A Vermont principal was placed on administrative leave by the school board with no intention to reinstate her following a social media post about Black Lives Matter.
Windsor School Principal Tiffany Riley was put on leave late last week over the post, which has been called “insanely tone-deaf” by former students, in which she said she believed “Black Lives Matter” but did not “agree with the coercive measures taken to get to this point across.”
“I firmly believe that Black Lives Matter, but I DO NOT agree with the coercive measures taken to get to this point across; some of which are falsified in an attempt to prove a point,” Riley wrote in a Facebook post, according to the school board.
“While I want to get behind BLM, I do not think people should be made to feel they have to choose black race over human race,” she added. “While I understand the urgency to feel compelled to advocate for black lives, what about our fellow law enforcement? What about all others who advocate for and demand equity for all? Just because I don’t walk around with a BLM sign should not mean I am a racist.”
The school board slammed the post in a statement posted on its website, saying the “ignorance, prejudice, and lack of judgement in these statements are utterly contrary to the values we espouse.”
“Ours is not a racially diverse school, so it is easy to forget or to be unconscious to the racial inequities that exist in the form of White Privilege in our community and our state,” the statement continued. “If we are not acknowledging White Advantage and working to remove it, we are not attempting to provide our minority students an equal opportunity for education.”
Riley has served the K-12 school as its principal since 2015 and was placed on paid administrative leave on Friday. The board concluded that it did not intend to bring the principal back to the school.
“Although we recognize Ms. Riley’s meaningful and positive impact on Windsor School, we have voted unanimously to place Ms. Riley on paid leave, effective immediately, and we are resolved that she will no longer lead our school,” the board said.
Riley said her post was “taken completely out of context,” according to VT Digger, and she added in a follow-up Facebook post that she “unintentionally offended” people.
Dozens of high-profile people across the country have been fired or placed on leave in recent weeks following George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis police custody last month as activists shine a spotlight on systemic racism and police brutality.
Top editors at the New York Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, Bon Appetit, Refinery29, and Variety have resigned or been placed on leave; professors at colleges such as the University of California, Los Angeles, the University of Chicago, and Cornell University have been placed on leave or faced calls to be fired; and people in the sports and entertainment world have also resigned or been fired for race-related comments or actions.
