Empty classrooms (Photo: Wikipedia)
Parents Called ‘White Supremacists’ by Sacramento Teacher For Demanding Schools Reopen
Another received message from a teachers union rep telling her to ‘get f**d’
By Katy Grimes, March 30, 2021 10:31 am
Parents calling for in-person learning and supportive of the online group Reopen California Schools got an earful over the weekend. A teacher who lives in West Sacramento but teaches at Kennedy High School in the Sacramento City Unified District went on a rant Sunday morning on Facebook, the Globe has learned.
“During a call-in board meeting he gave a four minute rant calling all parents that want their kids back in school ‘white supremacists,'” a parent told the Globe. Reopen CA Schools posted it to their twitter feed. “And the guy, Damian Harmony, still has the comments proudly posted to his FB page.”
A @officialSCUSD teacher in Sacramento publicly calling parents white supremacists and bullies that speak in favor of in-person learning. I thought we were done with this.@officialSCUSD, please make sure the parents in your district get an apology. cc: @ScusdP https://t.co/eSFUBWvz8o pic.twitter.com/wVL9sJ6Y6e
— Reopen California Schools (@ReopenCASchools) March 29, 2021
Here is what Harmony said:
“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 an MOU that already put them in harm’s way and was asking too much of a beleaguered group of professionals. 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 with your water when you walked in the door. This is a public service, aimed at educating your children so they grow up to be better than our generation. You set that back by quite a bit.”
“It’s starting to get really ugly here in our one horse town… our one horse town that had the Governor endorse the School Board President,” the parent said ironically.
Newsweek reported on the incident: “He blasted local parents who have put teachers ‘in harm’s way’ by demanding to reopen schools that have been shut down in adherence with coronavirus pandemic social distancing guidelines.”
Parents are demanding an apology from the Sacramento school district administrators.
“Harmony, who is a parent himself, said he has been able to better gauge ‘White supremacy’ in his neighborhood, after hearing other parents demanding that the school district have its teachers return to the classroom,” Fox News reported Monday.
A few weeks ago, the Globe was contacted by these same parents of school-aged kids who have been fighting hard to get the West Sacramento school board and teachers unions to reopen the schools in their Sacramento region district. The parents said at a Board meeting the trustees voted on a hybrid model, but did not provide an implementation date, leaving parents in limbo yet once more.
The parents said they spoke during the public comment period of the meeting. However, after the wife’s comments to the school board, they received a message from a West Sacramento Teachers Union representative telling her to “get f**d.”
“His facebook page public profile is an image of a knife wielding, mask wearing ‘Jason’ from the Halloween movies,” the husband said. “We have talked to the High School Principal where he works. We are engaging with the trustees and Superintendents. At this point only one of the trustees have responded. We are hopefully talking to the Superintendent.”
But nothing really happened beyond the report.
“I think what I realized was that our little town of West Sacramento seems to be a microcosm of what’s happening nationally,” the parent said. “And when you consider this teacher at Kennedy High School is, or was, on the Sacramento bargaining team… and the teacher that threatened my wife is on the political action committee for the WSTA, it points to a horrible culture of intimidation and harassment that is unacceptable.”
It has become quite clear that the school boards and teachers unions are no longer considering their clients – the students – as this has become just a massive shakedown of state and local funding .
Does anyone really believe that teachers are fearful of COVID in the classroom? During the past year, surely every teacher has shopped for groceries in busy, crowded stores, made several trips to Home Depot, met up with friends at a coffee spot, been to a dinner party in someone’s home, and gotten a haircut. They haven’t lived in a bubble.
The students appear to be the least of their concerns, as not once were the students ever mentioned in these screeds. This is all about control in a state without leadership, and parents are on to them.
Thank you again Katy. I hope you talk about this tomorrow morning on Phil Cowan’s show. I’m sure glad I don’t have kids in public schools. My Mother was a school teacher and a darn good one. In her day people looked up to school teachers with respect and admiration. I can’t respect people like Damian Harmony and they should not be teaching our children. Really sad and disgusting.
So weird how his words never said. “You are white supremacist.” He said “Structurally white supremacist” which is the actions that have been taken and the behavior that has been exhibited by the parents who have been making the most noise. Cherry picking and misrepresentation is not a good look on anyone. Even in journalism.
You’re a little early for April Fools.
Jess, he said “we all had to hear” the “…structurally white supremacist hysteria” by which he seemed to mean the opinions and/or feelings of parents who spoke at the school board meeting during the public comments period. Doesn’t that qualify as indicating these parents are “white supremacists?” Perhaps you’re just pointing out the error of using the quotation marks in the headline since he threw “structurally” in front of the term. But do we really think he would never have said “white supremacist” if he could have gotten away with it? That “structurally” did some heavy lifting in his list of dismissive and arrogant adjectives.
