Written by by HAROLD HUTCHISON at dailycaller.com
A school district in Massachusetts is engulfed in tension following claims that two school counselors were involved in harmful encounters with transgender students, leading to accusations of racism, the New Yorker reported.
The school newspaper of Amherst Regional Middle School, the Graphic, reported about claims that the counselors were mistreating LGBT students, prompting multiple investigations, according to the New Yorker. The allegations centered around Hector Santos, a Hispanic male, and Delinda Dykes, a black woman, and led to an emergency school committee meeting.
Santos and Dykes were hired by Doreen Cunningham, who was the assistant superintendent of the Amherst School District in charge of hiring, as part of a push by then-Superintendent Michael Morris to diversify the according to the New Yorker.
“There was a lot of racism in the district,” Cunningham told the New Yorker. “And I came, and a lot of people of color started to feel safe, not because they thought that I would not hold them accountable but because they knew that somebody would hopefully understand where they were coming from.”
Former Amherst school committee member Ben Herrington told the New Yorker that he suspected Morris failed to address problems surrounding Cunningham due to fears he would be called “racist” for taking action.
“The sense I got was that, once Mike realized that he didn’t have the right person, he didn’t want to be perceived as being racist for dealing with her or having her removed,” Herrington said, “Which, if we’re being honest, is actually kind of a racist viewpoint.”
Cunningham’s employment with the district ended in October after she was placed on leave in May, the Amherst Indy reported., noting Cunningham filed a discrimination complaint.
Parents of transgender children, though, accused Cunningham of abetting abuse allegedly inflicted by Santos and Dykes, who were placed on leave after being accused of discussing religion and failing to stop bullying, the New Yorker reported. Many of the students accused of bullying LGBT students were Hispanic or black, according to the New Yorker.
Instances of bullying of LGBT students were often addressed with “restorative justice,” a practice common in progressive school districts, but in one case, a conservative Hispanic student told the LGBT student they only believed there were two genders, according to the New Yorker. The LGBT student’s father later demanded that the Hispanic student have “ZERO contact” with his child.
“Change his class, change his school, send him to Mars; I don’t care,” the father wrote in an email, the New Yorker reported.