Nina Matthews spent her Veteran’s Day talking to administrators at Platte County and later attended an assembly after an incident on Friday that has sparked media attention in the metro.
The school sent out an email to parents on Friday, Nov. 8, stating a student at Barry School created a document that was later shared by a Platte County High School student with those with district email addresses that contained inappropriate racist words and 23 students in the district added comments, including the document creator that originated from Barry School.
The district’s technology staff disabled access to the document after 19 minutes but by then, 225 people with school district emails at the secondary level and staff viewed it.
Matthews received the email but she already knew what the document contained because her daughter, who attends Platte County High School, had taken screen shots of the diatribe and shared it with her.
“She sent it with no explanation at first so I followed up and she said it was sent to the entire school district,” Matthews said. “I kept on thinking this can’t be real. I was in a meeting at work and stepped out and questioned her. It is almost like you don’t want to believe it; she has to be mistaken. I called the school and that is where the fight began.
“I apologized to my daughter that I didn’t ask more questions or believe it until I was forced to see it with my own two eyes. It is unreal.”
The document in question used a racial slur in many different forms with headlines like: Configure, feed, install and entertain ‘your n*****.’
Among the many things in the documents included ‘they like to eat fried chicken, corn bread and watermelon,’ ‘once de-tongued, your n***** will be a lot happier, at least you don’t have to hear them complain anywhere near as much,’ ‘field n***** work best in a serial configuration, i.e, chained together,’ ‘N***** are very, very adverse to work of any kind’ and ‘n***** enjoy a good thrashing every few days.’
The school issued an additional press release on Monday with a message from superintendent Dr. Mike Reik.
Matthews received the text messages from her daughter at 12:27 p.m. on Friday.
She was asked for permission by the administration to talk to her daughter to discuss concerns from the post.
“They made it seem they wanted to support her and apologize and what they did was question her about sending it to me in the first place,” said Matthews, who has two children that are PCHS graduates and another one that attends elementary school. “I have had no issues with Pathfinder or with Barry (before) all the issues have been at Platte County (High School).”
Her son, who graduated in 2019, told her about a joke shared in the classroom that involved a racial slur about slavery. The teacher didn’t do anything and told the class to be quiet, Matthews said from talking to her son about the incident.
“That is the culture you have to change; that teacher showed it is OK to speak that way and it should’ve been an office referral,” she said. “That is what I don’t understand. They say zero tolerance behavior and the actions don’t match their words.”
Matthews brought up an incident this spring where a student made a hangman’s noose in a bathroom stall at the Paxton School on May 30.
The Platte City Police Department investigated it as a possible hate crime but the juvenile office determined no crime had been committed and the investigation was dropped. A 15-year-old boy was the guilty party.
“In the history of America a noose has been synonymous with a black person, how is that not specific and a hate crime?” Matthews said. “The response was an insult.”
Matthews learned how upset her daughter was when she got home and on Monday, her daughter didn’t want to go back to school due to anxiety. She took her to school and talked with principal Dr. Chad Sayre and demanded changes.
“It is not just a cultural divide,” Matthews said after attending the assembly with her daughter’s class. “There was a girl in a hijab, she was in tears and the black kids were in tears. Some said they hold their heads down and don’t want to make contact. People can say (the n word) without any consequence. They are tired of being picked on. The girl with a hijab said people pull on it. That is assault, let’s call it what it is. It is just not kids being kids. It is bullying. They never held an assembly until it made the news (KCTV5). They don’t feel the support. A light needs to be shined. The kids are afraid to go to school there.
“Dr. Sayre said he wants to make a change but we didn’t talk about an action plan. I would be OK with him saying we dropped the ball, how do we fix it? They need to listen to listen not listen to respond. I don’t care what you have done. None of it has worked and as a leader you have to be OK with critical feedback and be able to say, ‘I messed up, this is my plan.’ I have had a lot of people reach out to me and tell me this is their experience too. People are listening now. Let’s require change and not allow any more bigotry.”
Reik added in the email sent to parents at 12:15 p.m., on Monday, Nov. 11, that not all of the content violated the student handbook but the student responsible for the racist and hateful content was identified.
He said the documents included a three-page posting of racist and hateful text that appears to have been copied from a website and pasted from a student’s cell phone and does not appear to be written by the student.
“The investigation of this incident is ongoing and will remain active until we are confident we have identified all the students responsible,” Reik said in the email shared with The Citizen. “Our district does not tolerate racism, hate speech or inappropriate, disruptive behavior, and we will follow our board of education policies to hold students accountable for their actions.”
Reik added, “We will continue to work with our Diversity and Equity Committee to further develop our strategic plan moving forward. We will also be reviewing our technology procedures and programming impacting digital citizenship to identify areas we can strengthen the safety of our students. We welcome community feedback and ask that our parents and community members partner with us in creating an inclusive environment that is safe and caring for all learners. Working together as a team, parents and the school district can have a tremendous impact on the lives of our youth.”