Earlier this week, US Attorney Carmen Ortiz revealed that The US Attorney’s Office found that there had been one civil rights violation during their investigation of alleged civil rights allegations at the Boston Latin School.
The violation in question occurred when the school failed to appropriately respond to an incident where a male student called a female black student racial slurs and threatened to lynch her with an electric cord.
Ortiz said Wednesday that she is confident that the reforms outlined in the report on Boston Latin School including: Developing mandatory annual training for students, faculty and staff at BLS covering racial harassment, retaliatory conduct, reporting procedure and policies, and cultural competence; will prevent the school from committing future civil rights violations.
“We definitely appreciate her comments. We have been cooperating with the US Attorney's office,” said Boston Public School’s Superintendent Tommy Chang on Boston Public Radio Thursday. “This has been a long process. Our office of equity did some initial investigation and her her findings confirmed what we found, and we need at this point to acknowledge that there were issues, and we need to reflect, we need to create a plan and we need to move forward,” he said.
Chang went on to further say that, “There will be training, ample training, but there will also be dialogue with students, dialogue with parents, dialogue with teachers. Dialogue is important here.”
The Interim headmaster at Boston Latin School Michael Contompasis and the President of the NAACP Boston Branch Michael Curry joined Boston Public Radio Wednesday to discuss the civil rights transgressions that occurred at Boston Latin and the US Attorney’s Office’s report.
“Do I agree with the findings, I guess one would suggest I pretty much have to. Much has been made on the unresponsiveness of the school and all I am suggesting is that in many of those instances the school and the district responded. My concern is moving forward. That is what I have been asked to do,” said Contompasis.
Curry responded by saying, “His tone scares me, because, quite frankly, it’s misleading, what he said. It’s not just about the discipline that you administer as a result of what happened, it’s about the timeliness of your response. It’s about the communication between parents, the administration, faculty, to parents and students. ...You should understand the gravity of this, and then we can move forward, as you say. Lastly, on the ‘move forward’ piece, no matter what your issue is, whether you’ve been discriminated against, harassed sexually, whatever. The worst thing you could say to someone is, ‘Move on, let’s get over this.’ It means that you don’t get it—that it’s about a process of healing, it’s about a process of understanding, a consciousness of what happened, and for you to say to people who have been aggrieved, in some way, to ‘move on and let’s get past this’ really patronizing and insulting.”
When asked about Curry and Contompasis’ comments, Superintendent Chang said, “I want to thank you for bringing both of them to the table. They needed to have this conversation. I am confident that there is truth to what both of them are saying...... The administration last year did address it, but did they remedy the effects and the lingering effects of micro aggressions at this school? I think they could have better handled that. I also understand what Mr. Curry was saying you can’t just say we are moving forward. You have to acknowledge it and you have to reflect, and you have to then move forward.”
Listen to Boston Public Radio’s interview with Boston Public School’s Superintendent Tommy Chang above.
