Parents ask Sebastopol Union School District to address racial bullying at Brookhaven
PART 1: Parents say repeated incidents of racist name-calling weren't dealt with satisfactorily by the school or district
This is Part 1 of a two-part article on this issue. The first part deals with the discussion about this issue at last week’s Sebastopol Union School Board meeting. The second part is an interview with Sebastopol Union School District Superintendent Sara Gramm about what the district has done and is doing to stop racist name-calling and other forms of bullying at Park Side and Brookhaven.
The Sebastopol Union School Board meeting last week was packed as parents and other concerned folks crowded into the district’s small conference room to speak about the issue of racist name-calling by students at Brookhaven Middle School.
The issue was brought to light by Nadine Burke Harris, a pediatrician and formerly the Surgeon General of California, who lives in Sebastopol with her husband and two children. Harris, who is black, and her husband Arno, who is white, said their son has been the victim of repeated racist name-calling at school. Frustrated by what they say is the school’s inaction on this issue, they took their story to the Press Democrat.
At the school board meeting, the Burke Harris family was backed up by a group of around 15 other Sebastopol Union parents, who told of troubling incidents their own children had experienced in school, including antisemitism and verbal bullying for a variety of issues, including autism. The recent press attention also brought people from as far away as Petaluma and Glen Ellen to speak in support of the Burke-Harris family.
Nadine Burke Harris was the third parent to speak during Public Comment at last Thursday’s board meeting. We are presenting her comments in full:
My name is Nadine Burke Harris. I'm a pediatrician, and I'm the mom of two boys in Sebastopol Union School District. And many of you may have been familiar with the article that was in the Press Democrat, where we shared our story. I wanted to come here this evening so that you could hear directly from me what the experience is that my family has had.
When the first incident happened, I received an email in January of 2023 from Ms. Gramm, sharing that my son had been called a racial slur, and and in the email, it said that there had been a restorative justice conversation, and it was felt like the child didn’t have racist intent, and that the kids left together happily.
I really have deep concerns about how that went because I will say to you, to be honest, when my son came home, he didn't even tell us that he was the one who was the victim of the slur. He knew that we would…I felt like he got a strong message that ‘Everything’s fine, it’s okay, there’s no problem here.’ We felt like email was an inappropriate way of notifying a parent about something like that; we would have preferred to receive a phone call. We reached out to schedule a meeting, and the next day, we went and met with school leadership. It was in that meeting that it was clear that it was actually our son who had been on the receiving end of that slur, and that he had been trying to make it go away.
One of the reasons why we would have preferred to receive a phone call is because at the time, there was not a single black or African American staff member or employee throughout the district. So there was no one my son could go to who might be able to empathize with his experience.
When my family decided to move to Sebastopol to raise our kids—my husband grew up in western Sonoma County and his brother, my son's uncle, actually went to Brookhaven—our kids had been in private school in San Francisco, and here we wanted to be a part of making the public school community stronger.
And so after our experience with this situation, we decided to really invest in making our school district better and stronger, and that is why we made the $10,000 gift to the Sebastopol Education Foundation, specifically to support anti-racist curriculum and training. That gift was made in May of 2024. We didn’t receive a thank you note. We didn’t receive an acknowledgement. We received nothing. We received no communication.
At back-to-school night, months later—so this is now September—we heard Sebastopol Education Fund was trying to raise $30,000 this year, and my husband and I looked at each other and said, ‘Oh, so it wasn't that our gift was insignificant; it was just unacknowledged.’
In any case, there have been several more racist incidents involving our son being targeted with racial slurs or harassment, and in each case, we have really stepped up our engagement with leadership to say, ‘Hey, what’s going on? What’s being done?’
We see that when a substitute teacher comes and [reports that] the kids’ behavior is so bad that she says she's not coming back, there was an email out to all parents saying, ‘Hey, we had a conversation with your kids about this, but you need to talk about this with your kids too because this behavior is unacceptable.’
