Editor’s note: This story, and a draft report linked to in the story, include references to racist, Islamophobic language and bigoted views that are violent in nature.

Newark Public Schools leaders failed to “quickly and consistently” respond to racist and bigoted incidents against Black students and teachers at a city school designed to embrace world cultures, according to a draft of a scathing report that district officials have sought to keep private.

A , obtained by Chalkbeat Newark, details harrowing examples of how Black students and teachers at the Newark School of Global Studies were “subjected to acts of anti-Blackness and anti-Black racism.” The review also highlighted how the school’s response failed to address the problems, and in some cases, magnified racial issues.

The May 2023 draft of the report written by the consulting firm Creed Strategies is the public’s first look into the firm’s review of the cultural, racial, and religious dynamics at Global Studies that pushed some Black students to transfer and teachers to resign. The draft obtained by Chalkbeat is not the latest version of the report. But the district has fought to keep all versions of the report private, nearly two years after Newark school board leaders commissioned it.

Attorneys for the district have argued in court filings that the report is a “predecisional draft document” and therefore exempt from the state’s public records law. If portions of the report were disclosed, “it would have a chilling effect” on the district’s ongoing efforts “to improve dialogue and sensitivity practices” at Global Studies and other schools, according to a court record outlining the district’s opposition to the Newark Teachers Union lawsuit seeking the release of the report.

In 2023, the Newark Teachers Union filed two lawsuits against the district over the release of the report, but the union agreed to  without its release.

The draft report paints a picture of a campus where Black students and teachers reported being called racial slurs by Latino students, the N-word was commonly used among non-Black students, and where complaints by Black students were often dismissed or minimized by administrators and non-Black staff. A male student was repeatedly called an anti-gay slur in class while a teacher was present, and other students made threats to “take off” and “stomp on” the hijabs of Black and Arab Muslim female teachers, according to the review.

Read takeaways from .

Many of the allegations in the draft report have  substantiated in , and are mentioned in lawsuits against the district. The issues also caught the attention of Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, who hosted a town hall to discuss unity among Black and brown communities months after students spoke publicly about their experiences.

Former Global Studies teachers filed a lawsuit against the district alleging that school and district leaders created a hostile work environment where they experienced racial discrimination and retaliation, according to the lawsuit filed in Essex County Superior Court last spring. The lawsuit is ongoing.

The former teachers also filed claims with the U.S. ​​Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights. The department opened an investigation into the claim on Dec. 21, 2023, and it is ongoing.

Paul Brubaker, the district’s communications director, did not respond to Chalkbeat’s request to provide a copy of the full Global Studies report. Instead, in an emailed response, he reiterated the district’s stance that the report is “privileged and confidential.” Brubaker said the school board “reserves the right to take any and all appropriate action to prevent or redress injury to itself,” district staff, school or students.

Brubaker did not respond to questions about the district’s efforts to fix the problems at the high school, how it changed its policies to address racial problems, and the professional support it has provided teachers with since the incidents at the school surfaced.

Superintendent Roger LeĂłn promised to fix the problems

Staff, parents, and students were interviewed by Creed Strategies’ six-member review team about their experiences at the high school and were anonymously quoted throughout the draft report. The research team was made up of professors and education experts with experience in school leadership and representative of the demographics at Global Studies.

In interviews with Creed researchers, Black students described a “sense of betrayal” when their peers and adults used racial slurs, according to the draft report. Most Black students “felt stunned, at a loss for words, or angry” when the incidents occurred, the report read.

When asked by researchers about the reported incidents, some of the staff responded defensively, while others said they did not know about the issues until students spoke publicly in 2022, the review found. Teachers reported that the lack of transparency about the issues at Global Studies limited their ability to understand what was happening and eroded morale, the report read. Other staff said the aftermath of the issues becoming public caused “some upheaval” at Global Studies with “very few” attributing the chaos to the racist incidents Black students and teachers had described in 2022, the draft report stated.

But  revealed that school administrators had known about the issues before they became public, and a parent begged state and district officials for an end to the harassment against her son. School leaders missed an opportunity “to address the professional learning needs” of teachers to be responsive to the incidents and create “culturally responsive” learning, according to the draft.

