UPDATE: The San Francisco Public School District announced a resolution regarding the investigation on racist posts shared at Lowell High School.
The resolution calls for an equity audit led by community leaders and to use the regular admissions process that is used by other comprehensive high schools in the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD).
“SFUSD is deeply committed to affirming the lives of our students and has been changing our institutional culture to align with that commitment and undo the normalization of inferiority and bias,” the resolution states.
SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. (KRON) – The San Francisco Public School District is investigating racist posts shared at Lowell High School.
Administrators say a virtual bulletin board was taken over with hateful comments and slurs and it happened after a lesson on anti-racism.
The school district has come out against the behavior, but it is still unclear how this happened.
The district’s department of technology is right now trying to figure out where these offensive posts came from.
It’s believed that this was hack but there’s also a concern that this kind of behavior is not an isolated incident and that racism is, unfortunately, present in Lowell High School’s community.
A lesson on anti-racism at San Francisco’s distinguished Lowell High School unravels into racial slurs targeting African Americans, anti-Semitic comments and other hate speech.
The school’s principal condemning the messages shared from possibly inside or outside the district on Wednesday.
School officials say the offensive posts were shared onto Padlet, an online notice board used by students and teachers to post notes.
Students were asked to share their thoughts following the anti-racism when somehow anti-Black and anti-Jewish slurs bypassed an adult moderator and were posted.
“My heart specifically goes out to the members of our community who were targeted — our Black and Jewish students. The images and hateful words are part of historic acts of violence that have been committed time and again, and I will not tolerate it,” Principal Dacotah Swett said.
District officials deactivated the forum and district tech staff are investigating the issue.
School board president Gabriela Lopez called the hack sickening and in a statement said in part:
“This incident is unfortunately not an isolated one and is an indication of the deeper problems our district must address.”
In 2016, students staged a walkout at the school because they believed administrators were failing to address racism at Lowell.
It appears for some current students those issues remain unresolved.
The San Francisco school’s superintendent has also weighed in on the offensive posts saying the district is committed to anti-racist instruction and that this was an attack not just on Lowell High School but the district as a whole.