A Black principal was hired at a majority white school. She was told not to talk equity

One of the Sacramento region’s most affluent public high schools opened the academic year in fall 2021 with a new principal who had committed much of her career to equity in education.

Amber Clark brought with her to Granite Bay High School five years of experience as Elk Grove Unified’s equity adviser. She believed in the practice of cultural responsiveness to lift up marginalized students who fall behind in public schools.

“I felt like I was thriving,” Clark, 45, said about that time early in her brief tenure at Placer County’s Granite Bay High School. “I was excited to meet every single staff member and know their hopes and dreams and challenges.”

The good feelings didn’t last long.

Clark ended the school year suspended by Roseville Joint Union High School District when she did not apologize for an email from the school’s wellness center that listed support services for LGBTQ students. The newsletter also included a link to a trailer for a short documentary about a gay Mormon teenager, a video that offended some in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints.

Now Clark, who is Black, is no longer at the school where she felt such promise a year and a half ago. She filed a discrimination claim against the district, a step that is often considered a precursor to a lawsuit.

“I have experienced ongoing and pervasive discrimination, harassment, intimidation, bullying, and retaliation while serving as the principal of Granite Bay High School by specific GBHS teachers, my direct supervisors, and members of the Board of Trustees,” Clark wrote in a complaint to the district in May.

Clark is speaking out publicly for the first time since her suspension. She believed the district intended to fire her when it placed her on leave and she took an administrative position at a south Sacramento charter school.

“I think back to those experiences, I don’t think I was protected,” she said. “I felt unprotected and I felt disrespected.”

Her former employer counters that it didn’t actually dismiss her. It noted the district conducted an investigation and determined that it handled complaints about the newsletter appropriately.

The Roseville school district also hired an outside agency to investigate Clark’s discrimination claim, which was completed in September.

“The district did not take any disciplinary action or terminate Mrs. Clark,” the district said in a written statement. “Mrs. Clark accepted another administrative position with a different educational agency.”

But the conflicts over Clark and her emphasis on equity in the conservative-leaning Placer County school district were more complicated than the disagreement over the newsletter alone, according to Clark and records obtained by The Sacramento Bee.

For instance, investigators looked at 23 incidents that Clark alleged showed discrimination or bias against her, and sustained facts in 13 of them. Among them: Officials asked her to stop using the word “equity” and remove the term from meetings because “parents and staff were ‘freaking out.’”

According to the investigation: “In December 2021, (Superintendent John) Becker told you that you can ‘still do the work of equity but to not use the word.’”

Separately, Granite Bay High School emails obtained by The Bee through a California Public Records Act request lay out the difficult year Clark experienced as she and the school district sought a path to incorporate equity in education programs.

Her pursuit of equity

Equity work is important to Clark, especially in a school district where 53% of students identify as white, and fewer than 4% of students are Black. At Granite Bay High, more than two-thirds of the student population is white and Black students make up just 2% of the student body.

Granite Bay High says it takes equity seriously, too. In promotional materials, it notes that it achieved “true equity” among students taking advanced placement and International Baccalaureate classes, ensuring those classes are diverse. Those programs are recognized as the school’s most challenging courses and can be steps to desirable college admissions.

But just months after Clark took the job, Becker asked her to “pause any work or any committee work on equity” as the school board works on a new approach for its vision and goals.

“There are too many pockets of distractions and misinformation across the district around the word equity and we need to re-think our strategies and intended outcomes,” Becker wrote in an email to Clark in October. “This is to protect the work, not end the work.”

Clark said she received no further directives from Becker or other administrators on how to pursue equity.

“They had a plan, but for whatever reason they felt the need to stop it,” Clark said.

Clark is continuing the work at a school in south Sacramento, carrying out the kind of programs she intended to do at Granite Bay.

“It’s unfortunate that I am not (at Granite Bay High) but I love that I am serving,” Clark said. “I feel honored to serve these students as well. I found a place that I could make a positive contribution.”

Asked about equity in interviews

Clark is a career educator who graduated from Arizona State University, married her high school sweetheart and started teaching.

She said she has strong relations in the LDS community, and she’s attended church events. When a job opportunity in Elk Grove Unified brought her to the Sacramento area in 2016, friends from the Mormon church helped Clark, her husband of 23 years and their four children pack their belongings and make the move.

She worked for Elk Grove Unified for five years as a director of equity, developing programs that encouraged teachers to accommodate students’ learning style and adopting restorative justice practices.

When she applied to work at Granite Bay, her colleagues knew her background and expected her to make equity a part of her administration.

Panels of parents, students and administrators interviewed her for the Granite Bay job. They asked how she would make curriculum, hiring practices and campus climate culturally responsive.

“Everyone asked me how I would handle issues with equity,” she said of the interview process. “I would be doing more of the same work I was doing in Elk Grove.”

But district officials and parents began to grumble at some of the equity work after Clark joined the administration.

“I was told that there were teachers on site that complained about my equity work and they didn’t understand what my intentions were,” Clark said.

In one instance, the district directed teachers to discontinue reading a book, “Grading for Equity,” for their book club. Some teachers, who supported Clark’s work, began emailing district officials in February, asking about the change.

District executive of support services Jennifer Leighton, who was also the former Granite Bay principal, asked Clark why she was hosting so many meetings with students and staff, and scheduling them as equity meetings. The district’s investigation stated that Clark likely misunderstood Leighton’s inquiries as criticism.

Staff members were concerned about Clark’s equity work, according to the emails. The requests for clarification surprised Clark. She responded to Leighton stating much of the work was inherited from administrators who were no longer at the school.

