A culture of racism
In a live-streamed video of USD 309's Board of Education meeting, President of the board, Dan Schweizer, made a racially charged statement in regards to the increasing price of anti-virus software that "we gotta keep them Chinese out of our back door", before immediately acknowledging the inappropriateness of the comment, stating "that's right, I said it on YouTube, you can come and get me".
I'm a 2012 graduate of the USD 309 school district, and am an Asian-American myself. Attending a school system in a rural area of Kansas, I was one of the few Asian-Americans who attended the school, and as a result faced regular discrimination and racial remarks during my time there by both my peers and faculty members. People would make fun of me using math stereotypes, driving stereotypes, stereotypes involving Asian genitalia, and called me derogatory names such as "chink", "gook", "zipperhead", and most commonly a "dirty Jap". One faculty member went so far as to jokingly ask me, in front of the entire class, if I could come over sometime and "take a look at his rice cooker sometime" because it was broken. I was actually unaware of a majority of these stereotypes and names until students in my former high school started using them to refer to me and my siblings. It always confused me as to why people treated me this way because I'm half-Japanese and half-white, yet it seemed to be ignored that I was a mixed race individual, and that treatment makes me very concerned for Asian students who attend the school district now, and for those who will attend in the future. I'm well aware that I'm afforded a significant amount of privilege in this country because I'm partially white and a male, and the fact that I was still treated the way I was in high school, I can't imagine the treatment that a student who is not mixed like me would experience.
This incident with the President of the Board of Education at my high school has allowed a lot of unresolved emotions surface in me in regards to my time in the school district, and makes me disappointed to see that the culture of racism and discrimination in USD 309 is still very much alive. If leaders in our education system can't be held accountable for racial remarks, then I have little hope that others in the same district are being held to high standards on the topics of racism and discrimination. The live stream of the incident can be viewed here, with the remark occurring at the 28:05 mark: https://youtu.be/Et7ze3Y4rfs?t=1670