A Black teacher filed a lawsuit against a school that allegedly practiced racial discrimination. Tiffany Wright worked as a teacher at New Roads School in Santa Monica, California.
During her tenure, which started in 2018, Wright said she encountered several racially-charged incidents and faced discrimination as well. She noticed that teachers and staff members treated students of color differently from White students. In her second year teaching at the school, Wright says a white male co-worker ordered her to “go back to Africa.”
She reported the incident to school administrators, but her male co-worker decided not to reprimand him and claimed that he “did not mean it.”
The lawsuit also claims that when she complained about the mistreatment and racism, she was ignored, shunned, told to shut up, ‘eat sh**,’ and also faced threats by the school’s administrators.
Wright also said the school’s $43,000 annual tuition was mostly covered by white parents who could dictate who the school could hire, retain, punish, or fire.
“The School also pressured teachers to appease and do whatever the parents of full-paying white students wanted, including changing their children’s grades and treating them better than any of the minority half-paying scholarship students,” the lawsuit claims.
At the end of 2020-21 school year, Wright was told her contract would not be renewed.
Wright is currently seeking a jury trial and punitive damages.
