After days of silence, school leaders in Cache County are answering questions from KUTV 2News about the fallout from an assembly about race and diversity at Sky View High School.
As KUTV 2News reported Monday, a video about racism – shown at the end of the assembly last week – drew criticism from some parents and led to an apology from the principal.
But part of the reason for even holding last week’s assembly, according to school officials, was because of what happened at Sky View around Halloween when two students came dressed in costumes that were inappropriate and offensive, especially to people of color.
Blackface and a KKK outfit
A photo obtained by KUTV 2News shows a Sky View student on stage at a Halloween assembly dressed as a basketball player wearing blackface. Another student showed up that day in a KKK outfit.
But parents didn’t hear about any of this from the school. Sky View Principal Mike Monson said he addressed it with those involved and their parents – and that was the end.
Monson called the students' costume choices an "individual mistake," noting they both learned from the experience.
But last week, after a four-and-a-half-minute video was shown at the end of an assembly about diversity, Monson took a different approach. He sent an email to all Sky View parents. In it, he praised the presenter, Dr. Jacquelyn Thompson, but said the video – which touched on the mistreatment of people of color and white privilege – was too divisive.
Asked if the video needed to be apologized for, Monson paused and said, “Yes, in the respect that it was something that was so upsetting to people.”
'My heart hurts'
But Darlene McDonald, a community activist, disagrees.
“The apology should have been to [Thompson], not to the parents,” McDonald said.
She said she believes both incidents – especially what happened on Halloween – should have been handled better. She became emotional as she talked about the history of oppression faced by Black people, and how Black students at Sky View may have felt seeing those costumes.
“My heart hurts right now just even thinking about it,” she said, tearfully. “I’m in pain right now thinking about it.”
Why the difference in treatment
Tim Smith, assistant superintendent at the Cache County School District, said conversations about race are necessary, and that the purpose of the assembly was to create respect and understanding among students.
But KUTV 2News asked Smith why last week’s assembly was handled differently than the student who wore blackface at Halloween.
“There wasn’t a community response to the student, and it was a momentary thing where they handled that on that case basis with that student,” Smith said.
Even though he was in the assembly and many students saw him?
“Right, yes,” Smith responded. “Yeah, it was handled differently. There wasn’t an outcry about that event.”
Smith said incidents like that are usually handled on a case-by-case basis, and the school can’t go back and change what occurred.
“We can go forward, we can learn from experiences, and we hope that parents will extend that trust to us, and we can take actions to earn that trust back,” Smith said.
A Cache County School Board meetingwill be held at 5:30 p.m. Thursday. Some parents are planning to show up to comment on these recent incidents. The meeting will be held in-person and live-streamed here.