Talking about race in mostly white school districts; Hastings charts uncertain path

• Mostly white, suburban districts may feel less need to talk to students about issues of race.
• 1 in 5 Westchester students, outside Yonkers, attends a school without a black or Latino teacher.
• A new middle-school program in Hastings looks at the history of race and analyzes current events.
• Teachers of color who work mostly with white colleagues often feel unheard and unsupported.

In education, talking about matters of race and diversity is an activity often reserved for school districts that are diverse.

So, in the Lower Hudson Valley, where many affluent districts have predominantly white student bodies and teaching forces, race can be an elusive subject — prominent in the news but not a day-to-day conversation in classrooms or hallways. In Westchester County, one in five students, outside of Yonkers, will attend a school without a black or Latino teacher, according to the Education Trust-New York.

In an attempt to change this narrative, a school in the Hastings-on-Hudson school district, where 77 percent of students are white, last year began offering a class called "Sparking Courageous Conversations." Farragut Middle School introduced this three-year required class where students spend 80 minutes every other day delving into topics about race, racism and social justice.

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Detra Price-Denis, an assistant professor at Columbia University’s Teachers College, observed the course last year and said it was groundbreaking.

“I’ve never heard of anything like this, especially in a predominantly white school … So often we hear that this should be reserved for urban schools, which is of course coded for students of color with limited income,” Price-Dennis said. “It’s so brave and so forward-thinking and it just captures where we are in this moment in our own socio-political context.”

And that socio-political context is not lost on students who bear witness to the viral stories of the day — body cam footage of police-involved shootings of unarmed black men; Nike's campaign featuring Colin Kaepernick, the face of the NFL's controversial protest movement over racial injustice; or immigrant children being separated from their asylum-seeking parents at the U.S. border.

School districts with large numbers of black and Latino students and teachers delve into these issues automatically, as discussions move from kitchen tables to classrooms. But affluent suburban districts that are mostly white may feel a less pressing need to talk to students about race, even though these districts are part of an increasingly diverse New York metro region.

In fact, the genesis of the initiative in Hastings was an incident on the front steps of the middle-high school building that illustrated the complexity of addressing race in a mostly white community.

The impetus

The first day of school in 2015 started like any other first day for veteran teacher Sonja Cherry-Paul. Incoming seniors annually greet other students and staff on the steps of the grades 5-12 school building, waving banners, spraying silly string and playing music.

Except this time, the seniors were rapping a song that included lyrics repeating the n-word.

“What it looked like to me was a mob of white people chanting the n-word,” said Cherry-Paul, who is black.

After ducking into a side door, she sent an email to school administrators expressing how disturbing the experience was. Then-superintendent Roy Montesano was apologetic, Cherry-Paul said, but asked her to deal with the matter herself. She said that he suggested, “Why don’t you go and talk to the high school seniors and let them know how that made you feel.”

“These are the very kids we’ll see in the news putting on blackface at their fraternities … and we’re really not going to talk about this?” Cherry-Paul said. “These students are on the brink of adulthood and they think it’s OK to stand on the steps of a public school and behave this way. We should all feel, to some extent, that we failed these children.”

Louis Adipietro, Hastings High School principal, said he brought in the seniors who organized the morning event to talk about the incident after receiving a call from the middle school.

"They felt terrible about it ... I can assure you, these kids are not racist," Adipietro said, adding that he also followed up with the teachers of color in his building. "They did not have the same perspective as some of the other teachers who were upset by it ... and the kids followed up with them because they felt horrible that they alienated them."

Montesano, who is now the schools chief in Bronxville, did not provide a comment. 

Becoming more 'race-conscious'

Days after that incident, Cherry Paul decided to take matters into her own hands.

She brought together about 10 teachers to form what became a “Race Matters” committee, aiming to break the silence around race issues and make the district as a whole more “race-conscious,” she said.

The 1,600-student district gave the committee $25,000 in 2016-17 to bring in speakers, hold a multicultural book fair and train staff. The committee also presented to administrators the idea of a class curriculum centered on race.

Gail Kipper, the middle school principal, quickly arranged for students in grades 6, 7 and 8 to take a course for a quarter of the year. The class, called “Sparking Courageous Conversations: Discussing Race and Racism,” was developed that summer and launched in 2017-18.

Kipper said she recognized the value of trained teachers leading constructive conversations about race.

“Where is it that children learn about racism? Where is it talked about in a safe place? Where is it provided in their education?” Kipper said. “We knew that we needed to take this on.”

