Right-wing school board revokes 'racial healing' resolution passed after George Floyd murder

A conservative school board in suburban St. Louis voted Thursday night to revoke an anti-racism resolution passed in the wake of 2020 protests over the murder of George Floyd, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.

The 5-2 vote by the Francis Howell School Board will require the removal from school hallways of a resolution that calls racism “a crisis that negatively impacts our students, our families, our community, and our staff,” the report said.

Here’s the rest of the resolution that has now been officially rescinded:

“We will promote racial healing, especially for our Black and brown students and families. We will no longer be silent. We are committed to creating an equitable and anti-racist system that honors and elevates all, but one that also specifically acknowledges the challenges faced by our Black and brown students and families.”

The conservatives were able to target that message by voting to rescind all resolutions 75 days after “a majority of current Board of Education members were not signatories to the resolution or did not otherwise vote to adopt the resolution.” But the racial-healing resolution is the only one affected.

The anti-racism resolution had been passed in August 2020, two months after 2,000 had marched in St. Charles County, where the school district is located, in support of Black students after Floyd was killed, the report said.

But that was followed by the election of the five right-wing school boards members in April 2022 and April 2023. And they were supported by a Republican-backed political action committee Francis Howell Families, according to the newspaper.

Here was that PAC’s version of racial justice, according to the report:

“In 2021, the committee described the anti-racism resolution as 'woke activism' and drafted an alternative 'against all acts of racial discrimination, including the act of promoting tenets of the racially-divisive Critical Race Theory, labels of white privilege, enforced equity of outcomes, identity politics, intersectionalism, and Marxism ... the Board hereby declares its commitment to establishing, supporting, and sustaining a culture of racial harmony and goodwill districtwide.”

A majority of public speakers at the board meeting supported keeping the resolution, according to the Post-Dispatch.

“You are set to scrub our buildings of a resolution that made our Black and brown families feel seen and heard,” said Francis Howell teacher Raquel Babb.

The St. Charles County branch of the NAACP said the organization plans to pursue a civil rights complaint against the district. The school district is one of the 10 largest in Missouri.