In the first seven months of 2024, seven Connecticut school districts made headlines for alleged racist incidents involving students.
Last week, Glastonbury Police arrested a 16-year-old on hate crime charges after the juvenile allegedly used a stolen social media account to make death threats against Black classmates at Glastonbury High School.
In June, a 14-year-old boy fled the state after enduring months of alleged racist bullying as an eighth-grader at Nathan Hale-Ray Middle School in East Haddam.
In May, a track coach stepped down from her position at Colchester’s William J. Johnston Middle School after she was accused of calling a sixth-grader on an opposing team from Middletown a “gorilla.” The allegation and the circ*mstances around the interaction were disputed by the school.
In April, a video of an alleged text exchange between Wilton Public School students that contained racist speech and hateful language circulated on social media. Just weeks prior, GOOD Morning Wilton reported that the district’s superintendent called on the Board of Education to schedule a special meeting in response to reports of racist and antisemitic incidents.
That same month, Cheshire Public Schools made headlines twice after an unidentified Facebook user called New Haven residents who attend Cheshire schools “thugs.” Later in the month, news outlets reported that racist graffiti was found at Cheshire High School. The slurs were scrawled on a tampon dispenser and cafeteria table.
In March, a Reddit thread about Cromwell students’ experiences with alleged racism and bullying received 275 comments and sparked a community debate about discrimination in the district.
Later, a West Hartford mother said school administrators called to inform her that an individual had allegedly written a racial slur on her son’s Chromebook at Sedgwick Middle School.
In February, Westport parents prompted a public outcry after raising concerns at a board of education meeting about racist incidents that targeted their children at school.
The reaction to these stories often follows a familiar pattern: a flood of public outrage sweeps the community, local officials pledge to do more, and the spotlight dims as news cycles move on to the next controversy.
In isolation, it’s easy to see these stories as a one-time occurrence, perpetrated by one or, in some cases, a handful of bad apples in what district leaders often purport to be an otherwise inclusive barrel of students.
Activists and community leaders say a complete picture paints a very different reality – one that speaks to a systemic pattern of racial hostilities in Connecticut schools that must be confronted head-on.
“This is beyond my wildest imaginations of how this has become an epidemic in the state of Connecticut,” Middlesex County NAACP President Anita Ford Saunders said.
In Saunders’ eyes, leaders should treat racism in schools with the same urgency as a public health crisis.
“(If) you have an outbreak … and you’ve got one in Colchester, and you’ve got one in Middletown, and you’ve got one in East Haddam, and you’ve got one in Cromwell and you’ve got one in Glastonbury — wouldn’t you say ‘Hey, we got a problem here,’ and do something about it?” Saunders said.
Saunders emphasized that the issue is bigger than any one school or town — “It’s Connecticut.”
“The governor needs to pay attention to what’s happening in his state,” Saunders said. “I know of two families who are leaving this state — leaving his state — because of racism. He needs to pay attention (and) the Department of Education needs to look at the state and start finding solutions to this epidemic.”
“This is not like a snowbird going to Florida. This is, ‘I’m packing up my family and I’m going,’” Saunders said. “It’s a sad state of affairs. It doesn’t have to (be) this way. We can do better. Connecticut can do better.”
This summer, Saunders has worked closely with the community in East Haddam to address the recent incidents of alleged racism in the town’s middle school.
In conversations with residents, Saunders said it became clear to her that the recent behavior is part of a larger history of “systemic racism that has gone on in the school system for decades.”
“It’s not everyone, but it is so deeply ingrained,” Saunders said. “When you have someone who is willing to talk to you, but only if they can remain anonymous because they’re afraid of retaliation of what’s going to happen to them in the community (or) how they’ll be ostracized — (you think) is this Connecticut or is this Mississippi?”
“That’s crazy,” Saunders said.
Saunders said she is still searching for solutions that will thwart racism in Connecticut communities. One thing she is sure of is that students and adults must be held accountable for their actions.
“There needs to be consequences,” Saunders said.
“We have hate crime laws (but) it’s very difficult to prosecute hate crimes,” Saunders said. “When it involves a juvenile, it needs to involve the parents. … People have to be accountable and we as citizens need to be able to speak out and hopefully have the courage to speak out.”
Last week in Glastonbury, several community members spoke out at a town council meeting after news broke that a student had been arrested after sending messages containing death threats that included the names of Black students at Glastonbury High School.
Heaven Diaz, who graduated from the school in 2019, demanded action from her town leaders and fellow residents.
“If talking about race makes you uncomfortable, if teaching an important part of American history seems too taboo, if disgusting behavior becomes your dirty little secret, you put every Glastonbury resident in danger and you become the problem itself,” Diaz said. “Racism isn’t something people are born with. It is taught and you should feel ashamed that such hate can be nurtured in our community.”
In messages sent to the community Wednesday and Thursday, the Glastonbury Board of Education and Superintendent Alan Bookman outlined the array of programs, clubs and initiatives in the district that promote diversity, prosocial behaviors and positive digital activity, and work to prevent racism, bullying and violence.
In a phone call with the Courant Wednesday, Bookman said that while you may never know what an individual student is feeling or thinking, it is important for schools to constantly offer programs that combat hate.
However, as the board of education emphasized in their community statement, “Racism and threats of violence are not just school problems. They are shared problems for schools, families, and communities to overcome.”
“When the school day is over, students return to homes where too many of them are bombarded, hours at a time, with the politics of anger, division, hate, and blame played out on television screens and social media apps,” the board’s statement read. “Our schools need your help. There are many ways you can assist in building a more supportive and welcoming community. And there are many ways you can support the efforts of our schools to do the same.”
Even before racist incidents cropped up in Connecticut cities and towns this year, state lawmakers had turned an eye to the hate manifesting in schools.
Last session, the Connecticut General Assembly passed legislation authorizing a task force to study the effects of hate speech and bullying on children.
The charge of the task force extends to bias that targets all different aspects of student identity from race and ethnicity to religion and nationality, to sex and gender identity, as well as disability status and body weight or type.
Rep. Liz Linehan, the chair of the Committee on Children, said the goal is to build a program that will effectively address hate speech where current programming has failed.
“This working group is different,” Linehan said. “We know what the problem is. We have no idea how to get to it. And so we needed to convene the boots on the ground that can help us put together something that will truly work and not just be another feel-good program.”
Linehan stressed that any program put forward by the task force must include a home-based component that actively involves parents and caregivers.
“Any parent could say ‘Well, I don’t teach that stuff in my home.’ Twenty-five years ago, 30 years ago that may have been good enough, but children’s access to information is so vast right now, and with that comes the opinions, not facts,” Linehan explained. “If they are constantly bombarded with messages of hate, the only way to ensure that that message isn’t what burrows in their soul is to not only even it out, but be even stronger on the side of love and tolerance and understanding.”
Linehan described the urgency of the current moment as an “all hands on deck situation.”
“With anything for kids, if there is no buy-in from the home, things aren’t going to get better,” Linehan said.
“It can’t solely be done in schools and that means we need municipalities to get on board, we need nonprofits to get on board, and this is going to take entire communities to make a difference.”
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