There was no such email after multiple incidents of racial aggression against our child, and so on April 18 [of this year], I sent an email to leadership saying that:
We ask for you to hold a convening to listen to the concerns of parents and guardians about racism in school climate;
We ask that you explicitly address conduct regarding race with all students and the consequences for violating school policy;
That you clearly communicate the policy on racist behavior and consequences to violations to all parents and guardians. (Because one of the things that we heard with the first incident was. “Oh, that student has a black grandpa,” and I was just like, that bears no relevance to the harm that happens when he says those words to my child.)
The fourth thing that we asked for was to establish an anti-racist curriculum, as well as a robust response to racist incidents.
I received a response to my email that was sent on April 18 on May 2. It did not address any of those four requests that I talked about. It shared that, junior high is a difficult time, and we can't control all things, and therefore I simply repeated my requests. On May 3, I sent an email signed by eight other parents, some of whom are in the room, saying, ‘Hey, we want to repeat our request that you do these four things.’
We did not get a response a week later, a month later, two months later. We only received a response after I had already contacted the Press Democrat, which was at the end of July. So that is why we're here. We would like to see, for me, I think, a community conversation, not about ending all racism, about how we as a community come together and put a very clear stake in the ground to guide our children about what is acceptable and what is not acceptable. And number two, I would like to see—and I don't know if this is something we can talk about or maybe get agendized—I'd like to understand if responding to these issues and creating a culture of safety for our kids is part of the performance evaluation for our school leaders.
The racial slurs in question included being called a “black monkey” and words that sound like the N-word, including “Niger” and “vinegar.”
During public comment, several people spoke in support of the Burke Harris family and in support of having the district adopt an anti-racist curriculum.
“I’m a parent of a student at Brookhaven and a graduate from Brookhaven,” said Sam Swinburne. “I just want you to know I fully support Dr. Burke Harris’s demands as a parent in the school district. They’re immeasurably reasonable and incredibly important. We moved here from Oakland four years ago, where my kids went to a school that had a social justice curriculum that did anti racist work, and it can be really transformative for the community, for parents, for students, for educators. And I really hope that the district will take this seriously and begin to implement these demands.”
Sebastopol’s Kristy Boblitt, a white parent of two black children who went to school in Santa Rosa, echoed Burke-Harris’s experience.
“My own son had a very similar experience at his middle school in Santa Rosa, the Rincon Valley Middle School and Lake Middle School, where he was called very similar things. And we had a pretty similar experience where it was addressed as a bullying issue, but not an individual issue, and not addressed to the school community. I can tell you that even if the leadership may not feel that there is intent, like conscious intent from a child, the impact is what we need to think about. There's intent and impact. The impact of these statements on our children is incredibly damaging, and it creates stress and problems later on. Childhood trauma and the stress that comes from racism—it’s well-proven that there is a connection to issues with mental health.”
Boblitt, who is white, co-founded a black teen leadership group called Grapevine. She said that the teens in that group faced similar harassment in their schools. “This is across the board, across the county, and it's time that it changes, and it is a hard thing…We're not living in a great time for this right now, but we need to stand up, and we need to be, as a community, more aware this is happening to our kids every day, all day.”
Board chair Deborah Drehmel thanked everyone who had shown up and spoken. She noted that, due to the Brown Act, board members were not able to respond directly to public comments. She also noted that the district had held one facilitated listening session for the parents who were concerned about this issue and was planning to have a second facilitated listening session for the larger school community. Drehmel also mentioned that Sara Gramm, the district’s superintendent and the principal of Brookhaven, was putting together a report of all the efforts the school and district had made in order to prevent racist bullying.
“We believe very strongly that the entire staff and the community has good will, positive intentions, and an awareness that work has been done and is ongoing, Drehmel said, picking her words carefully. “We clearly need to make some steps, some efforts, to add in to what we have done in the past, which clearly doesn't meet—according to the conversations that we're hearing tonight—the needs of the age.”
“Our understanding is the next step will be another listening session, and simultaneously with that, I know that on an ongoing basis, there's been work done in the schools and will continue to be done,” Drehmel said. “We want to work collaboratively, and we recognize that there is a lot of work to be done. We've heard some very concrete suggestions. We have some potentially new resources that have been brought forward—we very much appreciate that.”
