Parents voice concerns about racial incidents

Reports of uniformed marching band students giving the Nazi salute before a football game and an incident in which a group of students chased a minority classmate while yelling racial slurs filled the public comment session of Monday night’s Lewiston School Board meeting.

Concerned parents spoke out about racial incidents they said their children have encountered in and outside of school, and urged the school board to offer cultural diversity training and to create policies to deal with such incidents.

Sarah Graham, of Lewiston, who has two children from North Africa, said both of her kids have experienced racially motivated incidents that make them feel unsafe at school. Graham said one of her children often comes home to eat lunch or use the bathroom because he doesn’t feel safe at school, and said her other child has been told she “doesn’t belong” at the school she attends.

“These are examples of the climate in the schools that make students of color feel uncomfortable and unwelcome,” Graham said.

Christine Jorgens, another parent of children with Hawaiian-Japanese heritage, said a “mob-style” group of students chased another group of kids from Webster Elementary School to her home recently. The kids stood on her front porch, pounded on the window and yelled a racial epithet.

The incidents came as a surprise to school board members and Superintendent Bob Donaldson, who said they took the comments at the board meeting seriously.

“I am really sorry that they experienced what they did and had to go through that and I certainly heard them,” School Board President Brad Rice said after the meeting. “If there are things we can do to make the environment better, whether it’s policy things, diversity training, or what have you, I think our board would have an interest in looking into that.”

Donaldson said the district’s bullying policy is aligned with the state’s reporting requirements, but wasn’t able to specifically say if the district had a diversity policy, which was a question posed by one of the parents.

“If they are coming and making this presentation or declaration, then I take that seriously,” Donaldson said. “It has not risen to my level, but that does not mean I’m saying everything is fine. It’s an opportunity for us to reflect on what we are doing or what we’re not doing and go from there.”

Several speakers at the meeting said racial incidents within the schools are not new.

Velda Penney, a member of the Nez Perce Tribe, graduated from Lewiston in the 1960s and raised her children here.

“This is not new at all,” Penney said. “I used to come into the school and talk in the classrooms every once in a while and even then, the kids were asking if we lived in teepees and we live right over the hill.”

Ray Rosch, a Lewiston resident since the 1980s, told the school board he was “disgusted” with what he’d heard and urged action.

“I’m asking you to step up,” Rosch said to the school board. “I encourage you to listen and learn and to accept the challenge to make this the best school district it can possibly be.”

Parents and community members recently convened a group to discuss the issues. They asked the school board for a chance to be put on the agenda for the next meeting, so the conversation could continue.

Donaldson said a work group will likely be convened so representatives of the group can talk with administrators to identify problems and come up with solutions.

Some of the parents of the group have already spoken with the police chief, school resource officers and building principals to express concerns about the lack of training, recommended curriculum and the need for a swift response when racially motivated incidents surface, Jorgens said.

“As the adults, we set that moral plumb line for what’s acceptable and what’s not acceptable,” Jorgens said. “These are hard conversations to have, but if we are not the ones at the table teaching our kids to have them, then we are going to continue to have these situations.”

Tomtas may be contacted at jtomtas@lmtribune.com or (208) 848-2294. Follow her on Twitter @jtomtas.