In the wake of the death of George Floyd, and the subsequent protests that besieged 2020, Amy Donofrio, a Florida school teacher, decided to use the current events to engage her students in an important dialogue about race in America.
According to CNN, the trouble began for Donofrio when she hung a “Black Lives Matter” banner outside of her classroom at Robert E. Lee High School in Jacksonville to show her mostly black students that they were fully supported there.
“I just wanted to make it clear to my students that when they walk into my room, they can feel safe,” Donofrio told CNN. “They can let out a breath. They can know that they matter.”
The school also found itself caught up in discussion over whether or not they should be named after the Confederate leader, Robert E. Lee. The state’s education commissioner cited them as an example of “indoctrination” and “critical race theory” in schools — even though the discipline was not part of Donofrio’s class curriculum.
Donofrio later found herself embattled with school officials who wanted her to remove the banner as she continued to challenge the district on its treatment of Black staff and students at the school.
Then a federal complaint was filed in April, and Donofrio was reassigned to non-teaching duties. The district said it had opened a “human resources matter to review allegations of potential misconduct” against her.
Now she is suing the Duval County Public Schools and superintendent of its regional high school, alleging that the district retaliated against her “for her protected speech, her complaints about discrimination, and, more broadly, her support of Black students’ lives.”
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