Some interviewees cited in the report also framed “Black women and girls” as “easily triggered and angry” when discussing the incidents at the school, the review notes. “Instead of focusing on the systemic racism that Black women and girls are speaking up against, there was a sense of defensiveness,” the draft report says. In claims filed by former , they alleged they “suffered harassment and racial hostility by students and supervisors” and felt their “worth as a teacher and human being has been diminished.”

Newark school board leaders commissioned the review of Global Studies at the start of 2023 in response to Black students speaking publicly about a pattern of racist harassment on campus. The May 2023 draft provided the district with three recommendations, which were released publicly, and meant to be “proactively implemented” to tackle anti-Blackness and build Global Studies’ understanding of diversity, the draft read.

A mix of Global Studies parents, students, teachers, some board members, and community advocates have been calling on Superintendent Roger  the full report on the high school and address the problems. LeĂłn promised students he would fix the problems at the school but he has not said what changes or efforts have been made at Global Studies, one of the district’s top magnet schools. Deborah Smith Gregory, president of NAACP Newark, is one of the advocates who has called on LeĂłn to release the Global Studies report but has been ignored, she said during a school board .

“It seems that the rule of the superintendent is being sanctioned by the board with little oversight and question,” said Smith Gregory in December.

Despite calls for transparency, the Newark school board last month quietly  to remove one of its longest-serving members after her daughter filed a legal claim against the district alleging racial harassment and discrimination during her time as a student at Global Studies. A New Jersey judge denied the petition but the state’s commissioner of education will issue a final decision by February.

School leaders did not communicate seriousness of harassment

Students reported racist incidents at the high school since  during remote learning in 2020, while the number of Black students has decreased steadily since then, according to the draft.

According to the draft report, Global Studies’ leaders had a “limited response” to the harassment reported by students and “centered impact rather than intent” of the incidents. Interviews found that some school staff learned about the incidents through their relationships with students and the teachers involved. A “very small group” said “they had no knowledge of the incidents before the students’ public comments” in November 2022, the report read.

Staff interviewees also said “the effect of the public reports and media” on the school environment led to “chaos” and “ill feelings,” the draft states. Some suggested that the feelings were “intensified by the lack of clear communication about why students were complaining and leaving the school,” the report read.

“I think that has made some students more like, upset, angry 
 Unraveled things a little bit. So that’s like an unfortunate thing that it’s like kind of causing some upheaval,” said one interviewee in the report.

As part of the review, teachers and administrators told researchers about 11 reported incidents. Discipline for those incidents ranged from written apologies and cultural sensitivity training to mediation and suspensions, according to the draft. Of the consequences, 22 students had in-school detention, seven received out-of-school suspensions, seven had a parent conference, six received mediation, four participated in out-of-school counseling, three received after-school detention, and three more had a conflict resolution session, according to the draft.

With one exception, Black adult interviewees expressed their belief that Black students experienced racial harm at the high school, while six out of the seven non-Black, non-Latino adults interviewed said “they believed the students and expressed concern about their well-being,” according to the report.

Some said they were also aware of racist incidents against Black and Asian American teachers in the building, the report found. The former teachers who filed a lawsuit against the district claimed they also suffered “severe emotional problems” leading them to seek “psychological counseling” after experiencing racial harassment at the high school. But nine interviewees also suggested the reports of Black students and media coverage “were exaggerated and wanted to set the record straight,” according to the report.

Others lamented the school’s approaches to addressing the incidents and “lack of communication about them were eroding teacher morale,” according to the draft. One teacher specifically suggested that because of the public scrutiny, “administrators started to backtrack reports stated about one of the formally reported incidents,” the report read.

“I want to say that when I hear these recordings about what people are saying and including the students that are in the school, to me, it feels like they’re talking about another school. Because I do not see that. You know, I have not heard that,” an interviewee told researchers.

Missed opportunity to support staff, teachers at Global Studies

One of the main draws of Global Studies was that it promised students would “develop a global perspective” through second-language immersion, exploration of different cultures and career pathways that emphasized international relations in business and diplomacy.

But the overall environment at the school – and the way it was run – led to administrators “missing the opportunity to represent the diversity of its students’ lived experiences and aspirations within the environment and their learning,” according to the report.

