Exclusive: A fired principal speaks — Christian Brothers acted with ‘privileged arrogance’
Chris Orr was the first African American principal of Christian Brothers High School, an institution with Sacramento roots dating back to 1876. This was a momentous hire and a source of great pride until Orr was unceremoniously fired last October after only two years on the job.
The sudden termination came out of nowhere, and with no explanation, dropping like a big stink bomb set off by CB President Lorcan Barnes and the CB board of directors – a collection of people decidedly lacking in racial and ethnic diversity.
A community uproar ensued while CB circled the wagons late last year and looked terrible doing it.
Orr, 49, is a third-generation Sacramentan with local roots dating back to the World War II era. He has not spoken with any specificity about his situation – until now. We sat down at his home where Orr and his wife Tashia were gracious hosts but clearly still reeling from Orr’s termination and its aftermath.
Orr has a son who is a senior at CB and he said telling him and his older brother, a college student, about his firing was heartbreaking.
“To see my wife have to go through all these emotions and for (Barnes) to do this to my family is unforgivable,” he said. “When I was hired I was super excited my aunties and uncles were so proud. That’s what was heartbreaking, because I felt that I let them down, even though I don’t think it’s my fault.”
After exhausting all remedies available to him, Orr formally has filed a federal complaint of racial discrimination in employment against the religious non-profit that runs Christian Brothers – and against Barnes, who is portrayed in the complaint filed by Orr as a micromanager who undermined Orr repeatedly until firing him.
Orr’s complaint has eight claims for relief, including employment discrimination, racial harassment, retaliation and wrongful termination. With his career in education wounded by the experience, Orr’s complaint seeks compensatory, general, special and punitive damages.
As stated earlier, CB had circled the wagons but on Tuesday released a statement denying “any and all allegations of discrimination and retaliation.”
“No employment decisions at (Christian Brothers) are race-based,” the statement read. “(Christian Brothers) also disputes allegations that impugn our deep commitment to diversity and inclusion. “
The statement also said that Barnes and his administrative team continues to have the full support of the school’s board of directors.
Anything can happen in a court of law and we won’t know how Orr’s legal arguments hold up until a court decides. Orr could win, his case could be dismissed, there could be a settlement with a gag order, or more unknown information about this case could still materialize.
Cornerstone Catholic school
The case has already been ugly and it could get uglier.
But what we can say with absolute certainty right now is that regardless of the eventual outcome of Orr’s complaint, and regardless of CB’s denials, this situation is a PR disaster for CB and for Barnes.
We can wonder why would Barnes and his board of directors let this situation deteriorate to this point: Orr has been fired and is suing. The African American female educator that Orr hired to be his vice principal was fired before him. Barnes is a lame duck and is leaving CB himself. What a mess.
Here is what we do know: CB is a cornerstone Catholic high school, a Sacramento institution that has produced many outstanding graduates. I personally have several friends who sent their kids to CB and loved the experience. Orr said he would have gone to CB but his dad was coaching football at John F. Kennedy High School so he followed him there.
But Orr’s brother, Mark Orr – athletic director at Sacramento State – attended CB. So did several other members of Orr’s family.
Orr, who is Catholic, was a principal at a Stockton school when he said Barnes reached out to him in 2017. When he got the job, Orr said he thought it was a perfect match.
“Here is a private school respected by so many people with a mission of social justice right in the middle of Oak Park,” he said.
Orr was raised in Oak Park and, along with wanting to run CB as best he could, he said he wanted to make the school more accessible to the diverse Oak Park community. He said he began asking questions about who was getting tuition assistance from the school and why. The question is important because CB charges $14,060 in tuition per year. That doesn’t include a $700 enrollment fee and a $320 graduation fee for seniors.
The tuition contradiction
Here is my bias as a cradle Catholic: I think that’s an outrageous amount of money to charge the parents of high school students. I think that creates haves and have-nots in an educational system purporting to be based on Lasallian principles that preach a concern for social justice and the poor.
I could go on about that contradiction between the mission of the school and the money it charges. But the point about tuition assistance at CB is key to Orr’s legal complaint. First, Orr asserts that Barnes discouraged him from conducting outreach within Oak Park’s diverse community. This troubled Orr, he said, because he learned that neighbors of CB began to view the school as a “fortress that was closed off to them.”
He said he was told by Barnes that outreach into Oak Park wasn’t a good use of his time.
When students’ families sought tuition relief, Orr’s complaint states that Barnes used “outrageous criteria” for minority students. The complaint alleges that Barnes would withhold tuition if a parent was suspected to be undocumented or gay.
Orr told me that Barnes and other members of the tuition assistance committee would look on Zillow, the online real estate listings site, and withhold tuition assistance to minority candidates if they thought they lived in a neighborhood that was too nice.
He said they would make cracks about some ethnic-sounding names or use vulgar language to describe groups of minority parents they rejected.
“There was a level of privileged arrogance,” Orr said. “The comments they would make were beyond offensive.”
At a certain point, Barnes began retaliating against him and fired him, he said.
Where was the board of directors? “It seemed like the tail was wagging the dog,” Orr said.
Separate from the statement, the school provided a breakdown of the ethnic makeup of the student body, with 57 percent not identifying as white for 2019-20 school year, and increase of 6 percent over the decade. The statement from CB said that the school has referred Orr’s complaint to their lawyers and that the school will “vigorously defend against what we believe to be baseless allegations.”
Before Christmas, community members – and famed activists such as author Cornel West – were rallying on Orr’s behalf. They wanted him re-instated. All Orr can do is seek relief in the courts.
But for the larger Sacramento community, Orr’s complaint could and should trigger increased community pressure on CB. What happened here? Why would an institution that purports to be about religious values based on social justice stray so far from its mission in its own internal affairs?
“That they’ve allowed this to go so far is sad,” Orr said. “I believe in (Lasallian principles). The school has to get back to that.”
This story was originally published January 28, 2020 at 10:41 AM.
