Black Placerville teen’s mother sues over years of alleged racial abuse at school

Every day that Ashley Lewis sends her 16-year-old daughter off to high school she feels the same sense of dread.

“I feel like I’m just sending her to prison, almost like I’m just waiting for her to hit the prison yard and hope that she has the one good person to have her back, or she’s going to get attacked,” she said.

Lewis, 36, is a single mother of two who moved to El Dorado County from North Highlands in 2012. She had hoped the change would lead to a better life for her and her children.

Instead, Lewis said her daughter – who is half Black – has been subjected to racist taunts and abuse, called the “N” word and harassed since the first grade.

They called the game ‘tag’

In elementary school, the children singled her out for a game they called “tag,” one where any children who tagged her daughter “turned black” as part of the game, Lewis said.

“She didn’t understand, and she’d say, ‘No, mom, it’s like tag,’” said Lewis, who is White. “’When I touched them, they freeze and they have to turn black.’

“And so that was kind of the first little thing that we started to catch onto.”

Then came high school.

“By then, everything got more physical,” Lewis said of her daughter’s experience at El Dorado High School in Placerville, where Lewis says her daughter has been dragged by her hair, punched, kicked and choked, sometimes in view of staff, and sometimes with the incidents recorded and posted to social media.

Now, Lewis and her daughter, who Lewis asked be identified only by her initials, S.L., for this story, say they’ve had enough.

Years of racist abuse led to lawsuit, she says

In a federal civil rights lawsuit filed last month in U.S. District Court in Sacramento, the family accuses the El Dorado Unified High School District, Superintendent Ronald Carruth, Assistant Superintendent Tony DeVille, school Principal Elizabeth Sisson and Assistant Principal Justin Gatling of failing to protect S.L. and ignoring Lewis’ repeated pleas for help.

“Beginning in November 19, 2021, S.L. became the subject of pervasive harassment,” according to the lawsuit, filed by Long Beach attorney Alexis Galindo. “Her classmates bullied her by calling her names, touching her, pulling her hair and beating her, all based on her race and sexual orientation.

“S.L. and her mother, Ashley Lewis repeatedly complained to the principal, Defendant, Ms. Sisson. Those complaints were brushed aside. On November 19, 2021, S.L. was attacked by four girls calling her the ‘N’ word in the cafeteria. The bullies punched and kicked her, calling her pretty little ‘N’ word.

“After the attack defendant Principal, Ms. Sisson imposed no disciplinary action against the bullies.”

‘These allegations are untrue’

In a statement responding to a request for comment, the district flatly denies the allegations, but declined to comment further.

“The El Dorado Union High School District is aware of the allegations contained in documents submitted by Ms. Lewis to the Sacramento Bee,” the district statement read. “These documents allege that the District and the referenced employees engaged in negligence and deliberate indifference with regard to her daughter.

“These allegations are untrue. The District disputes the factual allegations upon which Ms. Lewis’s claims are based but is declining to comment further as litigation has commenced.

“To be clear, the El Dorado Union High School District is committed to providing equal opportunities for all individuals in District programs and activities and prohibits discrimination.”

The district website also notes that it prohibits any “discriminatory harassment, intimidation, and bullying of any student based on the student’s actual or perceived race, color, ancestry” or sexual orientation.

And it says any student with such complaints should report them, something Lewis and the lawsuit say was done numerous times without result.

“School officials were aware that S.L. was being bullied based on her race,” the suit says. “Ashley Lewis made repeated complaints about the bullying, but the school took no action.”

Once, last November, after another girl called S.L. the ‘N’ word, she reported it to a school resource officer, the lawsuit says.

“The resource officer from the Placerville Police told S.L. that the attacker had a constitutional right to call S.L. the ‘N’ word,” the lawsuit says.

Stephon Clark’s brother sought for help

The situation deteriorated to the point that Lewis reached out for help to Stevante Clark, the Sacramento-based racial justice activist whose brother, Stephon, was killed by Sacramento police officers in 2018 as he held a cell phone the police said officers mistook for a gun.

“I’ve been in contact with the family providing any emotional support that I can,” Clark said last week after returning from the Memphis funeral for Tyre Nichols, the former Sacramento resident who died after being beaten by Memphis police officers.

Clark said he hopes to schedule a meeting with school officials over Lewis’ claims.

“It’s a disconnect from a lot of the staff and the students,” Clark said. “They come from a completely different culture. I think it’s a cultural problem, just like the law enforcement issue is a cultural problem.

“She isn’t the only family going through this. I deal with families from there all the way to Elk Grove.”

Part of the problem, Lewis says, is the fact that S.L. is one of only a few Black students in the school.

District, city are mostly white

The district reports on its website that its enrollment is 68.54% white, 16.79% Hispanic and 1.07% Black.

Those demographics are similar to Placerville’s as a whole, with the U.S. Census Bureau reporting the city of roughly 11,000 residents is 88.5% White and less than 1% Black.

The community has a recent history of racial tension, with arguments over the city’s nickname of “Old Hangtown” and a City Council vote in 2021 to remove a noose from the city’s logo, a move that sparked protests by some residents as well as members of the Proud Boys.

In an interview this month, Lewis dabbed tears from her eyes as she described her daughter coming home from school with bruises on her arms and the drastic weight loss S.L. has experienced from the stress.

Lewis said because of the troubles she moved more than 13 miles from town to a hilltop acreage, where a sign posted out front has a drawing of a hand holding a pistol and warning, “There is nothing here worth dying for.”

S.L. finally ended up in distance learning before changing schools.

“They made her do the (distance learning) thing because it’s just not safe on campus for her,” Lewis said. “So she’s the one that has to leave and you know, these other kids get to have the social experience of high school.

“But meanwhile my daughter’s stuck at home getting threats online and videos made about her and can’t go to school because it’s not safe.”

At her new school, S.L. is a junior studying cosmetology and says she has a fairly simple goal.

“I mean, all I really want is just to have a normal year,” she said.

The lawsuit seeks general, punitive and medical damages for claims of discrimination, sexual harassment and negligent supervision of students.

Lewis said she wants something basic from the lawsuit.

“I just want them to be held accountable,” she said. “This is about bringing attention to the fact that my daughter, since first grade, used to cry herself to sleep because she thought she was ugly, because she felt like she was disgusting.

“Those were her exact words to me in first grade: ‘Mommy, why am I so disgusting?’”

This story was originally published February 15, 2023 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Black Placerville teen’s mother sues over years of alleged racial abuse at school."