by Kendall Tietz
A California high school classroom displayed what an anonymous parent called “disgusting brainwashing of students with taxpayer dollars” over photos that show F*** the Police and F*** Amerikkka posters and Pride and Black Lives Matter flags, according to a tip provided by a parent to Parents Defending Education.
The parent of a student at Alexander Hamilton High School in Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) shared photos of the posters and flags in the classroom with Parents Defending Education (PDE), a national grassroots organization working to fight “indoctrination in the classroom.”
Update: @LASchools responds. Read here: https://t.co/zwW2WdXTOH https://t.co/061uAWhtVj
— Parents Defending Education (@DefendingEd) September 16, 2021
Photos show an American flag lying on furniture in the classroom, while the Palestine flag, a transgender flag, a Pride flag and a Black Lives Matter flag hang prominently from the blackboard, according to the photos obtained by PDE.
“L.A. Unified is aware of the specific classroom decorations,” LAUSD said in a statement to the Daily Caller News Foundation Thursday. “The specific posters will be taken down. We maintain and uphold student and staff confidentiality and therefore cannot comment on any of our students or employees.”
LAUSD said it “holds firm its policy that students and adults in both schools and offices should treat all persons equally and respectfully and refrain from the willful or negligent use of slurs against any person on the basis of race, language spoken, color, sex, religion, handicap, national origin, immigration status, age, sexual orientation, or political belief,” the statement said.
Another photo shows a poster that says “Fuck The Police” along with the statement, “Policing is a violent, anti-black, settler institution that originated as slave patrols. Their primary mandate is to protect property and to militarily enforce white supremacist capitalism. They are doing their jobs as they are trained and paid to do. You can’t fix what what isn’t broken. That’s why we fight for police and prison abolition.”
Another poster reads “Fuck Amerikkka. This Is Native Land,” along with the words “settler colonialism, genocide, slavery, imperialism, war on drugs, Jim Crow and prison labor.”
LAUSD is the second-largest school district in the nation, serving 630,000 students and about 30,000 teachers and “individual teachers decorate their rooms in a variety of ways,” the district told the DCNF.
LAUSD added that “teachers are expected to adhere to district policies and to be mindful of our mission to educate children in a classroom that reflects all our policies of inclusion and respectful treatment of individual rights.”
“Any displays that are determined to be overtly and objectively political or otherwise run afoul of our policies of inclusion and respectful treatment of others will be taken down and will be handled administratively,” the statement said. “Nevertheless, not every subjective belief that any one display is “political” can be accommodated in a district as large and diverse as L.A. Unified.”
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Kendall Tietz is a reporter at Daily Caller News Foundation.
Photo “Alexander Hamilton High School” by Alexander Hamilton High School.
