NAACP Challenges Clarkstown Superintendent Over Student Slideshow

CLARKSTOWN, NY — An eighth-grade student presentation on racism and the theme of Black Lives Matter continues to roil the Clarkstown community, as the NAACP issued a statement Tuesday calling on school officials to show the program.

The slide show had been made as part of Festa Middle School's No Place for Hate initiative, a project of the Anti-Defamation League. It was produced by a group of eighth-grade student "ambassadors."

Rumors about the planned presentation in early May led to community frenzy, particularly on social media. Some parents said they would pull their children out of school rather than have them sit through it. The Rockland County Republican Party took a stand, too: "This past week has revealed just how radical Clarkstown Schools have become and there is no one watching out for our kids. Last week, it was revealed that the district planned to have 8th grade students give a lesson to 6th and 7th grade students on Police Brutality and BLACK LIVES MATTER. This abomination was only stopped because a few parents found out about it and informed the community."

Opponents insisted the entire global social justice movement is terroristic, citing violence during protests over George Floyd's murder and the fact that some of the founders of the Black Lives Matter organization in the USA called themselves "trained Marxists."

The presentation was postponed.

At the May 20 Board of Education meeting, many residents spoke on all sides of the issue.

District resident Pete Bradley said someone had sent him 16-18 slides from the presentation. "The thing that is so appalling to so many people is that it was eighth-grade students potentially teaching a very hostile, very sensitive subject, very controversial subject."

It's not junior high school material, he said. "Adults cannot even come to a consensus about what this organization is, about what their underlying political agenda is."

Parent Rob Guzman told the school board that "the great achievement of the civil rights movement was to remove color from the consideration of other people's character" and that he opposed BLM and the teaching of critical race theory because "Their view is that everything needs to be filtered through a prism of color and we as concerned parents and I in particular oppose this view and think it only wins in the culture by default."

But resident Gary Cirlin called on the district to not only allow the presentation to take place but also to create more forums for discussion of the issues.

"The last few weeks, social media sites, particularly those surrounding this school district have shown the absolute worst voices of our community," Cirlin said. "In a vacuum of information, a vacuum of leadership, a vacuum of a united voice, hate, anger and wild ideas have flourished to a nearly unextinguishable place ... The ability to let students share their views and a number of varying and often controversial topics alongside and in conjunction with our amazing men and women in uniform is the most powerful lesson that can be taught to our children ... That is the lesson the adults of our community need to hear and what better way to hear it than from their children and have it backed up by the participation of our elected officials and police leaders."

An eighth-grader who spoke at the meeting, one of the students involved with the presentation, said it was not against other races or police officers as many opponents made it out to be. "This lesson was meant to promote the theme of 'no place for hate' that our schools have emphasized for years; this lesson, like all others, was used to promote equality and a sense of safety among students."

Parent Linda Dunbar noted that she was one of the only people of color at the meeting.

"It's a little frightening to find a room full of white people talking about whether black lives matter or whether they don't know what that means," she told the school trustees. "Some people mentioned that their children are colorblind, but I can tell you ... my son has been called the N word ... and that is from children at his school that live in this community and I'm going to assume that some of those children have parents and that those parents might be in this room at this moment. So my question is what kind of community do we want to be, do we want to be a community where our children learn the cultural competence that they will need to be adults in a world that is changing."

Dunbar also called on the community to take this opportunity to open up the conversation and find ways that are structured to talk to each other. "Because ... no one ever said that police lives don't matter, no one said that, but somehow if you say that black lives matter or lives of color matter somehow the conversation becomes about things that no one even said," she concluded.

But PTA member Lauren Wohl, who said she knew about bigotry from growing up Hispanic in a white Westchester community, said she didn't think her middle-school child, whose police officer dad was continually cursed at during the 2020 riots, could stand up to 8th graders making a presentation on a topic whose nuances they couldn't understand. "You cannot fight hate with hate," she said. "All I'm saying is I'd appreciate it if you kept this presentation off the doorsteps right now, until they're like 11th, 12th grade where they can actually have a debate about it and talk about it, not when they're 12, 13, 14."

Repercussions continue.

On Tuesday, NAACP Mid-Hudson regional director Wilbur Aldridge, and Nyack NAACP Branch President Nicole Hines issued a statement calling on Clarkstown Superintendent Martin Cox to "immediately permit the middle-school students to share their presentation on the importance of human rights, Black Lives Matter and the fight to end discrimination towards people of color."

Aldridge and Hines said they had been attempting to reach Cox for two weeks.

They cited Cox's announcement at the May 20 school board meeting that he would meet with Clarkstown Supervisor George Hoehmann and Clarkstown Police Chief Roy Wanamaker to discuss the issue.

"The presentation in question was not about the Black Lives Movement. It was just about the fact that Black lives matter. Period," Aldridge said.

"Sadly, the students are being harmed by the intolerance of those who deny the existence of racism," said Hines.

The controversy in Clarkstown points to a bigger picture, Aldridge said. "It is no longer acceptable that a school board without any members of color should be making decisions about Black lives and what should or should not be taught about Black history."

If Cox or the trustees hold meetings on the issue, parents of students of color and the NAACP, whose black lives are the subjects of the slideshow, should be welcomed to the table, they said.

"What will it say to the public if there is no room for people of color when the district rejects a program called No Room for Hate?" Hines said.

The NAACP renewed its demand for a meeting with Cox.

"After what we have been through as a country this past year, we cannot stand by and allow a thoughtful, student-driven discussion about race in our schools to be silenced," said Oscar Cohen, NAACP Branch Chair, Education Committee Chair.

Editor's Note: Robert Guzman and Gary Cirlin, residents who spoke at the board meeting, where mis-identified in the original version of this report.