The news of an all-white, conservative-led Francis Howell School Board voting to drop elective courses on Black history and Black literature – then almost immediately rescinding the mandate made national headlines.
The decision, however, wasn’t exactly breaking news to some who live and raise children in the district.
“It’s a follow-the-trail kind of thing,” said Harry Harris, father of a seventh grader in the district.
Referring to the newly elected Francis Howell school board, Harris said, “These people know what they’re doing. They were all backed by a PAC (political action committee) which has shown nothing but disdain for everything and anything that has to do with Blackness, diversity, equity, or inclusion.”
Harris referenced “Francis Howell Family,” a national PAC, locally headquartered in St. Peters, that supported candidates in last years’ school board race that were aligned with its views; such as its belief that there are hidden agendas involving critical race theory (CRT) and social justice in the elective courses offered in the district.
According to a 2021 press release, the PAC stated it was specifically created “inresponse to theFrancis Howell School District Board [of Education] and superintendent developing and teaching the dangerous and racist critical race theory and social justice agenda in its high schools and middle schools…”
Without citing specific examples, the PAC went on to state that it was rejecting “any attempt to divide people by race, gender, or other immutable characteristics or to teach that those characteristics determine their destiny.”
Heather Fleming, a St. Charles resident, mother of three Francis Howell school district children and a consistent critic of its school board, is highly frustrated by the nonsensical far-right culture wars that have invaded the nation’s school systems.
“The anti-CRT argument is just something people have just made up in their heads; It’s not even taught in our schools,” Fleming stressed, adding: “How do you strategize against something that people just make up and lie about over and over again?”
At the time, 2021, there were two contentious issues Francis Howell Family and its chosen candidates swore to revise or rescind. One was a non-binding, but symbolically relevant proclamation adopted in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. Francis Howell students who complained about discrimination against students and staff of color passionately advocated passing the resolution.
The PAC, however, drafted an alternative proclamation “against all acts of racial discrimination,” which included “racially divisive Critical Race Theory, labels of white privilege, enforced equity outcomes, identity politics…and Marxism.”
Of course, it gave no concrete examples of how or where those topics were taught at Francis Howell or any other St. Charles County school.
The other “controversial” issue was the board’s 6-0 adoption, in 2021, of two elective classes – Black History and Black Literature. The curriculum is based in part on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s “Teaching Tolerance” project. The PAC interpreted a section of the curriculum that focused on leading “Critical Conversations” writing that it indicated educators “who developed the curriculum do in fact have the goal of turning our students into social justice warriors with elevated critical consciousness.”
In April 2023, three candidates backed by the PAC, Ron Harmon, Mark Ponder and Jane Puszkar won three open seats on Francis Howell’s school board. They comprised a conservative majority by joining Board President, Adam Bertrand, and Vice President Randy Cook Jr., both who had already expressed desires to purge the anti-racism proclamation approved by the previous board.
By July 2023, the resolution was revoked with Cook bragging: “the board “doesn’t need to be in the business of dividing the community.”
Neither Bertrand, Cook or any of the other newly elected board members bothered to define what exactly was divisive about a declaration stating that the school district would “speak firmly against any racism,” “promote racial healing” and acknowledge “the challenges faced by our Black and brown students and families.”
A Post Dispatch editorial at the time chided the board’s response to the resolution:
“The newly seated conservative majority on the board somehow found enough fault with these words of racial tolerance to vote last week to effectively purge them from the record and literally remove printed versions of them from school building walls,” it read.
True to the ultra-conservative movement throughout the country, St. Charles County school board members launched book bans in schools and public libraries and championed destructive policies targeting LGBTQ+ students. Before last year ended, the school board finally got around to the PAC’s agenda aimed at dropping elective courses on Black history and Black literature.
“As a Black person in America who has a child in a predominantly white district, it’s sickening, it’s frustrating,” said Harris, responding to the board’s December decision. “We know that Black history is American history. To craft this where we can only mention parts of history or where we can’t bring up social justice-which is the backbone of how Black people have gotten where we are today-is just appalling.”
Harris further vented his frustration: “What this board has done is really a slap in the face to the educators who put time and effort into creating this (curriculum) and the students who wanted it…it’s just disgusting.”
“If we just look at the patterns they’ve established we can see that this is 100% about who in this district will be entitled to rights, privileges and protections,” Fleming said, adding: And it’s not going to be for students who look like my daughter.”
The district received criticism not only from St. Charles-area parents, students, and residents but the national media attention drew local and nationwide scorn. More than 3,350 people signed a student-led petition calling on the board to reinstate the courses and the St. Louis County NAACP had called a community meeting to discuss protesting the board’s decision.
Although Black students only make up less than 8% of the enrollment across Francis Howell’s 19 schools and African Americans are a definite minority in St. Charles, both Fleming and Harris said they couldn’t be prouder of the white residents and organizations like Francis Howell Forward, a group focused on equity in the district, who collectively stood up and challenged the school board’s extreme right-leaning policies.
Within days of announcing its plans to nix the Black History and Black Literature courses, the board announced it was reinstating the programs…kind of.
“Students can enroll in the elective courses at the district’s three high schools next fall” after the board approves a new curriculum “that is rigorous and largely politically neutral,” Bertrand and superintendent Kenneth Roumpos wrote in a press statement.
The2021 curriculum was approved only after a thorough review from teachers, administrators, the curriculum advisory council and the academic strategic planning committee. Bertrand and fellow board members are now proposing a new curriculum approved by them-the members who rescinded it.
Skepticism remains with many in the school district, including Fleming.
“If you look at the resolution against racism and discrimination they said ‘hey, we can revisit the course.’ Yet even though there was a very vocal outcry, that resolution was still taken away and has not been revisited…at all,” Fleming stressed, adding: “They’re just making promises in hopes that this will all die down and go away.
“Really, the only way to really get this course back is to work very hard to get this board out.”
Sylvester Brown Jr./Deaconess Foundation Community Advocacy Fellow.
