Black Lives Matter, She Wrote. Then 'Everything Just Imploded.'
A Black superintendent’s email to parents after the killing of George Floyd engulfed a small, predominantly white Maryland community in a yearlong firestorm.
CENTREVILLE, Md. — When Andrea Kane sat down to write a letter to parents in her school district days after George Floyd’s death in 2020, images of the Black man pleading for his life under the knee of a white Minnesota police officer were haunting her.
Dr. Kane, the superintendent, saw him in the faces of Black students in her district and heard him crying out for his mother when she spoke to her own sons. So she started her letter with a warning that it would bear not just “good news,” but “a bit of a reality check.”
Despite the coronavirus pandemic, the high-performing district on the Eastern Shore of Maryland had closed out the year with much to be proud of. But like the rest of the country, Dr. Kane said, the community had another crisis to confront.
“Racism is alive in our country, our state, in Queen Anne’s County, and our schools,” she wrote in the letter, emailed to the parents of all 7,700 students in the district. . .
A Spark Spreads on Facebook
Dr. Kane’s inbox swelled in the days that followed, overwhelmingly with responses of gratitude and support. But a month later, an email appeared with the subject line “Urgent Attention Required.”
Dr. Kane recognized the name of the parent who had sent it: Gordana Schifanelli. A few weeks before, someone had alerted the superintendent to Kent Island Patriots, a new Facebook group that Ms. Schifanelli had created, its name a reference to a part of the county. Members of the group had been raging about her letter.
In a June 16 post to the group, according to a screenshot provided to The New York Times, Ms. Schifanelli declared: “Dr. Kane in QAC needs to end her contract and go! People in this group must call and make it loud and clear that the school must remain apolitical and her letter to parents promoting Black Lives Matter is not going to be tolerated.”'>>>
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/10/us/politics/maryland-superintendent-racism-black-lives-matter.html
((We have serious cultural problems in this country, being felt everywhere. Others have written about the issue. I am not optimistic.))