A newly hired fourth grade teacher at a Utah elementary school is on paid leave after administrators learned of a video posted on her social media account that states she built her classroom for “nonwhite students.”
According to the video, the William Penn Elementary School teacher said: “For the first time in my life, I’m going to be teaching at a majority-white school, and I’m kind of interested to see how students and parents react to my classroom, or if they even notice anything about it, because it’s built for nonwhite students.”
Ben Horsley, spokesman for the Granite School District, said in a statement that the comments made by the teacher “are very disconcerting and she has been placed on leave while the district investigates the matter.”
The statement continued, “It would be in violation of our district policies and state board rule to teach anything other than the approved curriculum and standards or to discriminate against any student. As soon as our investigation is complete, we anticipate taking appropriate corrective action. We know that our role as educators is to support parents and the families we serve and we value our parents and their engagement in our schools and classrooms.”
Long-term substitute teachers and other grade-level teachers are covering the teacher’s classes, according to the district.
Horsley said the video was posted in July and recently came to administrators’ attention.
The teacher also discusses classroom materials and books in her classroom library.
“If you look around and you interact with some of the materials I have, you’ll notice that there’s like, no white kids represented in that,” the teacher said.
“So just on like that, that very first level of multicultural education, and I don’t think, like, my new students will mind, but you know, not a single white face there.”
In the video, the teacher said she has a big stack of coloring pages “and not a single one with a person on it depicts a white person or character.”
The teacher said literature “is kind of dominated by straight, CIS white men” so there are several titles in her library that reflect that.
“But it is overpowered now from all the books that I’ve been purchasing to add on to my library that depict a lot of diverse peoples, whether that’s people of color, or have like books or nonbinary, trans, otherwise LGBTQ characters.”
The teacher said “there’s just not a lot of adherence to the status quo on just that like base level of my classroom. So I’m kind of wondering if I feel like some parents might have something to say about that. If my experience with posh white parents in the past holds true for this year, we’ll see.”
The district’s investigation is continuing and Horsley had no estimate of how long it would take.
Horsley said Granite School District seeks to ensure every student “feels welcome and is not discriminated against in any way, shape or form, that every child is brought into a welcoming and safe environment.”
Responding to a Fox News story on the video, the parents rights organization Utah Parents United tweeted: “News stories like this are sad. There are so many amazing teachers. Yet all the focus is on teachers who are abusing their positions of trust. As parents we know who the ‘good’ teachers are. We are so grateful for them.”
Granite School District’s social media policy says teachers need to register any social media account they use in an official capacity with the school district. They can have personal social media accounts, Horsely said.
The policy states that “it is important that teachers be cognizant of their presence and any interactions with students, parents and others on social media.”
The district website provides resources on “how to leverage the use of social media in school in appropriate ways.”
The investigation will also cover whether the teacher’s actions constituted a violation of state school board rules.
In June 2021, the Utah State Board of Education passed a rule intended to clarify what concepts of diversity, equity and inclusion cannot be taught in public schools.
The board acted after the Utah Legislature, meeting in an “extraordinary session,” passed resolutions that encouraged the state school board to ban the teaching of “harmful” concepts, joining other state legislatures taking various action against the teaching of critical race theory. CRT is not part of the Utah State School Board’s core content standards.
The board rule prohibits instruction or professional training by a school district or charter school “that promotes or endorses that a student or educator’s sex, race, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity or membership in any other protected class is inherently superior or inferior to another sex, race, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity or any other protected class.”
It also precludes instruction that “a student or educator bears responsibility for the past actions of individuals from the same sex, race, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity or any other protected class as the student or educator.”