Teacher Resigns After School District Slams Her BLM Curriculum

A Michigan teacher resigned after school district officials slammed her Black Lives Matter curriculum suggestions for Black History Month.

For three years, special education teacher Katelyn Thomas has taught grades one through five. She says that she suggested the Black Lives Matter curriculum to Mason Public School district leaders in an email ahead of Black History Month. Leaders of BLM have urged educators to use the month of February to teach about diversity, racial injustice, and other factors facing the Black community.

The email, which was sent to the Mason Board of Education, the superintendent, the special education director, and the school principal, included a link to Black Lives Matter at School, which is the organization’s education initiative. The link included several helpful resources, according to Thomas.

“If Mason Public Schools would stand behind this big of an action, it would be a very powerful statement to our community and to all the stakeholders involved.”

She added that the resources she sent were not controversial. Instead, it included information on Black women and multigenerational families.

After making the suggestions, Thomas was ordered to attend a meeting where she was verbally reprimanded by leadership staff for allegedly violating the district’s policy on controversial topics. The school board defines these as “a topic on which opposing points of view have been promulgated by responsible opinion.”

Ronald Drzewicki, the Mason Public Schools Superintendent, said that the district reviews all teaching material before approving them to be used in the classroom. He claims that the “process takes time and must be followed to verify accuracy and consider the age-appropriate nature of the content before information is shared with students.” He maintains that the district would never deny its teachers the opportunity to teach about diversity, calling the claims “simply not true.”

Mason Public Schools district data shows that only about 2% of students and 1% of staffers are Black.

In her resignation letter, submitted on February 12th, Thomas said that her values and “integrity as a person do not align with this district or the policies and practices currently in place.” Thomas is married to a Black man, and their children are biracial, which is why the subject is of particular importance to her.

She slammed the district, saying that denying emotionally impaired students the opportunity to be educated on diversity, equity, and current events facing Blacks in America is “shameful.”