Racism And Bullying At The Classical Academy?
By Tak Landrockt.landrock@krdo.com
COLORADO SPRINGS – Current and former parents of the Classical Academy showed up in force Monday night to express concern about issues plaguing the charter school.
One former high school student spoke about the racism she faced since last October. The 16-year old, who doesn’t want to be identified, told the board that the racial slurs happened during history class.
“Some students thought it was funny and one of them said, ‘black people should be slaves still today, and they look like dirt anyway,'” the student said.
She told NEWSCHANNEL 13 that she immediately went to school administrators, but nothing was ever done. The taunts continued, with students using the n-word, drawing pictures of people hanging from a noose and even calling the President of the United States a “monkey.”
The Classical Academy is a charter school in Academy School District 20. The racial make-up of the school, mirrors D-20’s make-up: about three-percent of the student population is African-American.
The 16-year old’s mother understands this not just isolated to this school, but feels administrators didn’t act quick enough.
“Sometimes when you don’t have things in place, you’re not aware of things or what your are looking for. You don’t know what you’re listening too and I think it was very easy to minimize the comments and minimize the jokes and minimize those types of things,” said Shantelle Nix.
She thinks the school should have adopted a zero tolerance policy when it comes to hate speech.
“You don’t take something like this and minimize it, it’s significant,” says Nix.
“We take all of these incident seriously,” says Mark Hyatt, President of the Classical Academy. He says several of the students who made the racial slurs were disciplined. He also apologized to the family.
Parents disagree and told the board that administrators frequently hid issues from board members.
Hyatt tells NEWSCHANNEL 13 that board members knew about these racism issues, even though at the board meeting some claimed this was the first time they heard of the girl’s story.
Later board members told NEWSCHANNEL 13 they misspoke.
Hyatt is now holding character building workshops for teacher and staff. He also plans an assembly to address these issues with students.
