NC: Charter Fires Teacher For Teaching Book About Race

This story carries so many reminders. This is why you need employment protection. This is why you need a union. This is why it's bad that charter schools put students and teachers in a rights-free zone. And this is why CRT panic laws hurt education.

Charlotte Secondary School is a 6-12 charter school in North Carolina, a "diverse middle and high school community that focuses on college and career preparation and individually tailored learning opportunities to empower all students to reach their full potential." The school has an 88% minority student body, with about 50/50 White/Black faculty. They've been at it for around fifteen years; their test scores aren't so hot, but their lacrosse team was on ESPN once. They use a no-frills block schedule.

And they're being sued.

Last October the school hired Markayle Gray to teach seventh and eighth grade English. The hiring was "on a contract basis" meaning he has no job protections or guarantee of year-to-year employment. And in February, he was fired. And now he's suing the school.

Gray chose to teach the novel Dear Martin, a YA book that follows a Black high school student as he deals with a violent encounter with the police. After being thrown to the ground and handcuffed, the teen writes ten imaginary letters to Dr. Martin Luther Kingh, Jr.

The school requires teachers to clear materials with the principal before using them. In his lawsuit, Gray says he not only did so, but that the principal not only approved the novel, but she recommended the novel to him as a “challenging but age-appropriate work that promoted a discussion of core American values like justice and equality.”

But then white parents complained. According to the lawsuit:

on February2, 2023, Gray was informed by the school’s principal Keisha Rock that his contract was being terminated effective immediately. The ostensible grounds, he was told, was the emergence of parental opposition over “Dear Martin” and other aspects of Gray’s teaching content related to racial equality. As Rock stated, “I cannot address complaints made by parents all day.”

Rock also told Gray that she had been in constant communication with the Board of Directors,“all day long”, as she put it, which had also received parental complaints regarding Gray, and that the Board had authorized his immediate termination.

According to a press release from Gray's lawyers:

White parents complained that the critically acclaimed novel injected what they regarded as unwelcome political views on systemic racial inequality into their children’s classroom. In its published core principles, Charlotte Secondary, whose student population is 80-85% Black, Hispanic or biracial, claims that “Diversity is not merely desirable, it is necessary for the accomplishment of our mission.”

According to the lawsuit, Rock also saw firing Gray as the only way to avoid pressure from North Carolina Department of Public Instruction (DPI) as a complaint had been circulated to DPI that a Charlotte Secondary teacher was teaching Critical Race Theory.

North Carolina's House passed a teacher gag bill back in March, after failing to get an identical bill past the governor's veto in 2021. HB 187 does specifically include charter schools in the requirement to avoid teaching any naughty topics; like many anti-CRT bills, it doesn't mention CRT by name but instead offers a large, vague list of characteristics that legislators imagine might describe CRT.

That bill was filed in late February, after Gray had been fired, but some version of it has been around for a while. This is the state where Lt. Governor Mark Robinson set up a McCarthyish tip line in 2021 so that citizens could report teachers for teaching naughty things. Any school-- including a charter school--has to know that this sort of state-sponsored intolerance is in the air.

The school's attorney has the predictable response:

"Since this is a personnel matter, we are limited in what we can say about the reasons for Mr. Gray's termination," attorney Katie Weaver Hartzog told ABC News in a statement. "However, I can say that the termination of Mr. Gray's employment was based on legitimate, nondiscriminatory, non-retaliatory reasons. The school denies any and all allegations of wrongdoing and intends to vigorously defend the suit."

Dear Martin has been banned elsewhere. Haywood County schools in North Carolina pulled it from 10th grade English classes after one parent complaint. In Georgia, Columbia County schools banned the book from classes and libraries for reasons that are unclear (read The Root's account of that flap). And Monett High School in Missouri yanked the book and replaced it with To Kill a Mockingbird. 

As the book's author Nic Stone put it, “I think there’s an overall discomfort with facing up to the fact that racism is still a thing that we need to be talking about. But I don’t think it’s possible to talk about it without people being uncomfortable.” 

Gray's actual complaint hinges on the charge that his firing was a product of race discrimination. Gray is suing for back pay, front pay, lost benefits, punitive damages, and compensatory damages. 

So many layers here. So many things missing. Job protections, so that a school can't just fire someone because they find him annoying. Laws that actually defend against discrimination. A union to defend Gray's right to due process. And just generally not bending to the will of White folks who don't want to even discuss the idea that racism is a thing. I guess we'll see how Gray's lawsuit turns out.