principal said, ‘it’s Friday, we’ll deal with it on Monday.’ Parents were not notified by the school of these racial incidents,” she said. “The incident still wasn’t addressed.” 

Baxter recounted mismanagement of several such “racial incidents”, which are categorized in state law as hate-motivated behavior. Examples included administrators skirting responsibility to act by claiming that it was the victim’s word against their bully’s and the vice principal asking parents why a Black student should even be offended by the N-word, “if it’s in their music.” One student, Baxter says, was told to “shut up” and then called a “Black b-word,” while another overheard their classmate aspiring to become a police officer so that he could arbitrarily arrest Black people. 

According to Baxter, who spoke on behalf of parents, such incidents have occurred both in classrooms and on District buses, highlighting the importance of ensuring all staff members and students are educated on the imperative to report hate speech. The need to do so is explicitly addressed in the District’s own policy, which was linked in the agenda packet but not discussed by Board members.

“Within one business day of receiving such a report,” the policy states, “a staff member shall notify the principal of the report, whether or not a uniform complaint is filed. In addition, any school employee who observes an incident of bullying involving a student shall, within one business day, report such observation to the principal or a district compliance officer, whether or not the alleged victim files a complaint.” 

Verbal bullying is defined by the policy as “an act that includes saying or writing hurtful things, such as teasing, name-calling, inappropriate sexual comments, taunting, or threats to cause harm.” 

While incidents described by antiracist activists could be categorized as verbal bullying, they also fall squarely into what state law, and AUHSD, describes as “hate-motivated behavior,” which is defined as “any behavior intended to cause emotional suffering” based on a victim’s “real or perceived race.” This mirrors California Education Code § 233, known as the Hate Violence Prevention Act, which requires schools to adopt policies to prevent behavior that violates students’ civil rights.  

According to District policy, appropriate disciplinary action for hate-motivated behavior will be carried out “when appropriate.” The details of this discipline is far less fleshed out than the varying degrees of punishment for bullying, all of which are clearly outlined in the document. Employees who engage in hate-motivated behavior are also subject to punishment, including dismissal. 

California’s education law also requires that the District’s policies related to hate-motived behavior be posted in a conspicuous place online, as another advocate, Vicki Ono, the Equity Chair of the Shasta Cascade Service Center council of the California Teacher’s Association pointed out. 

Describing the difficulty of navigating the school’s website, Ono said “it took forever to find anything,” reminding the board that “one of the things that [the policy] states is that [anti-discrimination information] shall be posted in a prominent location on the district’s website in a manner that is readily and easily accessible to parents, guardians and students.”

The link to AUHSD’s policy about hate-motivated behavior is currently broken. Additionally, the “uniform complaint procedure” through which parents are specifically supposed to file complaints about bullying and harassment is not linked with other complaint forms under the “concerns” section of the AUHSD’s website. 

Jackie Morganfield and Greg Lawson, who are also members of the same informal anti-racism coalition that formed specifically to support Anderson parents, also spoke. Lawson reiterated the Board’s existing policy that requires the superintendent to provide staff with the proper resources to facilitate a hate-free environment, and Morganfield suggested contracting the organization Rooted in Love to provide diversity training to faculty. 

AUHSD schools are already required to implement preventative instruction that promotes inclusivity among students, such as “social-emotional learning,” “explaining the harm and dangers of explicit and implicit biases,” and “providing strategies to manage conflicts constructively.” Shasta Scout has reached out to Superintendent Brian Parker to find out if such instruction is occurring and is awaiting a response.

When the time for public comment concluded, members of the coalition gathered outside the high school’s library to discuss how the meeting went. Baxter told Shasta Scout that she was glad for the opportunity to get more relevant information on public record, and said that the board did seem to be more attentive.

But, she added:

“I was a little concerned that they read that letter from Jackie LaBarbera and that she wasn’t here,” she said. “Yeah, it kind of felt like they were letting us know this is our policy. However, (just having) that policy is not sufficient. That’s why we’re here asking them to change.” 

Now that they’ve said their piece, the group, which includes organizers from the Shasta Beloved Community, the Islamic Center of Redding, the Sikh Center, the Shasta Equal Justice Coalition, Shasta County Citizens Advocating Respect, Shasta Interfaith, SEIU 2015, the Anti Racism Task Force and the American Civil Liberties Union, is waiting to see how AUHSD will respond.

Until then, Morganfield underscored their determination to change the school’s environment for students of color. 

“We aren’t going away,” she said. “We’ll keep showing up.” 

---

Do you have a correction to share? Email us: editor@shastascout.org