Sacramento teacher likens parents pushing for faster school openings to white supremacy
A Latin teacher at a Sacramento high school has sparked controversy after making a Facebook post and commenting during a school board meeting suggesting local parents were expressing “structurally white-supremacist” views, as he lambasted their calls for teachers to reopen campuses from COVID-19 shutdowns more fully.
Damian Harmony teaches at Kennedy High School in Sacramento, but his comments were directed toward parents of the Washington Unified School District in West Sacramento, where his children at students.
“I’m as disappointed as I am unsurprised that last week, we all had to hear all the cynical, pearl-clutching, faux-urgency, ableist, structurally white-supremacist hysteria, even as teachers were moving forward with (a memorandum of understanding) that already put them in harm’s way and was asking too much of a beleaguered group of professionals,” Harmony wrote, according to screenshots of his Facebook page.
The written remarks, the subject of viral attention and national spotlight, were first reported by Newsweek. Harmony said in an email to The Bee on Friday that the post was made private after media attention flooded his Facebook page.
“This is not a country club. Our teachers are not the wait staff whom you callously and inhumanely disdain because they failed to anticipate that you wanted lime instead of lemon,” Harmony’s comment continued. “You’ve attempted to bully a school board into making the schools less safe for the teachers and children.”
Harmony’s employer, Sacramento City Unified School District, distanced itself from his recent remarks in a written statement, saying his comments were “not made in his capacity as a district employee of Sacramento City Unified School District, but in his personal capacity and through the public comment portion during a different school district’s board meeting regarding that district’s reopening plan.”
A Washington Unified parents coalition on Facebook called for the district to immediately renounce Harmony’s comparison.
Washington Unified issued a statement Wednesday in response to the recent comments, saying parents have a right to submit public comments but that the board of trustees “in no way condones public comments consisting of derogatory remarks.”
The statement referenced Harmony’s comments indirectly and did not mention him by name.
The Bee’s efforts to reach Harmony immediately on Friday regarding his remarks were unsuccessful.
The teacher spoke with The Bee last year, for a story published in September about teachers’ struggles in balancing online instruction with parenting children of their own.
In that story, Harmony, a single father of children ages 8 and 10, referred to distance learning as “crisis learning.”
“We need better leadership that isn’t kicking the ball up to the county and state,” he said at the time. “We don’t have public stewardship.”
Harmony submitted his comments during a board of trustees special meeting Sunday, which followed an eight-hour regular meeting the preceding Thursday.
During the March 25 regular meeting, the trustees approved a plan to combine hybrid “A” and “B” in-person learning schedules down to a single, four-day-a-week schedule that will begin April 12, according to a superintendent’s message sent to parents the following day.
That decision reversed course from its previous plan. The reversal came following U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the California Department of Public Health recently revising their guidelines for physical distancing in schools, reducing the recommended distance from 6 feet between students down to 3 feet.
Numerous Washington Unified parents called in to the March 25 meeting advocating that the existing hybrid schedules be combined. Public comments frequently grew contentious.
“Some people are willing to belittle, bully and threaten parents who advocate for their children,” a parent named Amber said. “That’s my reality. Teachers, please know we support you, but there some in your ranks that are acting like bullies in the name of representing you.”
Harmony, in his remarks online, disagreed, saying he could “measure the level of white supremacy in (his) neighborhood” by listening to parents “who treat the teachers’ efforts as though they’ve not been exhausting and ever-present, while also going through a pandemic themselves.”
This story was originally published April 2, 2021 at 12:48 PM.
CORRECTION: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that the Facebook post was deleted. Harmony told The Bee he made the post private after receiving harassing comments.
