School staff were not going to show up to work just because new students were from Rwanda. Just because Rwanda is part of the same continent as the ebola outbreak, though the distance is similar to that of Seattle, Washington and Philadelphia, PA. This is pure bigotry based on national origin- denying someone the right to education because they come from the same continent as the ebola outbreak.   

The NJ Attorney General's Office or the DOJ needs to penalize this school district in order to:

1) foster reconciliation between the students and their family who have been discriminated against

2) promote understanding, where the school must submit a Corrective Action Plan to the DOJ for review and approval. This plan should include, at a minimum, an in-service training program for the entire staff focused on sensitivity to and understanding of bias incidents.

3) to avoid repetition, the school needs to apologize publically to the entire country of the United States in a press conference in such a way that they apologize for what they did and not how other people took it, so that the entire country sees what happens when fear and ignorance against Africans are allowed to be followed to their logical extreme. (this is not the first incident of bigotry against Africans since the ebola outbreak).  

 

• What happened:  

It began with a letter from a nurse doing something completely unncessary, and it led to an ugly, bigoted reaction from both parents and teachers. "I will be taking the students' temperature three times a day for 21 days,” said the school nurse in a letter to staff which reached parents, citing health guidelines of the Burlington County Health Department's adherence to a Centers for Disease Control recommendation that all healthy people who arrive in the United States from an Ebola affected area be checked for fever daily for 21 days. "The nurse also acknowledges in the same letter however that Rwanda is not an area affected by Ebola.

The nurse informed the school staff she would check the students before they start school, at lunch time and at the end of the day."

•  The reactions:

"Anybody from that area should just stay there until all this stuff is resolved. There's nobody affected here let's just keep it that way," parent John Povlow told WTXF-TV.

"A lot of people were going to pull their kids out of school," custodian Bryan Huff told NBC10. "A lot of people weren't going to go to work."  

The children's parents decided to keep the children home for the duration of those 21 days, and beyond. Reading the above quotes from Povlow and Huff, it seems obvious that the Rwandan children's parents kept their children home past the 21-day limit because of pressure from other parents.   The school is 60% white, 9% greater than the state average.  

• The insincerity of the school and the need for DOJ action:

“None of the actions that have shined the regional light of media exposure on Maple Shade Schools was mean-spirited or ill intended,” Maple Shade Superintendent of Schools Beth Norcia wrote on Monday afternoon.

“Our schools have become the unwitting “face” of our nation’s fears with regard to pressing health concerns... No matter how well intentioned, a message that originated within our schools created conflict and concern within the Maple Shade community. We offer our sincere apologies.”

If you read this non-apology ("we're sorry people took it the wrong way," not that they are ignorant and denied school to children for no reason), it becomes clear that media exposure is the only thing that has the school administration talking about how these students will eventually return to school. Thus I doubt this district is going to do justice to these kids on their own.

This entire school needs to comply with some sort of sensitivity training and remediation.    Please contact the Office of the Attorney General Division of Civil Right's Camden Office  856-614-2550

Please contact the Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, Educational Opportunities Section and e-mail, write or call them to take action against this school.

• By e-mail to education@usdoj.gov
• By telephone at (202) 514-4092 or 1-877-292-3804 (toll-free)
• By facsimile at (202) 514-8337
• By letter to the following address:

U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Educational Opportunities Section, PHB
Washington, D.C. 20530   This needs to be federal. The NJ attorney general's office has already failed to fight racial bias in its schools this month, and thus cannot be trusted to call out bigotry when it sees it.