PUSD board updates policy on hate-motivated speech

After finding out about an ongoing problem of Pleasanton Unified School District students — who are not Black or African American — using a racial slur and saying derogatory things to students of color, the Board of Trustees updated its board policy last week as a way to begin confronting those issues.

The revised board policy that addresses hate-motivated behavior now states the board and district will support a zero tolerance policy against hate-motivated speech, require cultural competency training for all staff and students, prioritize support for victims who were impacted by hate speech and require these types of incidents to be thoroughly investigated.

Collaboration with other educational partners will also be a main focus as the district works on eliminating the use of slurs like the N-word, which many parents said has been a systemic issue for many years that is seen in high schools and now more recently in elementary schools.

“We’ve been talking about this for probably about seven years or eight years now,” Michelle Tompkins, a parent who has had four kids graduate from the district, said during the April 25 board meeting.

She said she has been with PUSD since 2006 and recently had her youngest child go to school in Pleasanton before having to pull him out because of various racial attacks from other students.

“Last year he was in a lot of pain and a lot of hurt and not just because of the use of the N-word but just the way he was being treated by his peers,” Tompkins said. “He was probably one of two African Americans in his class and I think he just felt like he was being demeaned … they would say Black people are dumb.”

The district had been revising its hate-motivated behavior board policy over the last month ever since two PUSD parents raised concerns at the March 28 board meeting about their Black student being asked by other students if they can get an “N-word pass”, which is when people who are not Black or African American ask for permission to use the racial slur.

According to the staff presentation at last week’s board meeting, while race-motivated suspensions have generally decreased in the high schools and at Harvest Park Middle School over the last three years, both Hart and Pleasanton Middle School have seen an increase.

Data presented at the meeting shows how in the 2022-23 school year there were eight suspensions regarding race-motivated behavior at PMS while in the 2023-24 school year, there were 14.

But many parents, some of whom had kids in elementary school, said this is an issue that has been happening now at the elementary level and needs to be addressed early on so that kids know it’s not OK as they grow up.

Feyia Simpson, a PUSD parent who has a daughter at Donlon Elementary School, shared a story about how she was picking up her daughter from a school performance last week and learned that a group of kids had told her daughter that Black people are ugly.

“She went to school excited, happy, felt beautiful … I pick her up from kids club and she’s sad, she’s hurt,” Simpson said. “We get in the car and she says a kid told her that a small group of kids said that Black people are ugly.”

She said her daughter tried confronting the students to let them know that was racist and not OK to say but the kids dispersed. Simpson said her daughter tried telling a teacher who didn’t do anything. 

“We love Donlon but this is painful and it makes us feel like we need to move,” Simpson said.

After trying to contact the teacher and principal, Simpson said the teacher had told her it was the end of the day and that they didn’t have time to address the situation. Simpson also said she spoke with the principal who told her the school was going to talk to the students and parents but even during that phone call, she could feel the discomfort in having that sort of conversation.

That’s why Lashawn Atkinson, one of those two parents who originally brought these concerns up at the March 28 board meeting, had wanted the district to be more aggressive in how staff and teachers respond to students using the racial slur and asking for a pass across the district. 

She said that while she is worried about how training will look like for administrators and teachers — she suggested the district might need to get experts on that sort of training because many of those employees might have their own bias that they they need to address — last week’s discussion was a good first step in addressing this serious issue.

However, she said it is only the first step out of many the district needs to take in order to fix a problem that many parents and families who are not Black or African American in the district don’t even know is happening at their schools.

“There is a lot more work that needs to be done,” Atkinson said. “The presentation is good, updating the policy is good but if no one knows about it or knows there’s a problem or that is happening they can’t have those crucial conversations at home.”

Like Atkinson, other Black and African American parents said the district needs to be more proactive in informing the rest of the community about these issues and incidents where students of color are harassed or discriminated against so that parents can talk to their kids to let them know that type of behavior is not OK.

While district staff at the meeting agreed that addressing these racist behaviors and hate speech at home is important and will take a lot of collaboration between the district and parents, they also talked in their presentation about how the district will be helping staff so they can address it at school.

According to staff, the board’s policy on hate-motivated behavior has been in place for quite some time but what hasn’t been in place, which is what the district is now implementing, is a systemic approach for how staff should respond when hearing things like the N-word or students asking for a pass at school.

The district will now have uniformed responses for teachers and staff to say when they hear students using the slur or when they ask for a pass and explicit expectations for how the word is not welcomed so it’s consistent across the district that this behavior will not be allowed.

Part of the conversation also revolved around discipline as some parents pointed out how their students who are Black or African American had gotten into fights because another student used the N-word and received a longer suspension than the student who said the racial slur.

Trustee Kelly Mokashi suggested working on an administrative regulation to address what happens when a student breaks the newly amended board policy, which other members of the board agreed with and said it could be part of the next steps in addressing this ongoing issue.