[dropcap]T[/dropcap]wo former Mamaroneck students have filed a civil rights lawsuit against the local public school district alleging it did nothing to combat racial discrimination and bullying.
The lawsuit, which is seeking a trial by jury, contains numerous accounts of classmates’ “racist” language and harassment directed at two black siblings over several years.
The suit was filed in federal court on May 18.
The anonymous plaintiffs, only identified in the lawsuit as A.A. and B.A., were taken out of the school district by their mother in 2019 and are currently being home schooled. Their full names are being withheld from the court filings to protect their identities.
Entering the majority white school district in 2011, A.A., now 15, attended Central Elementary School and first encountered racial harassment right away. When he turned nine, he was given a birthday card by one of his classmates; the card read, “Happy birthday. Avoid prison.”
The N-word was first spoken in his presence in school when he was in the fifth grade, at the age of 10. While playing a game with classmates and speaking out loud words that correspond with letters in the alphabet, one of his classmates, when it came to the letter “N,” looked at A.A. and said the N-word, followed by “Obama” for “O.”
“A.A. was so upset by these comments that he started to cry,” the lawsuit reads.
In 2012, B.A., now 14, joined Central’s second grade and began to feel ostracized from the rest of her class, recalling one day, in particular, when a classmate shouted, “Africans are annoying” while others just laughed. Although the student was reprimanded, B.A’s mother, listed in the lawsuit as C.A., said that the issue was never wholly addressed or used as a teachable moment.
As the harassment continued, the siblings and their mother routinely reported incidents to school officials. At first, teachers and guidance counselors were notified through emails, phone calls and conferences, until finally the matter was brought to the attention of Dr. Robert Shaps, the schools superintendent.
But the lawsuit claims the school district did nothing to stop it. “Defendants tolerated a culture in the school district where racism became the norm,” the suit reads.
Shaps, Mamaroneck High School Principal Elizabeth Clain, Assistant Principal Mario Washington and the Board of Education are also named defendants in the case.
According to the lawsuit, when A.A. matriculated into Hommocks Middle School, things would only get worse.
His classmates referred to him as the N-word so often that he lost count. “How many times is enough for the n-word to be mentioned,” he once asked his guidance counselor.
In seventh grade, while in the locker room after swim class he witnessed several students mimicking whipping slaves with towels; another student dangled shoelaces to mimic hangings.
Unable to cope, A.A. would cry at times on his walks home with his sister. The situation affected their own relationship, as A.A. would, on occasion, lash out at B.A. in anger and frustration. Through this, B.A. began to worry if her own time at school would soon resemble her brother’s experiences.
“How many times is enough for the n-word to be mentioned.”
-A.A. asked his 8th grade guidance counselor
Meanwhile, the abuse is alleged to have peaked in high school.
During a ninth grade Biology class, A.A.’s classmates put microscope covers on their heads pronouncing they were in the Ku Klux Klan, KKK, and telling him that he couldn’t join. According to the lawsuit, his classmates also asked A.A. if he wore a do-rag on his pubic hair.
That year, both Principal Clain and Assistant Principal Washington encouraged A.A. to report any instances of harassment directly to them in person. So for several months during spring 2019, A.A. would meet each Friday with both administrators, but they failed to protect him from the retaliation he received in return from students for reporting on them. Instead, that approach, which put the onus on A.A., only intensified the culture of bullying, the lawsuit claims.
“Neither Ms. Clain nor Mr. Washington… took any meaningful steps to stop the discrimination,” the filing reads. “And they did not take any steps to help [A.A.] cope with it.”
By the end of the school year, A.A. had bouts of trouble sleeping, became depressed and dreading going to school daily. Persuaded by pleas from her son, C.A. decided to withdraw both of her children from the district in the fall of 2019.
She first notified a high school guidance counselor, Ms. Tramontozzi, of her decision to pull her kids out of school via email. At the time, A.A. was a high school sophomore and B.A. was in the eighth grade.
“It is a sad time for me as a parent to face and accept that my children cannot be a part of a school system (like other children) that I patiently tried to work with,” C.A. wrote. “But it has been even sadder to witness hurting children who go to school only to be racially tormented year after year. Hearing [A.A.] say he cannot peel off his skin and therefore would rather not exist if he has to endure the repeated racial torment is unacceptable to any one who values human life let alone that of a child.”
Yet, according to the court filings, even after leaving school both children continued to suffer. They remained anxious, afraid to run into former classmates. A.A. even had a panic attack, one time, when the family visited a pizzeria across the street from the high school.
“What happened to A.A. and B.A. should never happen to any child,” said Emma Freeman, attorney for Emery Celli Brinckerhoff and Abady LLP. “Racist abuse is impermissible everywhere, but it is especially traumatic in schools, where young children like A.A. and B.A. internalize the cruel words of their peers.”
However, these are not the first accusations of discrimination against the school district.
In 2019, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, OCR, investigated a complaint brought forth by a Hommocks School parent whose daughter, along with two other black students, were called the N-word by a white student. The parent contended that the school district mishandled the incident and discriminated against his daughter, but OCR find insufficient evidence to support the parents’ claims.
The district was also involved in a 2016 controversy when it refused to let a Guatemalan immigrant—who had recently moved to Larchmont—attend Mamaroneck High School. The district claimed the student had already received the equivalent of a high school education in his native country, making him ineligible. But after the New York Civil Liberties Union intervened, the state Education Department ordered the district to enroll the teen.
And back in 2012, the U.S. Department of Education investigated the school district and found that minority students were disproportionately placed in one of four kindergarten classes at Central Elementary School. As a result, the school district was monitored by the federal department for two years and required to report its student classroom assignments.
The Mamaroneck school district declined comment on the lawsuit. But the Board of Education penned a letter to the school community acknowledging past and current allegations of racism within its schools.
“Our district has faced several accusations in recent years that it has not done enough to address explicit or implicit institutional racial bias,” the letter reads. “This Board believes sunlight is an important antidote. Isolating or minimizing these incidents only feeds the perception that we are uncaring or blind to the issue of systemic racism and unconscious bias, which is untrue.”
The plaintiffs are asking the school district to develop policies for ending a hostile and intolerant environment as well as compensatory and statutory damages to include plaintiffs’ expenses, costs and attorneys’ fees.
CONTACT: chris@hometwn.com
