Students protest in corridors of Sandalwood High School after anti-racism posts

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JACKSONVILLE, Florida – A student demonstration in the largest school in Duval County.

Students at Sandalwood High School staged a strike on Wednesday after a series of online posts sparked outrage.

It all started Tuesday with an article on Microsoft Teams from Dr Saryn Hatcher, Principal of Sandalwood High School. This was to promote the school district’s mental health awareness campaign this month.

The “You Matter Month” campaign has provoked outrage among many students that it is replacing Black Lives Matter and, by extension, Black History Month, also in February. DCPS spokeswoman Tracy Pierce said the district recently rebranded the campaign from its original “#TakeOffTheMask” post, after causing some confusion and inadvertent mixed posts, first reported by the Florida Times-Union.

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Then the students allegedly posted insensitive comments to racism on that Microsoft Teams thread, and the director ultimately shut down the entire thread.

News4Jax spoke with the organizer and one of the protesters and they explained what made them leave the class.

“So that’s when I was like, ‘Okay, that’s the last straw. We are not being heard, ”said student and organizer Jara Enoch. “Our ideas and concerns are not being expressed because we are currently silenced. So I decided to do this post I said peacefully anyone can go out at 12:30. And we’re going to protest in the cafeteria.

“We just wanted our school to have such a low level of respect for us,” said student Jodi Price. “We felt the need to wear black and go around the halls chanting ‘Black Lives Matter’ because we feel like our voices are not being heard enough because of what is going on these days,” you know, a lot of violence and stuff.

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Both students said they have meetings scheduled with school administrators on Thursday.

District spokeswoman Tracy Pierce said there was no physical violence and no injuries were reported. There was some knocking on the tables and standing on the tables, but there was no damage to school property, Pierce said.

Additional policemen were called to the school towards the end of the approximately two hour protest, but they did not engage at all, they were only there to make sure no one was entering or leaving. the campus without permission and to make sure the campus was secure, the district said.

Kimberly Williams, 17, senior vice-president of Sandalwood High School, said that while the protest did not go exactly as planned, there were still issues at the school that need to be addressed.

“Being at Sandalwood for the four years, I witnessed peer racism, racist remarks in my classes, and I personally really didn’t know how to attack it and felt like I didn’t. didn’t have a strong enough voice to say something, really nobody did, ”Williams said. “I just feel like we need a congregation to be able to talk about it and make it known… instead of pushing it down and ignoring it.

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Williams and other members of the student government plan to meet with school administrators to try to find the best way to move forward and have productive discussions.

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