A New York high school is facing backlash after a teacher began the new school year by handing out an assignment on the Black Lives Matter movement that compared police officers to the Ku Klux Klan.
“My daughter showed me the paper. I said, ‘What is this?! You’ve got to be kidding me!’” one mother, Ania Paternostro, told the New York Post about her 11th grader’s class work. “This cartoon compares the police to the KKK. It’s an attack on the police.”
Westlake High School teacher Christoper Moreno gave the class of 11th graders a cartoon handout sheet that showed cartoon depictions of various white men, such as a KKK member, a police officer, and a slave owner, kneeling on black men’s necks.
“We don’t need a teacher brainwashing my kids. I’ll teach my kids about what’s right and what’s wrong,” Paternostro added.
Her daughter also told the New York Post that “the cartoon was disgusting,” adding that “it compared the police with all the terrible people in history. It was not fair. It wasn’t right.’’
Other community members also voiced outrage over the cartoon.
“Parents don’t send their children to school to learn to hate America and our police,” Rob Astorino, a Republican running for state Senate, said. “Our schools should be a place for the open exchange of ideas, not political indoctrination. The false narratives and brainwashing has to stop.”
“It’s a smack in the face to law enforcement. It’s absolutely a smear of the police,” Steve Kardian, a retired Mount Pleasant police officer, said.
Mount Pleasant School District Superintendent Kurt Kotes told parents of students in the class that an investigation has been launched.
“I want to assure the community that the district will be conducting a thorough investigation to determine what exactly occurred in this particular classroom and what, if any, action is to be taken under the circumstances to appropriately address the matter,’’ he said.
The cartoon appears to be the same as one distributed in a Texas junior high school over the summer. Eighth grade teachers at Cooper Junior High in Wylie, Texas, distributed the cartoon in August and were met with swift pushback from community members, plus Gov. Greg Abbott. The assignment was subsequently pulled from the school’s lesson plan.
President Trump on Sunday doubled down on eliminating “radical indoctrination” in schools.
“We will stop the radical indoctrination of our students and restore patriotic education to our schools. We will teach our children to love our country, honor our history, and always respect our great American flag,” he said at a rally in Nevada on Sunday.
“We will live by the timeless words of our national motto, ‘In God we trust.’ And we’re going to keep it that way,” Trump said.