The course delves into the history of race, defining racism and stereotypes, analyzing current events and using media clips and other texts to spark classroom conversations. The goals are for students to develop the skills, vocabulary and confidence to talk about topics that might be uncomfortable, and to expose students to ideas and people from unfamiliar backgrounds. 

Jenice Mateo-Toledo, who teaches one of the classes and is the new diversity coordinator, said the challenge at first is getting kids to open up.

“There’s this fear of saying the wrong thing, and getting students to understand that you may say the wrong thing, and that’s OK,” Mateo-Toledo said. “This is the place where we practice.”

Seamus Pugh, a freshman at Hastings High School who took the course last year in middle school, said the discussions were valuable, but at times the course was met with cavalier attitudes by his peers.

"I liked the class. I think it could have been more effective if it had been longer ... the topic is just so big it could use a full year," Pugh said. "If people give it a chance, I think people would have learned a lot."

Work still to be done

Meanwhile, the district continues to grapple with its handling of race issues.

"So many of us have felt undervalued, ignored and have left," said Cherry-Paul, who stopped teaching in Hastings in October 2017 after, she said, an incident involving an administrator who made a racially insensitive comment about Cherry-Paul's daughter. Cherry-Paul said she was told by then-Superintendent Tony Sinanis it "didn't rise to the level of harassment" that would merit further consequences. 

Shortly after Cherry-Paul's departure, 10-year middle school teacher Erica Williams attended a teacher training about diversity. At the end, participants were asked to write anonymous reflections. Williams, who is black, recalled someone writing that certain teachers played the "race card."

"The comment was targeted at a colleague ... but clearly (also) teachers of color who, quote-on-quote, use the race card," Williams said.

She said district administrators did little to address her concerns.

Williams said part of the reason she has stayed in Hastings is to see through the work of the "Race Matters" committee.

"I am having these conversations in these classes and I think it does make a difference, even if it’s a small one," she said.

The Hastings Board of Education, in a statement, said the district is striving to be at the "forefront" of diversity and inclusion matters. The board wants to support the "Race Matters" committee's work and improve the district's handling of perceived racial and ethnic insensitivity.

"Having a diverse teaching force is something that we understand will benefit our community and all students, not just our students of color..." the board said. "That said, we can and will do more."

Sinanis, who become the Hastings superintendent in July 2017, did not return a request for comment. He left the district after less than a year to become assistant superintendent for human resources in Chappaqua.

Diverse workforce lends to social justice work

Research and surveys show that teachers of color who work mostly with white colleagues often face challenges that leave them feeling unheard, undermined and unsupported. In Westchester, about 12 percent of teachers, outside of Yonkers, are black or Latino, according to The Education Trust.

This is partly why teachers of color are also more likely to leave the profession sooner than white colleagues, according to Leo Casey, executive director of the Albert Shanker Institute, where he has researched diversity in the teacher workforce.

“The problem is not simply that we don’t have sufficient numbers of teachers of color in the pipeline, although that is certainly the case; we’re not retaining the ones that we do have,” Casey said. “If you assign a teacher of color to a school where they are the only teacher of color or one of two teachers of color, it is not a conducive and supportive environment for them.”

The Dobbs Ferry school district brought in a consultant and has hosted other districts, including Hastings, to work on recruiting and retaining teachers of color.

"It's one thing to hire, and that's important, but you also have the retention issue ... we want to make sure we are doing all that we can to make sure all staff are successful," said Lisa Brady, superintendent in Dobbs Ferry, where the student body is 64 percent white.

Such training will help prepare administrators and teachers to have more in-depth conversations about race in classrooms, Brady said.

"I have to have the adults in this system comfortable with dealing with these topics," Brady said. "Teachers will be better prepared to have better conversations with kids if we're trained on how to do that." 

Mount Vernon Superintendent Kenneth Hamilton, who has worked in predominantly white suburban districts and now leads a 71-percent black city district, agreed that schools can't tackle a difficult subject like race without a clear message from administrators that it's truly important.

"You can't begin to have conversations with kids about embracing diversity if there isn't an edict at the administrator level that spills into the teacher level," Hamilton said. 

Ultimately, students from all backgrounds, including white students, deserve to learn about issue of race from a diverse teaching force, said Judith Johnson, a former superintendent in Peekskill and Mount Vernon who now represents the Lower Hudson Valley on the state Board of Regents.

"A diverse teacher workforce is the earliest and most valuable opportunity students have to experience education as one of the pathways to social justice," Johnson said.