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PORTLAND, Maine — Embattled Lincoln Middle School Principal Robyn Bailey is taking a leave of absence starting immediately, Portland School Superintendent Xavier Botana announced in a letter addressed to students and their families on Monday.
The move comes after hundreds of students walked out of class on Friday protesting what they said was their principal and teachers’ lack of response to ongoing incidents of racism, Islamophobia, transphobia and homophobia at their school.
A similar, though smaller, walk out, also took place across town at Lyseth Moore Middle School.
Bailey had served as an interim principal since August and was due to step down on June 30, at the end of the school year.
During the protest at Lincoln on Friday, students said they’d heard teachers use the n-word and call a Black student a monkey.
Last fall, Bailey publicly apologized after making racially prejudiced comments about newly elected, Black city commissioners.
“I owe many people an apology,” Bailey wrote in October. “I regret that my words were not more thoughtful and that I didn’t reach out personally to discuss my concerns.”
In an email sent to City Hall two days after the June 8 election, Bailey had lashed out at newly elected progressives, singling out two women of color for “spreading hatred” and arguing that they’d be “done, gone and trashed” if they were white.
In her fall apology letter, Bailey lamented that she “undermined the success of those women” and that her comments worsened a political discourse she already saw as divisive.