When Global Studies opened its doors in 2021 following remote learning, the school was newly renovated and well maintained with college-related signs throughout hallways. But researchers found that the overall tone of the school lacked “the spirit and vitality typical of a high school,” with much of it resembling an elementary and middle school, according to the report.

Most classroom walls were decorated with word walls and inspirational posters or pictures, the report found. Wall displays “rarely demonstrated” how students grappled with topics like geographical and linguistic diversity and global political institutions, the report found. The main theme of the school, which highlights students as global citizens, was often tied by staff to specific celebrations such as Hispanic Heritage and Black History months and notable figures, according to the report.

Additionally, most teachers lacked previous high school teaching experience, according to the report. Students spent “extended periods of time sitting silently” and had a lack of dialogue in classrooms, the report found.

Early on, the school and district administration had not cultivated an environment that encouraged staff to examine and challenge their assumptions of implicit bias and other forms of racism, according to the report.

When Black students spoke about their experiences of racial harassment, school administrators hosted a staff discussion of a book called “Courageous Conversations About Race,” according to the report. But staff members weren’t clear about why they were attending the discussions and told Creed researchers the conversations felt “surface-level” and “lacked transparency and support, and limited their capacity to understand and address the issues” that were happening, the report read.

“There was a missed opportunity to address the professional learning needs of instructional staff to be responsive to these issues as a part of student learning,” the report said.

Response did more damage, leading to transfers, resignations

After Black students spoke out publicly, district leaders held assemblies largely viewed “as insufficient and ineffective” by others, according to the report.

During the 2022-23 school year, Global Studies principal Nelson Ruiz held an assembly for the entire school where he told all students not to use the N-word or they would be suspended, according to the report. The school’s zero-tolerance for the N-word was “not only viewed as harming victims, but it also policed the language and speaking practices of Black students,” the report read.

Interviewees also discussed a pizza party for Black students that some students felt “was an attempt to drive their attention away from the issue,” according to the report. During the , a former Global Studies student said school administrators called members of the Black Student Union “and gave us pizza, candy and even soda,” in what she felt was an attempt to silence students. Ruiz did not respond to calls, a text, or emailed questions from Chalkbeat about his response to the incidents.

León also held an assembly during the 2022-23 school year, specifically for the junior class, where students were told, “If they don’t feel comfortable [at NSGS], basically they can leave,” a student interviewee said. Students interpreted León’s comment as “If you don’t like it, you can leave,” according to the report. Student interviewees also felt as if school staff were not facilitating their transfer requests because of a lack of communication between León and the school, while others said it was because the school “did not want to lose high-achieving Black students,” the draft report stated.

Those findings echo what students had told Newark school board members. During the January 2023 board meeting,  they were being told by guidance counselors that they couldn’t transfer. One student told board members that Leon’s speech “didn’t feel like it had any empathy and it gave very much, ‘if you don’t like it, then go home.” Another student said “a vast amount of students” lined up outside of the guidance counselors’ offices the day after LeĂłn’s assembly. A third student said guidance counselors told her multiple times that she couldn’t transfer and if she left “how would that make us feel.”

Staff interviewees also said high-performing Black students were the first students to try to transfer out and some considered how that would impact the school’s image, according to the draft report.

The transfer rates of Black students have “significantly increased” each year at Global Studies in comparison to all other student groups, according to data included in the draft report. Black students have been less likely to complete an academic year at the school than their peers at Newark School of Data Science and Information Technology, Newark Fashion and Design, and Newark Vocational, the report stated.

At the end of the 2021-22 school year, six Black students transferred out of Global Studies and in the following school year, another seven Black students had transferred as of March 15, 2023, according to the report. During the 2022-23 school year, three Black female teachers resigned, all from the same department, and two Latino students were transferred out, the report notes.

Throughout the report, researchers also found that the school’s restorative approach to the issues did not adequately address “the persistence or saliency” of racist comments by students. To address the incidents, administrators called for parent conferences and time of reflection with students that led Black students to feel emotionally unsafe about being forced to work with students who used racist language toward them and were allowed to remain in classes, according to the report.

The practices also “created an atmosphere where some Latino students felt they could use racist language toward Black students and teachers without consequence,” the draft reads.

Staff members who were interviewed said they were following district policy and “employing a restorative approach” to discipline students while others acknowledged they had an “educative role” to address the use of racial language by non-Black students, the report found.