She then suggested that the board agendize a discussion on this issue after the next listening session, a proposal which didn’t sit well at all with the assembled parents.
“I think that on the next agenda item, it would be pretty authentic of you all to just have the open dialog with the parents and not wait for the next listening session,” said parent and Sebastopol Education Foundation treasurer Matt Wynkoop.
Drehmel pushed back.
“As a board is we want this [the listening session] as broad as possible,” she said. “The function of a facilitator is to bring forth voices, not just those at the forefront, but the others beyond that…I would caution that processes have value and importance and bring forth a lot of opportunities for people to come forward prior to our board discussion. Our work is to direct our administrative team to do the work, and that seems to be in process,” she said.
“So all it took was a Press Democrat article,” someone in the audience sniped.
“I think what you're hearing from some of the parents is a loss of faith in the process that we've been going through so far,” said Nadine Burke-Harris. “So for example, you mentioned the meeting on Tuesday with the facilitator, which was useful for hearing people's feelings. There was nothing that was said in that meeting that has not been said in previous conversations that we’ve had with the administration, and our experience is that those conversations have led to lack of action. So I definitely left that meeting feeling, hearing once again, like ‘We hope that you know that this is important to us,’ and the thought that was in my mind that I didn’t say, was ‘We'll know when we see the action, right?’ As you said, this is an urgent issue. This has been years, years in process. Literally, I mean between April 18, when the explicit request was made in writing (‘Please communicate to the entire student body and families’) and today is August 21, right? Our experience is is that it feels like there's a lot of process and very little action.”
“I think what I'm hearing is a request for a parallel process with the board that is not predicated on action by the administration,” Burke-Harris continued. “For the board to engage with concerned families and concerned parents that isn't only through another process that has been fairly fraught.”
In the end, the board agreed to add an item about this issue to the agenda of their next meeting.
“The dates of our next two regular board meetings have been changed,” Drehmel wrote in an email to the Sebastopol Times after the meeting. “The regular September meeting will be on Wednesday, Sept. 17, and the October regular board meeting will be on Thursday, Oct. 16.” A discussion of budget actuals was moved to a special meeting on Sept. 10, 4 pm. All of these meetings will be at the district office at 7611 Huntley St. in Sebastopol.
Drehmel noted that the September meeting would include “a discussion around racist language and behavior, procedures and policies, and, depending on work done over the next few weeks, a discussion around directed donations,” such as the $10,000 donation the Burke Harris family gave for anti-racist curriculum.
She also said that the second listening session the district had hoped to have in early September couldn’t be scheduled until the end of September.
When the public comment period was over, the parents and their supporters walked outside into the fading, late-summer sunlight.
Burke-Harris had mixed feelings about the meeting.
“We're just looking to see action,” she said. “My hope is that this is something the school board will take very seriously, particularly in their role in overseeing our school administrators. My biggest thing that I am leaving here with is just seeing how our community has showed up, and that has been the most heartening thing.”
“Obviously, it’s heartbreaking to hear more and more parents sharing their stories of how they’ve experienced similar things,” she said. “I think that it’s clear that these are not one-off situations and that we actually need to respond as a community.”
I was at an extended Taos Roundtable meeting last night. Identical patterns exist here as in Sebastopol, where I lived for many years. Elected officials seem to to assume that, upon being elected, they possess knowledge, discernment, and wisdom lacking among those who elected them. It seems to be a disease of politicians in general.
The 1940’s Rodger’s and Hammerstein musical « South Pacific » was a story about racial prejudice. There was a song, so controversial that it was kept off the official soundtrack record; « You’ve Got to be Taught « .
The parents of each generation pass the virus of prejudice. Our society needs a to break this ignorant cycle, through all school systems.
Thank you Sebastopol Times for your leadership in journalism
https://youtu.be/VPf6ITsjsgk?si=vhd0K-PHpAws-9hK