Boonville School District apologizes for ‘miscommunication’

The Boonville School District is apologizing after parents raised concerns about meetings held with students at LSE Middle School as part of a diversity initiative.

During the three lunch periods at the middle school, minority students were invited to attend a meeting with a mentor in a different area of the school while the rest of the student had lunch in the cafeteria, LSE Principal Stephanie Green said. The meetings happened Wednesday.

Green said about 12 minority students from each lunch period attended the meeting. She said each lunch period has around 100 students.

The meetings were not mandatory, Green said.

“Procedurally it was flawed and it did not work out the way we expected it to, but now we can learn from this, make adjustments, and make sure all of our kids are included in these events and these decisions,” she said.

Superintendent Sarah Marriot said administrators did not intend to exclude students. “The school takes full ownership that we didn’t necessarily probably approach it in the right way, but the intention behind it, I don’t want that to get lost, that there are good intentions with it as well,” she said.

Marriot said the district created a diversity task force in 2017, hoping to encourage minority students.

“They identified that our school and our students would benefit from some mentoring opportunities, specifically students of color, so they can help develop leadership skills, and see what opportunities are available for them so we can start to close the opportunity gap,” Marriot said.

Wednesday was the first mentorship meeting. The speaker was a high school student from Boonville who had recently attended a leadership conference.

Marriot said a faculty member was present during each of the meetings.

She said school leaders hoped to try out the mentorship opportunity with a small group Wednesday and they looked specifically for students of color.

“Unfortunately, what happened from that because of poor communication on the district’s part, the perception was that we were excluding all groups, and that’s not what the intention was for the project,” Marriot said.

Marriot said the school tried to give parents advance notice of the meetings last week, but the messages didn’t go out because of a technical issue.

“We apologize, sincerely, for that lack of communication,” Marriot said, “and if we made any student feel they were excluded or if any student felt they were isolated, because that was not the intention.”

The school district in a post on its Facebook page said the its Diversity Task Force is continuing to “address opportunity gaps in education for all students.” The post said LSE Middle School held an initial meeting Wednesday with small groups of students.

Several people who say they’re parents of LSE students left comments on the post, some of them critical of administrators.

ABC17 News spoke to a parent who did not want to be named. Her daughter was not invited to attend the meeting and said it felt like school officials were separating students by race.

She also said other parents are upset with the school, including her friend whose student was in the meeting. “She’s beyond furious,” said the woman. “Another parent that had made a post on Facebook has stated that there’s at least 15 other parents that are as furious as we are.”

Some parents claimed the students in the meeting were using racial slurs afterward toward the students that didn’t attend. Green said administrators heard of one incident, which was handled.

“He was in the meeting, and I think there was just some miscommunication or misperception on his part about what was being conveyed,” Green said.

Green said she sent an email Thursday to all parents explaining what happened.

Green said the district is going to make mistakes and hopes parents will understand. School leaders plan to meet with each grade Friday to talk about what happened and ask for ideas from students about future mentorship programs.