Arlington principal retires after lesson on slavery prompts investigation
An interactive history lesson last fall at Hill Elementary School depicted life as a slave too realistically for one parent’s comfort.
The parent complained to the Arlington school district, which opened an investigation. Now the school’s principal, longtime district employee Lloyd Day, has abruptly retired, and many in the Hill community are upset. On Friday, supporters wore T-shirts backing Day and gathered for a group picture after school.
The investigation is ongoing, district spokeswoman Leslie Johnston said, but contrary to what some parents believe, Day was not forced to retire or “escorted from the building.”
Supporters of Day also attended a Feb. 5 school board meeting to speak on his behalf.
Hill’s Student Council president told board members, “I think the hardest part for me and my classmates is that we never got to give him one last hug and say goodbye.”
Cindy Rothwell, a lunch monitor at Hill, said she attended the meeting to let the district know it made a big mistake in letting Day go.
“The kids do not know what is going on other than he was taken from them very abruptly,” Rothwell said.
Rothwell, who went to Hill in 1969 and now has two grandchildren enrolled, said she and other parents found out Day retired Feb. 4.
In a letter to the district Day wrote, “I have chosen to retire as of June 7, 2015. I would like to use a portion of my plethora of sick leave/personal leave days to be out from February 5, 2015 through June 7, 2015.”
Repeated efforts to reach Day were unsuccessful.
‘Plantation Life’ lesson
Hill PTA mom Krikit Lee said she thinks that Day retired after a parent complained about an interactive history lesson she and another parent were asked to teach on the life of a slave.
The history lesson, called “Plantation Life,” was part of a lesson on Colonial times for the entire fifth-grade class, Lee said.
She said her daughter’s social studies teacher, Katie Shaw, asked her and a group of other parents to set up volunteer stations based on different themes for a Colonial Day event the teacher was conducting in November, just before Thanksgiving break.
Each parent participating in the lesson received a packet of informative clips on what the teacher wanted his or her lesson to be on, Lee said.
Lee said her packet on plantation life contained copies of information the teacher had gathered, including an excerpt from Twelve Years a Slave, examples of runaway slave notices and information on farming and crops.
“We based the design for our presentation on the information she gave us,” Lee said. “We typed it up, had it in writing, and the teacher approved it.”
She and another parent gave a 20-minute-presentation followed by mock events. Children looked at pictures of slave quarters and their living conditions, Lee said.
The children lay on the ground in the courtyard as an example of how slaves had to sleep, she said, and wrapped cornbread in paper and twine as an example of how slaves ate. The children also picked cotton out of spiked hulls and separated the seeds as an example of what slaves had to do every day, she said.
Parents took pictures for the yearbook, she said.
“All of this was a learning experience designed for children to have empathy of what people went through,” Lee said. “…But someone got offended because their child went home and said they enjoyed the ‘slave station’ and that being a slave was ‘fun.’”
The anonymous parent sent the complaint in an email Dec. 1, saying there were “several angry and upset parents.” The subject line read: “Students forced to act as slaves.”
“The fact that this happened in 2014 is very shocking,” the parent said in the email, obtained by the Star-Telegram after a public information request. “I would think Arlington ISD would not want this experience to reflect a belief of the district that slavery is okay in any capacity.”
The parent chose anonymity “out of fear of judgment or animosity towards my child.”
Conflicting stories
Lee said she was first notified of a problem Jan. 26, when she was told a parent had complained to the Arlington school board and the Arlington branch of the NAACP.
Lee said Day called a meeting and asked her, the other parent at the station and the teacher to disclose details of the lesson. Lee said Day had been out of town the day of the event and was not privy to what happened.
She said she handed the lesson plan to Day, explaining that it had been given to her by Shaw.
But Shaw, Lee said, denied giving her the packet.
“She withheld information. She implied that I was being untruthful and turned around and watched all this happen,” Lee said.
Shaw, who is still teaching at Hill Elementary, did not respond to email and Facebook messages from the Star-Telegram.
Next came a meeting among Lee, Day and two other parents with Michael Hill, the district’s assistant superintendent of administration. Lee said Hill asked if there was a play in which any child was singled out. He asked for photos of the event, Lee said.
A week later Day, a 30-year-educator in Arlington, retired.
‘Our history is ugly’
Arlington NAACP President Alisa Simmons said in an email that she is aware of the incident.
“We are awaiting the results of the district’s investigation into this matter. It would be very presumptuous of the leadership of the Arlington NAACP to make requests or ask for anything absent all of the facts,” she wrote in an email.
She also said that the “Arlington NAACP does not made decisions about personnel issues at AISD.”
Jeff Knight, who is father to two Hill Elementary boys, said the parent who filed the complaint should understand that fifth-graders say and do “off-the-wall things” and that that doesn’t mean the lesson was inappropriate.
“Our history is ugly. There are a lot of portions that are really ugly, and if we are going to be afraid to look at history, we are going to make a lot of the same mistakes,” Knight said. “If we are going to sweep portions of our history under the rug if they are deemed unpalatable, then we need to not teach history anymore.”
Knight said his children were “visibly shaken” when they found out Day had left.
“I couldn’t believe that somebody like this would be put in a position where he was compelled to resign,” Knight said.
Rothwell, who said she has worked for the Arlington district in various jobs for more than 12 years, said she never met a principal who knew the names of over 600 kids and could greet them individually.
“I really do love this man,” she said, crying. “It tore a lot of people up, me included, to look at those little kids’ faces when they ask us if Mr. Day is coming back and tell them that he is not.”
The PTA ordered a thousand shirts that read, “O Captain! My Captain! #seizethedayforday” for students to wear to school Friday.
O Captain! My Captain! is the title of a Walt Whitman poem about the death of President Abraham Lincoln, but in this context, it’s a nod to the film Dead Poets Society, in which students recite the phrase in defiance when their English teacher is let go.
After class, parents and their children gathered at a nearby park to take a picture of everyone standing up for Day.
Correspondent Traci Peterson contributed to this report.
Monica S. Nagy, 817-390-7792
This story was originally published February 14, 2015 at 8:00 AM with the headline "Arlington principal retires after lesson on slavery prompts investigation."