{"id":98645,"date":"2025-12-23T17:07:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-23T17:07:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/98645\/"},"modified":"2025-12-23T17:07:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-23T17:07:10","slug":"probes-of-racism-in-lubbock-schools-have-stalled-under-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/98645\/","title":{"rendered":"Probes of racism in Lubbock schools have stalled under Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"

Audio recording is automated for accessibility. Humans wrote and edited the story. See our AI policy<\/a>, and give us feedback<\/a>.<\/p>\n

LUBBOCK \u2014\u00a0The meeting of the local NAACP chapter began with a prayer \u2014 and then the litany of injustices came pouring out.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A Black high school football player was called a \u201cb\u2014h-ass\u201d n-word during a game by white players in September with no consequence, his mom said. A Black 12-year-old boy, falsely accused last December of touching a white girl\u2019s breast, was threatened and interrogated by a police officer at school without his parents and sentenced to a disciplinary alternative school for a month, his grandfather recounted. A Black honors student was wrongly accused by a white teacher of having a vape (it was a pencil sharpener) and sentenced to the alternative school for a month this fall, her mom said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re breaking people,\u201d said Phyllis Gant, a longtime leader of the NAACP chapter in Lubbock, referring to local schools\u2019 treatment of Black children. \u201cIt\u2019s just open season on our students.\u201d<\/p>\n

Just last year, there was hope that the racial climate at Lubbock-area schools might improve. The federal government had launched civil rights investigations after several alleged incidents of racial bullying shocked the community and made national<\/a> headlines<\/a>. In fall 2024, a resolution seemed to be in sight: An investigator from the Department of Education\u2019s Office for Civil Rights was planning to visit the area, community members said, for what they hoped would be a final round of interviews before the agency put in place a set of protections negotiated with the Lubbock-Cooper school district.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Then the 2024 presidential election happened \u2014 and the visit didn\u2019t. In March, the Trump administration closed seven of the Education Department\u2019s 12 regional civil rights enforcement offices, including the one in Dallas, which had been investigating complaints about Lubbock. Emails from the lawyer representing the families to the federal investigator bounced back \u2014 like hundreds of other OCR employees, she had been terminated.<\/p>\n

Since then, race relations in school districts in and around Lubbock have taken a turn for the worse, many parents and educators say. Black residents \u2014 who make up about 8% of Lubbock County \u2014 didn\u2019t expect the federal government to bring a halt to racist incidents, but the possibility of an agreement between the government and school districts provided a sense of accountability. Now, parents and students say racial epithets are more common in public, and Black teachers fear drawing attention to themselves. Gant says the NAACP chapter fields frequent calls from parents seeking help in addressing racial incidents they no longer bother to report to the Education Department.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Since President Donald Trump took office, the agency has not publicly announced a single investigation into racial discrimination against Black students, instead prioritizing investigations<\/a> into alleged<\/a> anti-white<\/a> discrimination<\/a>, antisemitism complaints and policies regarding \u00a0transgender students.\u00a0<\/p>\n

All told this year, the Education Department under Trump has dismissed thousands of civil rights investigations<\/a>. During the first six months of this year, OCR required schools to make changes and agree to federal monitoring in just 59 cases, compared with 336 during the same period last year, a Washington Post analysis found<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn many of our communities where people feel isolated and like they didn\u2019t have anyone to turn to, OCR mattered and gave people a sense of hope,\u201d said Paige Duggins-Clay, a lawyer at the Intercultural Development Research Association, an education policy and legal advocacy group that helped file some of the OCR complaints against Lubbock schools. \u201cAnd it matters that they\u2019ve essentially destroyed it.\u201d<\/p>\n

In an email, Julie Hartman, press secretary for legal affairs for the Department of Education, wrote, \u201cThese complaints of racial bullying were filed in 2022 and 2023, meaning that the Biden Administration had more time to investigate this than the Trump Administration has even been in office. The Trump Administration\u2019s OCR will continue vigorously enforcing the law to uphold all Americans\u2019 civil rights.\u201d She did not respond to a question about whether the agency had opened any investigations into discrimination against Black students.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Some white residents have noticed the change too. Lubbock County, located at the bottom of the Panhandle, is home to more than a quarter million people. It is the urban seat for a sprawling county that encompasses several suburban and rural school districts and hosts Texas Tech University at its center.<\/p>\n

Tracey Benefield \u2014 who has two children in Hutchinson Middle School in the Lubbock Independent School District, which borders the Lubbock-Cooper district \u2014 is from a family that has lived in the area for generations. She says her son has witnessed multiple incidents of racial bullying over the past year.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy son was walking down the hall with his friend who\u2019s Black, and some kid shoulder-checked him and called him the n-word. That\u2019s been one of many,\u201d she said. \u201cThings have absolutely gotten worse. The attitudes have always been there, but people acting on their attitudes is completely different.\u201d Lubbock district officials did not directly respond to questions about Benefield\u2019s assertions.<\/p>\n