One teacher acknowledged that education “on the background of why some of the things [students] say to each other are so hurtful” would be useful.

“I think especially for recent immigrants, they come here, and they hear that kind of dialogue, and they adopt it thinking like they’re gonna be proud and part of American culture and have no background for it, and don’t realize that for them, it’s not appropriate to talk that way,” according to the teacher.

The report  build school staff’s capacity to identify cultural gaps, create a racially conscious and inclusive environment, foster conversations about race, and assess the effects of anti-Blackness on the school system.

Researchers also noted that “the courage and resilience” of Black students at Global Studies who assumed leadership positions in school organizations, participated in extracurricular activities, and are high achievers demonstrated a level “of social awareness and activism” by challenging racial discrimination.

Their efforts were aligned with the Global Studies theme, the report found.

This was originally published on .

An erroneous outcry around critical race theory created more red tape for Akeem Brown, complicating the opening of , a school designed to celebrate the Black and brown communities who partnered with Brown to co-create it.

identifies and prepares excellent leaders to transform education in their communities. Brown is a , and we are proud to have walked alongside him in his remarkable journey to found Essence Prep, set to open in August 2022 serving students in kindergarten through second grade. 

Building and leading a locally responsive public charter school is the ultimate exercise in community organizing and engagement for school leaders. BES understands how to do this, and we believe Brown did it very successfully in designing Essence Prep.

While Essence Prep will deliver a high-quality education to any and all students, Brown intentionally co-created a public charter school with a predominantly Black and Latino community; a community who expressed a desire for a public educational option designed to meet the unique needs they face every day in San Antonio’s Eastside and beyond. The charter application he submitted in 2021 promised high academic standards, culturally responsive teaching, social-emotional learning and a focus on learning about public policy. 

At first, the Texas Education Agency enthusiastically recommended the school be granted a charter with an 11-3 vote. Days later, TEA leadership received feedback from an elected official citing . Though this criticism inaccurately lumped together the school’s diversity, equity and inclusion practices with critical race theory, it effectively influenced TEA to request that Brown and his team remove anti-racist language from their website and from the charter application, unnecessarily lengthening the authorization process. Not only did this delay cost Essence Prep energy, time and money, it forced them to rewrite parts of the application that were important to the founding of the school — a process they had worked on together with the community.

To be clear, Essence Prep never promised to teach critical race theory; critical race theory was not mentioned in any part of the application, its curriculum, or its website. What Essence Prep promises is an inclusive learning environment that celebrates students’ cultures; ensures a psychologically safe environment for students of all backgrounds, needs and abilities; and teaches students to examine and interrupt the inequality they see in their own lives. Preventing anti-racism is inherently racist, and it is wrong.

Under the new Texas law, a “teacher may not be compelled to discuss a widely debated and currently controversial issue of public policy or social affairs.” Charter schools are public schools, held to the same accountability standards as any district-operated school and the curriculum taught in public charters must uphold state law. Unfounded claims about Essence Prep’s charter application created more work for a team made up entirely of people of color, forcing them to compromise on authentically representing the voices of the community, one of the hallmarks of their school model that parents stated they couldn’t find in other schools. Using these laws to limit opportunity for people of color is rooted in white supremacy. It is racist, and it is wrong.

Essence Prep was pressured to abandon its equity vision statement, which called for its school community to focus on “educational reform to achieve social, cultural, environmental, economic, and racial justice.“ All references to “Black and brown students,” and all references to anti-racism were dropped from their website and marketing materials. We at BES believe this pressure was driven by the fear that children might be taught to critically examine the world around them and create pathways to help all people overcome oppression. Those who fought against Essence Prep’s anti-racist design argued that such an educational experience would be uncomfortable for the school’s white students. This claim is baseless, and it is wrong. 

Families have a right to high-quality educational options that are intentionally designed to celebrate their communities and cultures and meet the unique needs of their students. Brown and his team spoke with nearly 500 families when designing Essence Prep; families who want their students to be able to interrupt the injustice they experience, develop knowledge of themselves and be agents of change in their communities and beyond. Essence Prep has promised to do this and more.

 Just as privileged, often white, communities have the opportunity to create and choose school options that meet the needs of their children, communities of color have the right to help design public school options that are aimed at creating safe, inclusive and anti-racist spaces for all students. Essence Prep will be that school when it opens its doors in a few months.

