Florida Elementary School Principal and Teacher on Leave After Disciplinary Assembly Targeted Black Students
A principal and teacher at a Florida elementary school were placed on paid leave after singling out Black students for an assembly aimed at improving their scholastic performance.
Principal Donelle Evensen oversaw the Aug. 18 assembly at Bunnell Elementary School in Flagler County, Fla., for which Black students were singled out and told to improve their scholastic performance, CNN reported.
Flagler County School Board chair Cheryl Massaro told CNN in an email that the students were shown a PowerPoint presentation that read, in part, “AA have underperform (sic) on standardized assessment for the last past 3 years."
“AA is African American, and that is one subgroup the FDOE requires annual reporting on from all Florida schools. The PowerPoint, created by one of the presenters shows the data results,” Massaro wrote in the email.
"This should not have happened, but it did,"said interim district Superintendent LaShakia Moore during a press conference, adding that she has spoken to most of the families affected.
Moore explained during the conference that underperformance among students is normally addressed on an individual basis during parent-teacher conferences. In speaking with Evensen, she and Moore examined "what led to this assembly and steps that were or were not taken before or after it.”
“In speaking with Mrs. Evensen, it is clear there was no malice intended in planning this student outreach,” she said. “However, sometimes, when you try to think ‘outside the box,’ you forget why the box is there.”
“While the desire to help this particular subgroup of students is to be commended, how this was done does not meet the expectations we desire among Flagler Schools. We want our parents and guardians to actively participate in their children’s educational successes. Without informing them of this assembly or of the plans to raise these scores, our parents were not properly engaged.”
Moore noted that many of the parents were “upset, concerned as to how and why it happened.”
“But the majority of families that I spoke with…their end conversation was ‘what do we do now, how do we work together as a community which is inclusive of our families, how do we work together in order to ensure that we are never in this place again?’” she said.
