OPINION: Why I’m suing my former employer, a school district, over critical race theory

Originally Published on The New York Post

The first days of returning to school after the COVID-19 pandemic were overwhelming. Like other educators across the country, those of us working in Albemarle County, Va., public schools were suddenly faced with fresh challenges that required our full attention and energy: implementing new health and safety procedures, helping students who had fallen behind academically during virtual learning and doing our very best to restore a productive learning environment for all.

It was at this exact time our school district decided to introduce controversial policies and mandatory teacher training based on critical race theory. The goal was laudable — to “become an anti-racist school system” — but the curriculum, in fact, produced the opposite result.

As assistant principal at Charlottesville’s Agnor-Hurt Elementary School, I witnessed firsthand how this training directed teachers to be racist by viewing each other and their students based solely on race and then treating each other differently according to the color of their skin. Indeed, this curriculum, based on Glenn Singleton’s book “Courageous Conversations About Race,” promotes harmful racial stereotypes. It also teaches that students of color are inherently disadvantaged.

I believe every person is made in the image of God and entitled to equal treatment and respect, so this content immediately set off warning signals. And I wasn’t alone. Fellow teachers and staff members repeatedly shared their concerns with me about how the curriculum created a racially divisive and hostile environment and about the hurtful comments other staff members made throughout the training, which denigrated them for being white.

I had to speak up. I expressed my deep concerns with numerous administrators not only about the harm this was inflicting on our staff but the cascading harm it would have on our diverse student body and families. I believed it would be beneficial for the administration and district supervisors to receive constructive feedback from someone on the ground, to hear what was actually taking place in the building and the negative effect this training was having on teachers and staff…