Calif. school district under fire for creating white student support group for Chauvin trial Our students were the first to call attention to it, and they were right to do so, agreed school board president Cory Smegal.
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A California school district has come under fire this week after it was reported that school officials created a support group for white students to vent after
Derek Chauvin was found guilty of murdering
George Floyd.
In a case that made international headlines and sparked the resurgence of a movement, the white police Minneapolis officer was ultimately found guilty of second-degree murder, third-degree murder, and manslaughter on April 20, following the May 2020 death of Floyd.
Where racial issues are concerned, we’re living in a strange time.
Yet, it isn’t altogether unprecedented the country’s once tried separation by race.
Part of the new twist, so far as I can tell: We’re doing something similar to what we did before, which we previously learned wasn’t good.
It isn’t exactly the same, but there are certainly shared properties.
Nonetheless,
Hence, in Piedmont, California recently, someone in charge of schools had an idea.
It went something like this: In light of the Derek Chauvin verdict, let’s host “support circles” for students to discuss the outcome. And let’s do it in a segregated way.
Wikimedia CommonsSchool officials in Piedmont, California, are in full damage-control mode after their plans for a “support circle for white students” in the wake of the Derek Chauvin verdict sparked major backlash.A day after the white former Minneapolis police officer was found guilty last month of murdering George Floyd, who was Black, the assistant superintendent of the Piedmont Unified School District reached out to students and staff offering the chance to engage in dialogue about the nation-changing trial.But there was one problem: The “restorative community circles” on offer were all segregated, and the white students, bizarrely, were seemingly treated as if they had personally been victimized by the Chauvin trial.According to an email obtained by SFGate, the message from assistant superintendent Cheryl Wozniak invited white students to a support group where they could “discuss how the trial, verdict, and experiences related to the George Floy
2 Vanden students medal as team takes 2nd at regional Academic Decathlon
Campolindo High School of Contra Costa County won the competition. Davis Senior High School was third.
Senior Lucas Morales was the gold medal winner in the Scholastic Division and senior Diana Egan was the bronze medal winner in the Honors Division. Annika Serrano is the team captain.
The Vanden High team members are seniors Egan, Morales, Serrano, Faith Miller, Alex Melendres and Jelly Caraballo; juniors Nina Schmidt and Nihal Grewal; and sophomore Sydney Haas. David Kenyon is the teacher-coach for the team.
The Solano County Office of Education hosted the decathlon, which attracted 240 students from 15 high schools in Solano, Alameda, Contra Costa, Imperial, Lake, Mendocino, Napa, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Sonoma and Yolo counties.