Thread by @evandawson

I hope you'll check out our @WXXINews story on how a local suburban district handled a Black History Month project that went wrong. I want to provide a little background.

(Thread.)

wxxinews.org/post/pittsford…

2) Pittsford is one of the highly ranked districts in New York State. Like many suburban districts, it's mostly white: 78% white students, and 99.4% white teachers, according to the latest numbers we have.

There are 481 teachers in the district. 478 are white. One is black.

3) If Pittsford's teaching staff was proportional to its student body, the district would need to immediately hire another 14 black teachers.

(By the way, this issue is not unique to Pittsford, at all.)

4) The question is, does a lack of representation impact teaching and learning?

Let's take a look at the botched Black History Month project. It happened at a Pittsford elementary school. The fifth grade assignment: honor 100 black inventors. Students created posters.

5) The students created the posters. The teachers hung them in the hallways for the month of February.

On March 1st, Dr. Jerome Jean-Gilles was there, picking up his two young children. They are an African American family.

6) Jerome noticed the posters seemed off. Wrong names, information. But then he saw a string of posters that included the name of a black inventor, but a photo of a white man.

He wondered: what on Earth is this about? White people getting credit for black inventions?

7) He took pictures of the posters; our story has three of them. We tried to figure out what happened. Let's look at these three.

8) One poster is for Powell Johnson, inventor of protective eyewear. The photo is of President Andrew Johnson, a man who routinely described African Americans as inferior. A google search produces no help in determining how a racist president was depicted on this poster.

9) Then you have a poster for Alexander P. Ashbourne, refiner of coconut oil. The white man depicted is apparently Arthur James Balfour, former prime minister of England. No idea how that mistake was made.

10) Then you have William Purvis, an African American who patented an improved hand stamp during the 1800s. The white man on the poster is Edward William Purvis, a British army officer. A google image search lists the Briton third.

11) So how did these posters, designed to honor Black History, and which instead depicted white men, end up hanging in the school hallway? Superintendent Mike Pero says the project was ungraded. Students handed them in; teachers hung them up. No checking for accuracy.

12) But how could these obviously wrong posters hang in the hallway for several weeks without correction? The staff is almost all white; no one noticed.

It required a black parent to see the errors.

Parents tell me: this is what happens when you have an all-white staff. But:

13) Superintendent Mike Pero flatly denies that. I asked if the incident could have been avoided with more diversity on staff.

"No. I don’t think diversity in the teaching staff had anything to do with this incident," he said.

14) Dr. Jean-Gilles was reluctant to talk to me. He does not seek attention. He wanted a meeting, and a guarantee that the mistakes would be corrected.

He was told the project would not be redone; too much time had passed, and the district was concerned it could be politicized.

15) Pero: "What we don’t want is for our staff to ever feel defensive or they’re on their heels or they’re going to be publicly shamed for doing something that has good intentions."

He added that the district owns this failure, and will make sure it is not repeated.

16) Jerome's response: If this'd been a botched math lesson, of course it would be corrected. Why is a botched Black History project ignored?

"They didn’t even address this to the students. What’s the point of the school? If you’re not educating the students, what’s the point?”

17) Some parents have called for a Pittsford community forum. Superintendent Pero told me that this is not the right time for that kind of meeting, but the district is working with a new inclusivity committee. That work is meant to make all students and families feel welcome.

18) Dr. Jean-Gilles, meanwhile, is left wondering what to do next. He says he's entirely unsatisfied. He believes more diversity on the teaching staff would have made a difference.

While Pero disagrees, he says he cares about representation on staff.

19/end) You can decide for yourself if you think an almost entirely all-white staff contributed to this breakdown. Meanwhile, WXXI will compile updated numbers on local districts. In three years, has anything changed? Care to guess?