Coalition demands North Thurston address removal of Black Lives Matter sign
A month after a “Black Lives Matter” message was removed from fencing at an elementary school, a coalition of groups working for social justice within North Thurston Public Schools is demanding the district be publicly transparent about what led to the sign being removed and commit to discussions to restore trust.
According to an NTPS press release issued July 9, staff at Lakes Elementary School in Lacey noticed the message was missing from the fence June 10, then administrators alerted the district and posted about the incident on the school’s Facebook page.
That Facebook post reads, in part, that the message “was removed from our fence by a passerby after only three hours.”
“The message is gone but the strength of our convictions remain,” the post reads. “We have a lot of work to do and we look forward to doing it together with all of you.”
The post prompted 177 comments that ranged from support for the BLM movement to accusations that it was bringing politics into the classroom and at least one tense exchange in which a user called BLM a “terrorist group.”
The official page also commented on the post, reminding users of the district’s equity resolution passed in 2019 and race and quality governing policy and asking those commenting to be respectful.
Iyanna Moultrie, a rising senior at River Ridge High School and a member of her school’s Black Student Union, told The Olympian the incident initially felt disheartening, then frustrating, as a student in the district. She assumed whoever removed the message had malicious intent and that it must’ve been someone from outside the school community.
“For me, it was really disheartening, in knowing that someone would go the lengths of taking down an innocent message at an elementary school,” Moultrie said.
Other BLM signs have also been removed in the district: About a month later, on July 7, a handmade sign at Lakes Elementary was destroyed by a vandal who left behind racist stickers visible to pedestrians, according to NTPS. Lacey Police Department has since put out a press release asking for help identifying a suspect caught on camera in that case.
But it wasn’t an outside actor at Lakes on June 10.
The district investigated and found it was “a member of the district maintenance team who was unaware that the signage was approved,” according to the district’s press release issued a month later. Administrators had told maintenance staff at the time that Black Lives Matter (BLM) signage needed to stay up, according to the release, and the signage was replaced June 11 by staff, families, and community members.
The maintenance team had also taken down another BLM sign, at Nisqually Middle School, NTPS says. The sign was replaced but partially destroyed in the next few days by someone on a motorcycle caught on security footage removing the word “Black.” Nisqually administrators have since decided to display the message on a reader board, NTPS says.
Internally, Lakes Elementary staff were told these were mistakes by the maintenance team, said NTPS spokesperson Courtney Schrieve. But that information wasn’t shared publicly at the time and had not yet been posted on the school’s Facebook as of Monday.
Christie Tran, teacher and co-adviser to the Black Student Union (BSU) at River Ridge High School, is among those who say the district’s public handling of the incident at Lakes lacks transparency and leaves room for interpretation and harm.
Putting up a sign that says Black Lives Matter is a simple act that has a complex, deep meaning, Tran explained to The Olympian. When it’s taken down, the deeper implication for Black people is that their lives do not matter. She said the signs at Lakes and Nisqually being taken down have been perceived as “anti-Black aggression,” and it felt like the district had been dismissive.
Through her own digging a few weeks after the incident, Tran found that the person who took down the message at Lakes was the district’s Director of Facilities who oversees the maintenance team, Tran said. Schrieve later confirmed that fact with The Olympian. Tran said someone told her it was the Director and she confirmed it by requesting video surveillance footage via public records request. She questions whether it was an honest mistake.
When rising senior Moultrie learned it was a member of the maintenance team, she said it felt like “the district really just let us down.”
Representatives from River Ridge High School’s and Timberline High School’s BSUs, North Thurston Public Schools Minoritized Educator Roundtable, and North Thurston Educators Association’s Social Justice League have communicated concerns over the district’s handling of the situation and listed actions to rebuild trust, including “a call to publicly condemn the act of anti-Black aggression, transparency in submitting the surveillance footage to the public, and reporting the crime to law enforcement,” a press release Tran sent to reporters reads.
The Olympian talked to several members of the coalition, including Tran and Moultrie, in a virtual group interview Monday. First, they’re calling for the district to be transparent about what happened, who was involved, and the rationale behind the district’s decision not to say anything about it publicly right away.
“It is imperative, if we want to begin restoring faith in power structures in education and in North Thurston, there has to be a time for becoming vulnerable and admitting that bad things have happened and they’re willing to do the work to make them better,” Katie Baydo-Reed, teacher at Komachin Middle School and member of the North Thurston Education Association’s Social Justice League said in the interview.
The news release sent by Tran also alleges that North Thurston leadership have pressured people to stay silent about the incidents, which Schrieve said the district denies.
Schrieve said “there was never anything hidden,” that the district just never thought to go back and post again about a topic that felt it was dealt with within the Lakes school community, and that this happened in the midst of the district dealing with COVID-19 and planning for what going back to school might look like.
The district issued its press release about recent sign removals on July 9, after the latest incident, to “tie them all together,” she said.
“We didn’t address it on Facebook, perhaps we should’ve, and we’re very sorry,” Schrieve told The Olympian, in reference to the Lakes incident in particular. She said the district recognizes “that if anything we did hurt our families of color, we are sorry and we will continue to support equity and Black Lives Matter.”
“We want to hear from our students of color,” Schrieve said.
Before this incident, they were planning to present to the district a four-point plan that included an ongoing call for the district to end “zero-tolerance discipline” on a broad scale, according to Tran.
They will now plan to present the sign removals as an example of when “restorative justice” may be employed — rather than “zero-tolerance” discipline, which might aim, for example, for anyone involved to be fired. That sort of environment can motivate silence in these situations, Tran says.
“I want to restate that our intentions from the beginning have not been to create more conflict, but to work together in problem solving,” Tran said. “We are interested in building a stronger relationship within NTPS through restorative practice around this conflict.”
The coalition wants to see what Tran referred to as “restorative circles” hosted with people who were directly involved, including NTPS leadership, teachers, administrators, and key members of the coalition bringing the issues forward. These would play out as discussions where conflicting parties meet on an even plane to understand different perspectives surrounding the incident with the intent of healing people who were harmed, she said.
“I look at this as an opportunity for the district to lead by example,” Sara Foppiano, a North Thurston High School teacher, said in the group interview. “A lot of times, as educators, in order to make an impact on students we model positive behavior, integrity, courage. That’s a really authentic way for students to learn from us. I feel like the district is in a position to take a stand and to be a leader in their community... this is a teachable moment for them, and that’s what I think that restorative justice gives us the opportunity to do.”
When asked about the restorative justice approach, Schrieve said the Board will want to hear from students and move forward from there. The district’s plan is to “continue to promote equity, to stand behind the statement ‘Black Lives Matter,’ to address issues like this that come up and talk about them.”
“We are ready to listen, move forward and work together,” she later wrote in an email.
This story was originally published July 14, 2020 at 9:05 AM.
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