MCPS averages one hate incident a day, McKnight reports, outlining response plan

But advocates say racist, antisemitic, anti-LGBTQ+ acts occur even more frequently

April 28, 2023 7:03 p.m.

The Montgomery County school district reports an average of one hate bias or racist incident per day, according to data cited by Superintendent Monifa McKnight on Thursday—a rate three times higher than previous years, even prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, she said. Community advocates say the actual rate is likely much higher.

Officials, parents, students and community members packed into Rockville High School’s auditorium on Thursday afternoon to hear McKnight address the recent rise of racist, antisemitic, anti-LGBTQ+ and other hate bias incidents within Montgomery County Public Schools.

“Let me be clear: these mean and unacceptable actions have no place in MCPS,” she said.

- Advertisement -

McKnight also announced new measures being taken to combat these incidents. Notable attendees included school board members, County Council members, state and local delegates and senators.

Mark Eckstein, who attended the event as a parent and prominent local LGBTQ+ advocate, said he spoke to several students afterward to gauge their reactions.

“I think the speech was largely well-received by students. They’re cautiously hopeful,” he said. “There’s often a feeling of there being much talk, no action. If this were the beginning of the journey, students would have been very encouraged. But there’s a long, hard history of being let down by MCPS.”

During her speech, McKnight reiterated the district’s commitment to its core values of “excellence, equity, respect, learning and relationships,” telling attendees:

“We move toward [these goals], but we rarely, if ever, achieve them. What we seek to do is close the gap between who we profess to be, who we want to be and who we really are.”

Sponsored
Face of the Week

She noted that “undeniable racist disparities” have persisted within MCPS for decades, antisemitic incidents have “arisen almost daily within in our schools” and transphobic and homophobic rhetoric has resulted in increased alienization of students within the LGBTQ+ community.

McKnight described the district’s recent systemwide Anti-Racist Audit as a commitment to understanding how school policies and structures must change for all students to feel a sense of safety and belonging on campus.

The school district is in the process of taking several actions in response to the recent incidents, McKnight announced, including:

  • Tightly coordinating the district’s response to incidents of hate and bias
  • Strictly scrutinizing the system’s decisions for evidence of equity
  • Professional development on anti-racist leadership
  • Ongoing training for all employees on responding to hate and bias incidents
  • Establishing a Multicultural Advisory Group to monitor the district’s anti-racist action plan
  • Strengthening and expanding student curriculum to ensure historical accuracy and cultural competency
  • Creating in-school opportunities like assemblies and student advisory boards to share information

Eckstein pointed out that in his frequent conversations with school staff and students, he’s heard that the use of LGBTQ+ slurs alone is so rampant that it’s “hard to even report.” He said he believes hate bias incidents happen much more often than once a day across the whole district—saying it’s more likely there’s “at least one incident a day in every school.”

Byron Johns is a prominent advocate for the Black community, co-founding the Black and Brown Coalition for Educational Equity and Excellence, and serving as president of the local Parent’s Council for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Responding to the data McKnight cited on Thursday, he said anti-Black racism goes vastly underreported within the school district due to many factors, calling it a “survival mechanism” for some communities.

- Advertisement -

“Especially for people raised in the South, a lot of these kids’ parents grew up hearing, ‘Don’t be smart-mouthed, or you could end up at the end of a tree,’” he said. “And unfortunately, history has shown that to be the case.’”

The superintendent recently held town halls at local synagogues to discuss the rise of antisemitism with students and parents. Guila Franklin Siegel, associate director of the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC), attended both meetings and said students described daily microaggressions as being a “seamless, organic part” of their school experience. She said internalized shame often leads Jewish students to underreport acts of antisemitism.

Eckstein said one of the key new initiatives he heard McKnight highlight was increasing staff training on how to identify a hate bias incident, something he said could use “a lot of improvement.”

“Some forms of trauma and victimization are harder to capture in the reporting process than a hate symbol on a desk,” he said. “And oftentimes staff and teachers are less aware of the context for certain forms of hate, so they report them less.”

McKnight told attendees on Thursday to expect a comprehensive action plan to be publicly presented to the Board of Education at its May 11 board meeting.

Digital Partners

Enter our essay contest