“They had the ball rolling and they were working toward change,” Clark said. “Based on the questions about equity they asked me in the hiring process, I did what I thought the community wanted and needed.”

According to Clark, Assistant Superintendent Brad Basham in March said some people found her confrontational and hostile.

“You need to realize the damage you are doing,” Basham said, according to the discrimination complaint Clark filed. “You are ruining relationships. I have received more complaints about you than any other new hire.”

Basham declined to comment for this story, but the district’s investigation confirmed Basham’s comments to Clark, adding that they did not find them to be microaggressions.

The district also fielded some complaints throughout the year about Clark from parents. One was over an email Clark sent out in March on how to support Muslim students with access to the school’s health office while they were fasting during Ramadan.

“I hope the district and/or school is able to issue a letter of apology to and how these same accommodations and well wishes (as in, we wish you a Happy Easter and celebration of Jesus’s resurrection) will be made for all religions,” read one email. “Or that they will all be discriminated against equally and completely left out of all activities and efforts in the secular environment on your campuses.”

Another email in April complained about an ethnic studies class, though it was being implemented throughout the state.

“The district didn’t have the right skills or the will to support, protect and lift the voices of marginalize groups, even the ones they hired intentionally,” Clark said.

LGBTQ newsletter

Conversations and concerns about equity continued throughout the school year, until it boiled over in the spring.

Before the LGBTQ newsletter was emailed, administrators already anticipated push back.

District officials knew that that month’s newsletter would stir up emotional reactions, so Clark asked Assistant Superintendent April Moore if the district’s outside public relations agency could review the content. Moore responded, “Honestly, no,” and that Granite Bay High should pay for any review.

“I like your revisions and the content is valid,” Moore wrote to Clark, according to the investigation. “I’m sure you can already anticipate how your audience will react.”

Conservative families reacted immediately when the wellness center sent its March newsletter highlighting LGBTQ resources. An email to Becker came from the school board President Scott Huber, who is a member of the LDS church. Huber said he received more than a dozen calls about the video.

The family in the 2013 film “Families are Forever” expressed concerns that the Mormon church would not accept their child, who came out to his family prior to the 2008 California election when voters passed Proposition 8 banning same-sex marriage.

“It is no secret that I am a member of that faith,” Huber said in emails to Becker in April.

Huber said the Mormon community was upset with the decade-old film because it was “filled with lies.”

“The message to all students and families who saw the video is ‘Don’t be friends with those Mormons…they hate gay people,’” he wrote to Becker, He added that the Mormon church has done much to protect the legal rights of the LGBTQ community, and encourages its members to get along with everyone, even if they don’t share the same views.

Huber also said he felt the video violated the district’s nondiscrmination policy and marginalized Mormon students.

“It is no secret that a high number of LDS students choose charter schools for their children. This email and video is the very reason why,” Huber said in an email to Becker. “They don’t feel included, and they feel attacked by the very group who advertises that we should treat everyone with respect. If the Wellness Center staff continue down this road of division, religious bigotry and hate spreading, it will lead to disastrous results.”

Becker, the superintendent, asked Clark to send a follow up email and apologize for the video’s content in the newsletter. The wellness center’s director and staff were not asked to address the content of the newsletter, according to the investigation.

According to the district’s investigation, however, Becker said the letter itself did not place blame on Clark.

Clark pushed back, asking why similar apology letters were not sent when racial and divisive incidents took place on campus, including when a student made monkey noises at a basketball game or when a site-selected announcer at a game said to spectators, “Let’s Go Brandon,” using a conservative euphemism for an expletive directed at President Joe Biden.

“I didn’t mind sending an apology out to help people feel heard and valued, but I felt it needs to be done equitably,” Clark told The Bee.

Granite Bay High School staff issued a public apology in response to the complaints.

Clark requested consistency, equity, and wanted to continue to position herself as a leader who cared for all students, according to her email to Becker.

“If RJUHSD and GBHS do not stand to address ALL parent/student concerns of misrepresentation, insults, and bias then I do not feel safe or supported with addressing only the ones that serve the majority group and/or my employers,” Clark wrote to Becker on April 5.

That same day, the district placed Clark on leave.

Roseville district challenges principal’s credential

Clark said she had no reason to resign from Granite Bay High. She was working on adding more classes to increase enrollment in its competitive International Baccalaureate program, creating consistent engagement with families and community, and introducing restorative practices to staff and students.

She was a regular at school boarding meetings and various sporting events including her favorite track and field. She would miss her son’s sporting events to make it to Granite Bay play Fresno and Bay Area teams.

In April, Clark was looking forward to graduation.

When asked to sign a settlement agreement in May, she instead hired a lawyer and appealed the district’s investigation.

She emailed district officials a list of questions including:

“What are the allegations against me? What specific board policies and/or administrative regulations are alleged to be violated? When do you expect to conclude the investigation? When will I be interviewed?”

The district denied her appeal to their investigation.

“I consider myself fired, because they terminated my employment,” she told The Bee.

Roseville Joint Union district disputes that claim, and took her decision to leave her job with the district to the Commission on Teacher Credentialing. Losing her credentials would threaten Clark’s current job and her livelihood.

The Commission on Teacher Credentialing told The Bee that Clark’s records with them will not be released until the investigation is fully adjudicated.

“It’s unfathomable on all counts,” Clark said. “It’s a tactic to intimidate me.”

Clark said she wants to see Roseville Joint Union take her complaint seriously and work on preventing discriminatory practices from taking place at Granite Bay High.

“What are they doing now to fix things?” she said. “They have an obligation to fix things, but they aren’t doing anything.”

This story was originally published November 13, 2022 at 5:00 AM.