A Colorado teen who says he was racially bullied at a Denver-area school district has left his middle school – and his family is planning to move out of town, the Denver Post reported.
Jeramiah Ganzy, 14, of Castle Rock, says he has “experienced repeated instances of discrimination, including students directing racist slurs at him and teachers unfairly targeting him for discipline,” the Post reported. It added the teen “was so fed up” that he emailed officials of the Douglas County School District. Ganzy had attended Castle Rock Middle School in the district.
“There had been a lot of bullying, of people calling me a monkey and a cotton picker,” Jeramiah told The Post in an interview. “I wanted something to happen. I sent the email in anger and frustration, hoping to get a response — and I didn’t.”
The post added: “Jeramiah also told his mother Lacey Ganzy about a Snapchat group chat with more than 80 Douglas County students, in which students repeatedly used racist slurs, called for the genocide of Black people, and threatened to shoot Black people and bring back the Holocaust.”
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Lacey Ganzy said when the chat group members heard her son had shared their messages, they talked about lynching him, the Post reported.
“He can never go back to these schools,” she said. “They’re talking about lynching my son. I am not sending him back there. He is someone who thrives on education and is nominated for awards and is in AP classes… The options are for him to be homeschooled or move out of town.
“We are looking to get out of Castle Rock as quickly as possible. We do not feel safe. I grew up here, and I’m run out of town because my family decided to speak up about something that is not right.”
“The Ganzy family said Jeramiah’s experience with racism in Douglas County schools is not an isolated incident,” the Post reported. “Nevaeh Ganzy, Jeramiah’s 16-year-old sister, said she transferred to a charter school after a teacher at Douglas County High School made students debate whether they were for or against Jim Crow laws enabling racial segregation — and put her on the side supporting the laws.”
A school district spokesperson told the Post she could not discuss the case because of student privacy laws. She said the district is addressing the matter “consistent with the DCSD Student Code of Conduct and DCSD Board of Education policies,” the Post reported.
Castle Rock is 26 miles south of Denver and the Douglas County School District describes itself as the third-largest school district in the state with an enrollment of 63,000. The district is no stranger to these controversies, according to the Post report.
The Post reported that “the evening the Ganzy family spoke before the Douglas County school board was the same night the board discussed the district’s equity policy — a polarizing policy that’s been debated for more than a year and which lays out how the school district handles equity and diversity issues.
“Conservative school board members erroneously claimed the policy would prompt teaching critical race theory, and former superintendent Corey Wise claimed the policy and his advocacy for supporting students of color was at the heart of his firing, which a judge found to have been unlawful.”