She thinks OCR\u2019s retreat, among other changes within the federal government, has had an impact. \u201cPeople are more emboldened,\u201d she said. \u201cPeople have always had racist ideas, but now there\u2019s no consequences for being racist.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"FacingBlack parents and teachers in Slaton say there has been no decrease in racial bullying incidents and mistreatment of Black staff since complaints were made several years ago to the Department of Education\u2019s Office for Civil Rights. Mark Umstot for The Hechinger Report<\/p>\n

Prior to Trump\u2019s election, the concerns of parents and civil rights groups were quite different: Many were frustrated that Office for Civil Rights cases could linger for years as overworked investigators tracked down details and testimonies. Some were starting to advocate for more OCR staff and speedier resolutions. The outcry from residents, along with the media attention, prompted the Lubbock-Cooper and nearby Slaton school districts \u2014\u00a0where Black students make up about 3 percent and 5 percent of the student bodies, respectively \u2014\u00a0to adopt policies of mandatory in-school suspension for students caught making racial slurs and spurred training for staff.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But for many, the changes weren\u2019t coming quickly enough.<\/p>\n

In 2022, Tracy Kemp\u2019s eldest son, Brady, then an eighth grader, was one of nine Black students whose pictures were put on an Instagram page called \u201cLBMS Monkeys,\u201d which stood for \u201cLaura Bush Middle School Monkeys.\u201d (Brady is being referred to by his nickname and his last name is being withheld to protect his privacy.) Kemp was part of a group of parents in the Lubbock-Cooper school district who filed<\/a> OCR complaints that August over what they said was a toxic racial atmosphere that subjected their children to repeated racial bullying. White students would sometimes play whipping noises on their phones when Black students walked through the halls, according to the complaints. Despite a school district investigation that included reaching out to the FBI, those responsible were never caught.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Lubbock-Cooper officials said via email that they \u201cresponded swiftly and appropriately\u201d to the 2022 incident at Laura Bush Middle School. \u201cEfforts of the district to ensure all students feel valued, supported, and a sense of belonging have contributed to the positive, nurturing environment our campuses strive to maintain,\u201d wrote Sadie Alderson, the district\u2019s executive director of public information.<\/p>\n

Kemp stayed in the Lubbock-Cooper district for another year, but even though the page was taken down, the taunting and bullying didn\u2019t let up, she says. Her middle son was in sixth grade at LBMS that year and was called racial epithets on the school bus and in the hallways. (His name is being withheld to protect his privacy.) When Brady, who had graduated from the middle school and started at Lubbock-Cooper High School, tried to start a Black Student Union there, she says, a white student ripped the page with signatures from his notebook. Kemp says the principal told her there was nothing he could do. The final straw came one day when the ninth grader didn\u2019t stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. The teacher told him he was a criminal who was breaking the law, Kemp says, and the harassment started up again, this time on Snapchat, with the same language as the \u201cmonkeys\u201d Instagram page.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In July 2023, Kemp moved with her family to New Mexico and commuted 75 miles each way until she found a job closer to her new home. Leaving Lubbock-Cooper, she said, was life-changing for her kids\u2019 mental health.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn eighth grade, you\u2019re going through puberty, you\u2019re learning about yourself, you\u2019re growing and you have all these different feelings. And now you add into the mix, \u2018These people don\u2019t like me because of my color\u2019 \u2014 that\u2019s a whole different type of aspect to have to deal with,\u201d said Kemp. \u201cAnd on the flip side of that, I also have to encourage my child that not every white person feels this way, because I don\u2019t want to teach my child hate either.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brady, now a 12th grader, also says he\u2019s happy the family moved. \u201cHonestly, it\u2019s a lot easier,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s no arguments, there\u2019s nothing to worry about, really. I just focus on school more than anything.\u201d<\/p>\n

Others who have stayed say they\u2019ve paid a price. Last December, Ja\u2019Maury, a then-12-year-old whose last name is being withheld to protect his privacy, learned of rumors that he\u2019d touched a white girl\u2019s breast during school. He went straight to administrators at the school, Commander William C. McCool Academy, to tell them the truth. But the assistant principal believed the girl\u2019s story and radioed a police officer, who interrogated him and threatened him with jail unless he confessed, according to Ja\u2019Maury and his grandfather, Mike Anzley. Alone in a room of adults, Ja\u2019Maury broke down and admitted to something he says never happened.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was yelling and threatening to send me to juvie if I didn\u2019t say I did it. I was scared,\u201d Ja\u2019Maury recalled in an interview. \u201cIt was a white person\u2019s word against a Black person\u2019s word.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Ja\u2019Maury was 12 years old when he was accused last year of touching a white girl\u2019s breast at school, something he denies. He was interrogated alone by police and assigned to the detention school in Lubbock for 30 days. Mark Umstot for The Hechinger Report<\/p>\n

