If you haven’t learned the lesson by now, here’s another crystal clear example of the modern rule that what you post on social media can affect your employment.
A gender-discrimination and Title IX trainer contracted by Guilford County Schools to train principals and assistant principals has been terminated after school officials and others read her highly controversial tweet and Facebook post.
District 59 State Rep. Jon Hardister was one of the people who let school officials know that he didn’t appreciate the comments. He contacted Guilford County School Superintendent Sharon Contreras and made her aware of the posts, and, not long after that, Wanda Legrand, the chief student services officers for Guilford County Schools, sent an email to all the principals in the county school district explaining that the Winston-Salem area professor would no longer be used by the school system for training.
Legrand wrote, “While these posts do not refer to her GCS training, due to their inappropriateness, we immediately ended our working relationship.” She added that the trainer, “will not be conducting any other professional development sessions with us in the future,” and, “If you have any gender discrimination/Title IX questions or concerns, please continue to contact me.”
This is one of the tweets the female African-American trainer sent out recently: “This week I have nine (9) trainings-presentations for school assistant principals and school principals. My trainings-presentations include a request that most books used in schools be burned. Stop using white history, white mathematics, and white science as the foundation.”
On Facebook, the trainer posted that she will “continue challenging whites and destroying white dominance,” and she added, “Whites prove DAILY that whites must be challenged and white dominance must be destroyed. Otherwise, whites would stalk brown and Black women.”
It didn’t take long until some irate Twitter and Facebook users called out the comments on their own social media pages, and, soon, local leaders and elected officials were made aware of the highly public comments that troubled many.
While the word spread on social media, one Facebook poster responding to the comments wrote, “This woman has a serious problem!” and others were critical of the school system for using taxpayer money to contract with someone who spreads this type of message.
Hardister said this week that he found the comments highly inappropriate, disturbing and racist, and he felt compelled to make school officials aware of the tweets and postings.
A group I’m associated with contacted several board members with concern about this crazy person. Winston McGregor’s reply was evident that the board members are being controlled by Contreras. I have a screen shot of the reply if you want it.
We need more press about this topic-please!
Contreras would have never fired her but she is trying to talk the county commissioners into a billion dollar referendum. Dr. Dennis ain’t the only one.
Yes there are many like this! I worked for GCS for less than a year and knew I needed to get out because of the toxic atmosphere that stemmed from the insane politics that go on behind closed doors.
In fact, why did you not list her name; Dr. Kimya Dennis?
Exactly, if it had been a white person posting these comments their NAME would be the first thing in the first sentence of the article. This article in itself is some what racist towards whites+
Please post this article on your FB page!
Does anyone in the Guilford County Schools perform even the minimal background review on people that we the taxpayers fund as “experts”? This is appalling. It suggests a complete breakdown in the interview process. It suggests if you are the correct color and gender, you must be qualified. Just look at the choice of the superintendent. They hit a home run with her: minority, woman and handicapped. When will we return to actually looking at qualifications and ignore color, gender etc. When this happens, if it ever will again, then we can say that we have overcome racism, sexism and all the other “isms”. Sickening.
So, her (Dr. Contreras’) ONLY qualifications are that she’s a woman of color with a disability? (FYI – the term ‘handicapped’ was dismantled YEARS ago). What is sickening is your likening of the hiring of one individual (who you have consequently reduced to three categorical types) to racism, sexism etc. It is PRECISELY because of this kind of thinking that we are all aware of how prevalent racism, sexism and other isms are!
If you have issue with her and her ability – by all means provide your opinion (validated or not); but stop hiding behind this country’s rampant history of racism, sexism etc. by throwing a cheap shot at one person who happens to fit in your categorical musings.
The home run they might have hit has little to nothing to do with her ancestry, gender identification nor ability status. But I don’t expect YOU to acknowledge that – not with your hidden isms on full display!
Whites working for the GCS know all to well the effects of black on white racism. We can talk about history and current affairs of blacks with power discriminating against whites. Sharon Contreras IS that person. It’s very obvious that shes pro black and not pro everyone regardless of skin color. Dont talk to us about history, then excuse your own racism.
Thank you for bringing this to our attention. Why is the person not named in your article? Why was she chosen from all the other speaker options? How many times has she “taught” our GCS school admin and staff, and what was she paid for that “service”?
This is unbelievable. Our superintendent of schools should be fired for this effective immediately. We have teachers and bus drivers picketing for raises and instead we spend money on racist outside consultants. This is a disgrace and should have immediate consequences. Our schools have been performing poorly and they can’t even keep the heat on with this Superentendant in charge. And now this.
Can we also talk about how an extremely knowledgeable expert, whom is a person of color, was fired for saying something that gets discussed quite often. If you are in any way a part of the educational system in this country then you are well aware how biased our textbooks are. Not to mention, the overall school culture. Moreover, when a person of color:
1.) states facts (we are still “using white history, white mathematics and white science as the foundation” in our public schools) and,
2.) urges our school system to do something about it (“that most books used in schools be burned” – in other words, get rid of them and adopt equity-based books!),
we do NOT get to call them RACIST. Because, well, to call a person of color and/or anything they communicate racist, would be absurd.
This is hilarious. As a black person, I’m glad it happened. The rhetoric has gone too far. People are acting like angry children. Completely unprofessional.