In the aftermath of the police killing of George Floyd in 2020, the Francis Howell School District in suburban St. Louis pledged to address racial discrimination in the resolution.

Passed in August 2020, the resolution read,  “to our learning community that we will speak firmly against any racism, discrimination, and senseless violence against people regardless of race, ethnicity, nationality, immigration status, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, or ability.”

Now that the school board is controlled by a conservative majority, the anti-racism resolution has been revoked and all copies of it will be eradicated from school buildings, the Associated Press reports.

The vote took place during an emotionally-charged meeting on Thursday (July 20) “ after a majority of current Board of Education members were not signatories to the resolution or did not otherwise vote to adopt the resolution” rescinded resolutions with anti-racism being their primary concern.

Many who were in attendance disapproved of the board’s ruling and held signs that read “Forward, not backward.”

Randy Cook, the board’s president, said that terms in the resolution such as “systemic racism” are open to interpretation with various meanings. Jane Puszkar, another board member, argued that the resolution is irrelevant.

“What has it really done,” she asked. “How effective has it really been?”

As one of the largest districts in the state, Francis Howell currently has 17,000 students, 87 percent of them are White.

Kimberly Thompson, a Black woman who attended Francis Howell schools, and is the parent of two graduates from the same district “urged the board to stand by its 2020 commitment” at the meeting. She also accused the district of having a history of racism.

“This resolution means hope to me, the hope of a better Francis Howell School District,” Thompson said. “It means setting expectations for behavior for students and staff regardless of their personal opinions.”

Only two members of the board remain since the resolution was adopted in 2020. The five new members who were elected in April 2022 and April 2023 were endorsed by Francis Howell Families, a conservative political action committee (PAC).

One of the tenets of the PAC’s platform was characterizing the anti-racism resolution as “woke activism” and a new resolution was drafted to oppose “all acts of racial discrimination, including the act of promoting tenets of the racially-divisive Critical Race Theory, labels of white privilege, enforced equity of outcomes, identity politics, intersectionalism, and Marxism.”

Cook, who sponsored the revocation said there are no plan’s create another resolution.

“In my opinion, the school board doesn’t need to be in the business of dividing the community,” Cook said. “We just need to stick to the business of educating students here and stay out of the national politics.”