Ja\u2019Maury was assigned 30 days at Priority Intervention Academy, Lubbock Independent School District\u2019s detention school, where children are sent for offenses determined to be too severe for in-school suspension. Constantly anxious, he reverted to sleeping in his grandfather\u2019s bed like he did as a toddler. At the detention school, he said, he was so afraid of defying adults that he twice wet his pants rather than challenge a teacher who said he couldn\u2019t leave class to use the bathroom.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cHe had never been in trouble before,\u201d said Anzley. He\u2019d always taught Ja\u2019Maury to trust adults, and said he was devastated by the adults at McCool betraying that trust. \u201cI had to make him distinguish right from wrong in a whole new way.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Anzley filed a formal grievance with the district and, according to a copy of the findings shared with The Hechinger Report, administrators agreed to wipe the incident from his discipline file, issue a formal apology and provide training in discipline and due process to both McCool administrators and the officer who interrogated him.\u00a0<\/p>\n

McCool administrators did not respond to requests for comment. Amanda Castro-Crist, executive director of communications and community relations for Lubbock ISD, wrote in an email that the district could not discuss individual students because of federal laws protecting student privacy, but that it \u201cis proud to serve a diverse student body.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gant, the 62-year-old NAACP leader, says that growing up in Lubbock she never experienced the kind of racism she sees now. An accountant who runs her own business, she got involved in community activism about 20 years ago after enduring identity theft and a costly, time-consuming effort to clear her name. \u201cI\u2019m a strong, faith-based woman,\u201d said Gant. \u201cWho else will someone call? Who will go to their meetings for free, come with the facts and the research and not make them feel like they owe anything?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Gant noted changes the districts have made in the wake of the OCR investigation and parent activism, including the new suspension policies. Administrators in Lubbock-Cooper sometimes even proactively contact her about a parent concern, she said. In Lubbock ISD, Gant credits the director of student and parent resolution, Brian Ellyson, with listening to parents and helping them resolve conflicts in a principled manner.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Phyllis Gant, a longtime leader in the Lubbock NAACP, says she has been fielding more parent complaints about racist incidents in schools in and around the Texas city this year. Mark Umstot for The Hechinger Report<\/p>\n

Ellyson was one of two Lubbock school officials at the September NAACP meeting, held in an independent living center on the south side of town equidistant between Laura Bush Middle School and McCool Academy. Parent after parent described their children\u2019s mistreatment.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Leshai Whitfield said her son was sent to a detention school after a teacher complained that he\u2019d pushed her; she said her son was only trying to leave the classroom because of a fight between two other students. Naquelia Edwards said her son has been repeatedly called the n-word and disciplined for fights while white students went unpunished. Jessika Ogden, mother of the 11th grade honors student who was wrongly accused of having a vape, said she believes her daughter was racially profiled. She filed a grievance against Lubbock Independent School District\u2019s Coronado High School to keep her daughter from being sent to the district\u2019s detention school, which she says she eventually won. But her daughter missed school while the case was being resolved, Ogden said, as she refused to send her to the detention school. \u201cHad I not fought for my daughter, she would have suffered that punishment, missing more class, more credits,\u201d Ogden said.<\/p>\n

In interviews, more than a dozen Black high school students in Lubbock said they regularly heard other students use the n-word. \u201cSlurs happen all the time \u2013 it don\u2019t matter what time of day it is,\u201d said a 10th grader from Coronado High School, whose name is being withheld to protect her privacy.<\/p>\n

Gant says the absence of an actual agreement between the federal government and any of the districts means the environment in schools hasn\u2019t fundamentally changed. Those agreements come with teacher training, data collection and penalties for failing to comply. In-school suspension for racist behavior may keep some of it in check, but the changes are cosmetic, she and parents say.<\/p>\n

Emails obtained by The Hechinger Report through public records requests show that Kulsoom Naqvi, the OCR investigator based in the Dallas office, conducted staff surveys, data requests and several rounds of interviews throughout much of 2024, but the work came to a halt that fall. Naqvi, who is not technically separated from the Education Department because of ongoing litigation over the mass firings at the Education Department, said she could not comment on the case.<\/p>\n

