By 7:00 pm on Tuesday, February 27, ICSD’s Board Room was overflowing with community members waiting to speak during the public commentary section of the Board of Education (BoE) meeting. Most of them had come to talk about race or safety, prompted by IHS’s casting controversy over The Hunchback of Notre Dame and the subsequent national response. Many people, including the five leaders of Students United Ithaca (a group that had called for the production of a different musical), lined the walls. Others sat on the floor at the board members’ feet.
Over the course of an hour, community members stepped forward to give testimonies about their experiences with race in ICSD. Through their three-minute statements, community members shifted the focus of the BoE meeting from the casting controversy to a broader discussion about ICSD’s treatment of race, and of the importance of keeping its students safe.
First, several members of Students United Ithaca spoke about their experiences receiving racist threats after their story received national news coverage. For example, Eamon Nunn-Makepeace ’21 said that when he was out jogging, some white people recognized him as involved in the casting controversy and then referred to him using the n-word. His mother, Dr. Nia Nunn-Makepeace, read aloud a threat that Eamon had received on social media: “After I’m done with you, you’ll be swinging from a tree.”
Later, Prachi Ruina ’19 read aloud multiple comments that had been addressed to her on social media, including one telling her to “go back to s***** India and stop crying about whites in this white country.”
Throughout the evening, a common refrain was that the district was not responding appropriately to these threats and racist comments. Many community members expressed the belief that ICSD was trying to downplay the effects of the casting controversy by ignoring the issue and failing to inform students about what was going on. Some said that ICSD had not done enough to protect the students’ safety, and some stated that many students at IHS were still unaware of what was going on.
Maddi Carroll ’18, a leader of Students United Ithaca, said, “Every single time we try to have a conversation [with ICSD], it is extremely vague and people are left confused, wondering what is going on in our district. . . . It seems that our teachers have been told not to talk about this. Some of them whisper their support to us when no one else is watching. . . We asked for more protection because we were afraid. We asked for an open and educated conversation about race because we were afraid.”
Additionally, some speakers connected the threats and hate speech to the recent school shooting in Parkland, Florida. Ari Cummings ’19 said that though he is a junior at IHS, he has never experienced a lockdown drill at IHS. He called on educators to do a better job educating their students about safety.
For many people at the meeting, the importance of race education was the common tie between the school shootings and the national response to the casting controversy. Eamon Nunn-Makepeace attributed the racist threats he received in part to a lack of race education across the United States. His mother said that the Parkland shooter was “nurtured by a culture of sickness–a culture of white supremacy.” Eliza VanCort (the mother of Ella Mead-VanCort ’18, a leader of Students United Ithaca) cited an Atlantic article with the statistic that 71 percent of all murders in the US in the past decade were carried out by right-wing extremists.
For the rest of the public commentary period, many people commented on their own experience with a lack of race education in ICSD. Community members and parents called for more anti-racist curricula to be taught in classrooms. Teachers asked the Board for guidance for teaching about race. Adults from the community, who had graduated from ICSD schools, described instances in which they had failed to learn about race, or had witnessed racism. Some community leaders, both white and black, said they could provide resources and support for anti-racist educational programs in ICSD.
The members of the BoE responded differently to the public commentary. Board member Moira Lang, the leader of the ICSD Secondary Language Arts Curriculum Committee, asked the community to contribute “specific action steps” toward implementing anti-racist curricula in grades K–12. Board member Eldred V. Harris, JD, stated that it was time to stop whispering about race, and thanked the members of Students United Ithaca for shocking the Board into action. Board member Nicole LaFave said it was “highly irresponsible” of the district not to address the threats to the students more directly, though she cautioned that the Board and community should think about whether the culture at ICSD is ready for a curriculum about race.
Superintendent Dr. Luvelle Brown said the district would be re-allocating resources in the coming weeks to address equity in terms of race, and that the district would work on developing an anti-racist curriculum. However, he asked the community be patient, and warned against asking teachers to teach about race without giving them the necessary tools and training to do so (something he said could take “a year of planning”). Finally, he suggested broadening the discussion to include gender and class in addition to race because “we’re living in a culture that is oppressive.”
The district has taken some measures to promote school safety as well. On February 28, ICSD published a brief article about how Superintendent Brown recently met with Ithaca Police Chief Pete Tyler to discuss safety in the wake of recent violent events. Also on February 28, IHS held an all-faculty meeting to discuss safety protocol. The following day, IHS held a lock-down drill.
For many people in the community, the casting controversy was a much-needed impetus to open up a discussion about race and safety in our schools. Many of the speakers remarked that they had long been fighting to be heard, and that they were glad ICSD had finally reached a point where it was possible to have a conversation about race. As Board member Harris said, the conversation may be painful to have now, but “it’s because we can finally actually have it.”