A Topsham high school has changed how it promotes groups for students of color after pushback from a conservative activist group.
The Students of Color Coalition at Mt. Ararat High School offers a space where students can share their experiences and promote diversity, according to the Harpswell Anchor.
But after hearing from “a local resident,” New York-based Foundation Against Intolerance & Racism sent a letter to school administrators, warning them they may be violating the law by promoting an affinity group just for students of color, the Harpswell Anchor reported.
“It is crucial that schools adhere to anti-discrimination laws while promoting diversity and inclusion,” the group’s director of legal advocacy, Leigh Ann O’Neill, wrote in a December letter to Mt. Ararat High School Principal Chris Hoffman.
She noted in her letter that the affinity group may foster division rather than unity.
In a response, MSAD 75 Superintendent Heidi O’Leary assured O’Neill that the Students of Color Coalition is open to all students and that promotional material will be updated to make that clear, according to the Harpswell Anchor.
“To that end, the school district plans to add clarifying language to student handbooks stating that affinity groups and clubs are open to all eligible students regardless of sex and race or any other legally recognized classification,” O’Leary wrote in a letter two weeks later.
MSAD 75 serves Bowdoin, Bowdoinham, Harpswell and Topsham.
The Foundation Against Intolerance & Racism, also known as FAIR, was founded in 2021 in the wake of the protests of the police murder in May 2020 of George Floyd, a Black man, in Minneapolis.
It is among a panoply of conservative groups opposing diversity and inclusion programs and the teaching of critical race theory in schools. Education experts have noted that critical race theory isn’t taught in K-12 schools, but is a university-level academic concept that teaches that racism is not an individual bias or prejudice, but rather is embedded in legal systems and policies.
In January 2023, another conservative group — Virginia-based Parents Defending Education, which claims to oppose “racial discrimination” and “political indoctrination” — sued the Portland school district alleging a staff support group for people of color was discriminatory.