\u201cGiven the pace that things were moving, I felt confident that we were going to get a resolution before the end of the year,\u201d said Duggins-Clay, the lawyer who helped file some of the complaints. \u201cHad the election not happened, we would have gotten to a negotiated resolution.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Alderson, the spokesperson for Lubbock-Cooper, said that the investigation is still open, but the current superintendent, hired in June, was not aware of any communication from an OCR investigator. She said the district had sought mediation with OCR in spring 2024, but Naqvi had denied that request and had not given Lubbock-Cooper a timeline for resolving the complaints.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Just over 20 miles away from downtown Lubbock, in the neighboring town of Slaton, which had its own series of racist incidents and ensuing complaints to OCR, residents say the racial atmosphere has deteriorated even further this year and the school administration has been completely unresponsive. School officials promised to work with local authorities to paint over part of a mural in the center of town that depicts Black men picking cotton under the watch of a white farmer, teachers say. But that never happened. Parents say the n-word is used regularly by white students without consequence in the district, where just 5 percent of students are Black.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve witnessed kids on my campus calling Black kids \u2018monkeys,\u2019\u201d said a Slaton teacher who grew up in the town and spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear for her job. \u201cI\u2019m sorry to say that it\u2019s gotten worse. I feel like more of the extremists have come out.\u201d<\/p>\n

Parents say their children continued to be bullied because of their race even after Slaton administrators pledged in 2022 to discipline students for slurs. One mom said her second grader was called an \u201cAfrican monkey\u201d the next year by other kids in his class at Cathelene Thomas Elementary. She says she told the principal, who said, \u201c\u2018Would you be offended if they called him a cat or something different?\u2019\u201d the mother recalled. \u201cI got up and left. I didn\u2019t even know what to say.\u201d<\/p>\n

After that she started homeschooling her kids. She asked to remain anonymous because her children still participate in community events and she is worried they will face retribution.<\/p>\n

Cathelene Thomas Principal Margaret Francis did not respond to requests for comment. Superintendent Shelli Conkin said in an email that federal law prevented the district from discussing student-related matters and did not respond to additional questions. \u201cSince I became superintendent in 2023, Slaton ISD has experienced many positive developments that highlight our commitment to students and staff,\u201d she wrote, including facility upgrades, a district fundraising effort and a four-day school week.<\/p>\n

\"\"After a series of racist incidents in schools in Slaton in 2022, Black residents had hoped a mural at the center of town depicting of Black men picking cotton would be painted over. The mural is still in place. Mark Umstot for The Hechinger Report<\/p>\n

Anzley, meanwhile, is still fighting for justice for his grandson. After the district declined to discipline the girl for making the accusation, he said, and with OCR no longer seeming like an option for redress, he\u2019s hoping to find a lawyer to file a civil rights lawsuit on behalf of his grandson.<\/p>\n

The district\u2019s apology and commitment to better train administrators did not undo the damage to Ja\u2019Maury, he and his grandfather said. \u201cPeople kept on messing with me about it, saying I was a pedophile, saying I was a pervert,\u201d said the middle schooler. \u201cAfter that I almost hated life, I didn\u2019t even want to live no more after that. That was horrible.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last spring, four months after Ja\u2019Maury had been back at McCool, he got into a fight with a boy who called him the n-word on the school bus, he said. This fall, Anzley decided to transfer Ja\u2019Maury from the top-rated school he once loved \u2014 which is 9 percent Black \u2014 to Dunbar College Preparatory Academy, which is 45 percent Black and received an F rating this year from the Texas Education Agency. Ja\u2019Maury says he feels safer there; Anzley says the move was necessary for his grandson\u2019s mental health but that he preferred the learning opportunities at McCool.<\/p>\n

\u201cNone of this is new, because the very name Lubbock is the name of a Confederate soldier,\u201d said Gant. \u201cIt\u2019s heartbreaking, but it doesn\u2019t surprise me. The aggression of it has been heightened under the Trump administration.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

She added, \u201cThe districts know that OCR has been dismantled so there\u2019s no urgency to fix these issues. It\u2019s on the community, and it\u2019s on the parents to be factual, vocal and not quit.\u201d<\/p>\n

Contact senior investigative reporter Meredith Kolodner<\/a>at 212-870-1063 or kolodner@hechingerreport.org<\/a> or on Signal at merkolodner.04. This story about federal investigations into schools<\/a> was produced by The Hechinger Report<\/a>, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Disclosure: Texas Tech University has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune\u2019s journalism. Find a complete\u00a0list of them here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Audio recording is automated for accessibility. Humans wrote and edited the story. See our AI policy, and give…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":98646,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[145,168,170,169,39868],"class_list":["post-98645","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-lubbock","tag-donald-trump","tag-lubbock","tag-lubbock-headlines","tag-lubbock-news","tag-u-s-department-of-education"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98645"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98645\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/98646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}