Colleyville Heritage principal placed on leave after being accused of promoting CRT
Colleyville Heritage High School principal James Whitfield was put on paid administrative leave Monday, more than a month after he was placed at the center of a critical race theory debate.
Kristin Snively, spokesperson for the Grapevine-Colleyville school district, confirmed the move in an email.
Snively did not provide information on the reason for the decision or whether the leave is indefinite. She said the district will not comment further on the situation because it’s an ongoing personnel matter.
The announcement comes a month after Whitfield was publicly named and accused by Stetson Clark, a former school board candidate, of teaching and promoting critical race theory during a July 26 district board meeting.
Clark said he became concerned about Whitfield’s views when he saw a letter the principal sent to parents and students last summer.
“In this letter he promotes the conspiracy theory of systemic racism ...” Clark said. “He is encouraging the disruption and destruction of our districts.”
Clark called for Whitfield’s firing and received applause from some crowd members.
Whitfield has denied these accusations, and said in a July 31 Facebook post that he has been criticized for speaking out after the death of George Floyd and has experienced racial attacks in the past several months.
Whitfield was named the first Black principal of Colleyville Heritage High School in May 2020.
“I am keenly aware of how much fear this strikes in the hearts of a small minority who would much rather things go back to the way they used to be,” he said in his Facebook post.
In that post, Whitfield also shared that in 2019, when he was named principal at Heritage Middle School, district officials asked him to take down Facebook photos of him and his wife, who is white, embracing on a beach.
“As I read the forwarded email it said, ‘Is this the Dr. Whitfield we want as an example for our students?’ And the picture attached was a picture of my wife and I kissing on the beach in Mexico during a trip we took for our 10-year anniversary. I showed my wife and I could tell she was already getting upset — tears were welling up, but I was still awaiting the callback,” Whitfield wrote.
His Facebook post received more than 3,000 reactions and his comments were covered by People Magazine and The New York Times.
The Grapevine-Colleyville school district said the request to remove the photos had nothing to do with race.
Since the July 26 meeting, students, parents and teachers have rallied in support of Whitfield. A petition urging the school board to keep Whitfield as principal received more than 1,500 signatures, dozens of students protested outside of the district administration building last week to support him and about 100 Twitter posts contributed to the #istandwithdrwhitfield hashtag.
Prior to joining the district, Whitfield was principal of Richland Middle School, assistant principal at North Ridge Middle School and was a world geography teacher at Richland High School, according to the Grapevine-Colleyville website.
In an email to parents, superintendent Robin Ryan named Dave Denning, former principal of Grapevine High School, as interim principal for Colleyville Heritage.
This story was originally published August 30, 2021 at 8:07 PM.
