In the midst of an investigation into a racist remark reportedly made to a pupil of Middle Eastern heritage, a teacher at Central Dauphin Middle School has resigned.
The child’s parents were among the several dozen persons who attended Monday night’s Central Dauphin School District board meeting to express their worries that the district has not been proactive in addressing racial harassment issues and has not handled the situation with enough gravity.
During the meeting, Michael Jacobs, the president of the school board, read a statement that the district had already prepared, stating that the alleged occurrence violates staff policies and the principles upon which our district is based. During the public section of Monday’s meeting, no additional school officials spoke about the matter.
The board did, however, unanimously approve a personnel report that detailed the teacher’s departure, along with a statement stating that the board acknowledges and accepts the teacher’s tendered resignation letter.
According to the student’s mother, Nayla Rahman, the incident happened on January 16 while her seventh-grade son was taking part in an after-school study group. According to Rahman, her kid inquired if he might switch seats if he finished more assignments at one point during the session.
Her kid informed her that the teacher’s response was, “I don’t deal with terrorists.” According to Rahman’s version of events, the teacher said, “Look it up,” in response to other pupils’ inquiries about the definition of the word “terrorist.” The Rahman family has Lebanese and Palestinian ancestry.
According to Nayla Rahman, he felt targeted, humiliated, belittled, surprised, alone, and discriminated against. Rahman recounted her son’s incident, and other pupils looked up the word and said that the teacher had truly insulted him.
She claimed that she could tell right away that something was amiss when Rahman showed up to collect her kid from the study group.
Rahman remarked, “I noticed that he was heading toward the car with his head lowered and an expression that seemed like he was about to cry.”
Rahman claimed that after her son told her what had happened, she went to the building to voice her grievances and ran into the offending teacher. Rahman claimed that during a confrontation, the teacher acknowledged making the comment in front of other people.
Rahman recalled that the teacher said something along the lines of “it’s not like that” before their conversation was interrupted, and that not much clarification was provided.
Rahman stated that she was informed by the school administration that the instructor bears complete responsibility for the comment after speaking with her son and the teacher. Rahman added that she was contacted by district superintendent Eric Turman, who informed her that the administration was investigating the issue and that she would be meeting with him shortly.
Turman, who only recently began in Central Dauphin after serving as the superintendent of the Harrisburg School District, told PennLive on Monday that he was unable to comment on the particular incident and wanted to hold off on making a judgment on the district’s overall anti-discrimination efforts until he had more time to investigate the matter.
It will take some time to comprehend the scope of all that has transpired, Turman stated.
A number of attendees on Monday voiced their disappointment that the district failed to recognize the situation until it was reported in the media. The day following the event, on January 17, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) released a statement urging both state and district authorities to conduct an investigation.
However, the district didn’t say anything until January 24, when a statement confirming the teacher’s departure during an inquiry was included in a CBS21 news program.
According to Ahmet Tekelioglu, director of CAIR’s Philadelphia branch, a more direct and equitable approach to the matter would have been for the district to immediately and directly contact its community, students, and parents to inform them that this incident occurred and that it is unacceptable.
Tekelioglu added that although the district had made a strong statement, it was only made to a TV station a few days later.
Numerous people who spoke on Monday claimed that racist behavior by students and some staff members had been allowed to fester and that the current incident was only one prominent symptom of a much larger problem.
Local activist Omar Mussa stated, “This is not just about this one incident, it’s about the precedent we set for every student walking through those doors and every parent sending them there.” Will they go into a protective and loving environment or a dangerous and destructive one?
Rahman claimed that she had brought up the matter last year when another teacher made a discriminatory remark regarding Palestinians, and that her son and her other kids had previously been the targets of Islamophobic abuse in the district.
Similar incidents were reported by a number of other Middle Eastern students. The afflicted student’s older brother, Zain Abdul-Rahman, recalled being the target of incessant bomb-making jokes that portrayed all Muslims and Arabs as terrorists. In 2022, Abdul-Rahman received his degree from Central Dauphin.
Many of the people who testified on Monday said that in order to stop bullying and discrimination, the district needed a more assertive program. To help children fight bigotry, several recommended that the district include classes on Middle Eastern history, or more especially, the Israeli-Palestinian struggle.
Abdul-Rahman remarked of Arab-Americans, “We’re treated as if this is our temporary residence and not our home.” Remarks that portray people as inherently outsiders gradually accumulate on one’s mentality.