School district leaders might deny that they’re openly teaching critical race theory, but the nation’s largest teachers union is launching a campaign to have them do just that.

Delegates at the National Education Association’s annual meeting last week a calling for a campaign to implement the theory in curriculum and oppose efforts to ban it. Other items approved include researching organizations “attacking educators doing anti-racist work” and naming Oct. 14 — George Floyd’s birthday — as a national day dedicated to teaching about oppression and structural racism.

On Tuesday, the leader of the nation’s other major teachers union joined the fray. American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten said critical race theory is not taught in schools, but pledged to back any teachers who address topics the laws seek to exclude from classroom conversations.

“Mark my words: Our union will defend any member who gets in trouble for teaching honest history. We have a legal defense fund ready to go,” she said at the opening of the union’s annual professional development conference. She added that “culture warriors want to deprive students of a robust understanding of our common history.”

It’s unclear whether the NEA is encouraging members in states that have already passed anti-critical race theory legislation to violate the law. At the very least, it is arguing that teachers shouldn’t gloss over “unpleasant aspects of American history” according to the union’s adopted statement.

The theory — bitterly dividing communities across the country — teaches that racism is an integral part of U.S. systems and institutions that purposely disadvantage people of color. The unions’ stance comes as nine states have already banned instruction that references structural racism, white supremacy and other key principles of the theory. More than 20 other states have considered similar bills.

The union was “forced to some extent” to enter the fray because of how volatile the debate has become, said Bradley Marianno, an assistant education professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

“Their members, particularly those who wish to instruct on elements of critical race theory, want to know that they have a union behind them if their jobs are jeopardized by their classroom instruction,” he said. “This is not a new role for teachers’ unions in the broadest terms but is also somewhat unique in that this one is tied so tightly to instruction informed by a single theory.”

Like the conflict over reopening schools, the clash over critical race theory is pitting parents who want a say in what schools teach against unions seeking to protect teachers’ autonomy, Marianno said, adding that they “will continue to butt heads throughout this school year.”

Weingarten, in fact, predicted that this coming school year could be even more challenging than the last.

“It won’t be easy, and some people will try to make it harder, like those who have disparaged educators, scapegoated our unions and blamed us for things outside our control, like school closures caused by a pandemic,” she said.

Marianno said the NEA’s action could be an effort to preempt any further bans on instruction related to critical race theory, but that the union has also “opened up the avenue for litigation” in the nine states with existing restrictions.

Not all teachers, however, agree with the focus on race and racial oppression in the classroom. The conservative Southeastern Legal Foundation is representing a Chicago-area teacher in , filed last week, that argues antiracist training for teachers and students is unconstitutional. Stacy Deemar, a middle school drama teacher, argues that the Evanston/Skokie School District 65 is violating prohibitions on discrimination by race, color or national origin. According to the lawsuit, the district has organized both teachers and students into racial “affinity groups” and required them to participate in “privilege walks” where they are segregated by color.

Meanwhile, teachers are receiving increasing support from civil rights groups, who are drawing comparisons between the current uproar over critical race theory and the struggles of the 1960s. One group, the , a nonprofit seeking to preserve the history of a student-led organization that participated in the civil rights movement, penned an open letter to teachers.

“We who resisted the laws of segregation by sitting at ‘White Only’ lunch counters, and organized voter registration campaigns among those historically denied the right to vote, stand now in support of those teachers and professors who today defy this new form of McCarthyism by pledging to continue writing, speaking, and teaching about systemic racism, structural inequality, and institutionalized white-supremacy past and present,” the letter said. “To all the courageous teachers who won’t back down from teaching their students the truth, we stand with you.”

Editor’s note: Reporting for this story was based partly on “business items” that the National Education Association passed at its annual meeting last week, but which no longer appear to be on the union’s website.

An item referring to critical race theory in curriculum appeared under prior to its approval and reads that the union will support and lead a campaign that results “in increasing the implementation of culturally responsive education, Critical Race Theory, and Ethnic (Native People, Asian, Black, Latin(o/a/x), Middle Eastern and North African, and Pacific Islander) Studies curriculum in Pre-K-12 and higher education.” The news of its passage also no longer appears to be on the union’s website, but was .