You can engage with white supremacy without being a white supremacist. What he gave here was a choice: engage with white supremacy and make a decision harming underrepresented minorities, or choose not to engage with it and protect those student, and all teachers who are or have family members who are in those groups. Teachers’ and their families’ safety matters, and they don’t have those things if they’re forced back into their jobs in person with tons of children indoors for hours at a time. Look at how many schools have had to shut down after opening due to outbreaks. The district these teachers represent have had enough infections to be very problematic up until very recently, and children are still especially vulnerable to spreading the disease until they are eligible for vaccination. This teacher is advocating for students and teachers alike that would be disproportionately affected by this decision, while the people advocating for it have more resources on average and higher recovery rates.
What are you talking about?
Apparently white supremist means a rational, law abiding, intelligent person who cares about their kids.
Funny. I’ve been reading elsewhere that black and Hispanic parents are anxious to get the schools reopened, too. But maybe that is in a different school district. This teacher sounds like he is a bit stressed here. And the language the teachers used is not really the kind I’d want my kids to hear.
Let’s just say Mr. Damian should be very thankful I’m not in his district or he’s retreat his existence
Right now if I were a teacher I would be embarrassed to admit my occupation if I were asked. I would lie and say something respectable like thief or drug dealer, though not deemed essential, still out there working.
No kidding.
This is the general gist of the entire plandemic right here :
“It has become quite clear that the school boards and teachers unions are no longer considering their clients – the students – as this has become just a massive shakedown of state and local funding. (And on a wider scale, creating the fear-based controls that enabled massive voter fraud that stole a Presidential election and install China Joe & Headboard Harris in office.)
Does anyone really believe that teachers are fearful of COVID in the classroom? During the past year, surely every teacher has shopped for groceries in busy, crowded stores, made several trips to Home Depot, met up with friends at a coffee spot, been to a dinner party in someone’s home, and gotten a haircut. They haven’t lived in a bubble.”
Does anyone really believe that teachers are fearful of COVID in the classroom? During the past year, surely every teacher has shopped for groceries in busy, crowded stores, made several trips to Home Depot, met up with friends at a coffee spot, been to a dinner party in someone’s home, and gotten a haircut. They haven’t lived in a bubble.”
Please consider: in none of these suggested public situations is a person in a single room for hours at a time with 15-30 unvaccinated people, having to control the environment for the safety of everyone there (and those they go home to) while also facilitating the education of all the folks in the room.
I’m not surprised that those who can’t think beyond themselves are having a great time tearing teachers down for caring about the community beyond themselves. It’s sad that the respect for those who raise our kids along side us as parents has become disdain from the selfish and entitled among us. Because they are not serving all of the needs you have come to rely on them for during a GLOBAL PANDEMIC, you see fit to call them names and accuse them of being lazy and uncaring. Your rhetoric is tiresome. Talk to your child’s teacher-have a conversation about these issues. You might learn something!
By June 2020 at the very latest we knew that children’s risk of harm from COVID was virtually ZERO (except in rare instances of serious underlying co-morbidities) and we knew that children were not spreaders of the virus. But the propaganda continued in spite of the science and data. It’s not hard to figure out why: So that arguments like this could be made to enable teachers’ unions to continue to hold parents hostage until all of their insane left-wing demands are met and so that teachers would not have to return to school even though their paychecks kept coming (unlike most residents of CA). If you’re following the science and the data schools would have opened back up by Sept 2020 at the latest and it’s absolutely unacceptable that they haven’t.
Also, “Misty,” if you would, please help me understand WHY, when all the schools in the San Diego Unified School District remain closed, ostensibly for the reasons you listed, San Diego teachers are knocking themselves out to volunteer to teach the unaccompanied minor illegal immigrants who are streaming across the border? Who by the way are testing positive for COVID at a rate of 9%? When the City of San Diego has a COVID positivity rate of .001%? It’s pretty obvious they don’t think COVID is a concern at all.
In California, the money follows the schools. If the money followed the student, then there wouldn’t be a problem because the students could afford to go elsewhere. Problem solved.
He didn’t call parents white supremacists. They’re supporting a change while disregarding the students in that district with a disproportionate lack of resources in this pandemic. What a reach. I have met this teacher before and he is the bravest, kindest person I know and stands up for anyone in need. This is a bad look for your article, sorry.
It’s interesting that one of the bravest, kindest, most stand-up teachers you’ve known is capable of spewing such divisive nonsense and hatred and can so easily fling around incendiary expressions like “white supremacy” in such a completely nasty and irresponsible way. Your comment trying to justify his diatribe doesn’t knock the common sense out of people. They know what he meant.
You guys asked for this fight and now you’re getting it so maybe you’d better get a grip. It’s completely unacceptable that the schools haven’t been open for more than a year, when they could have safely reopened by fall, at the latest. But given this nastiness and bad will and name-calling I’m not sure why a parent would want to return their kids to such a toxic environment. And it’s not toxic because of COVID, either.
He’s a brainwashed woke p*ssy who shouldn’t be anywhere near kids.
You said it all.
This comment alone tells me all I need to know “During the past year, surely every teacher has shopped for groceries in busy, crowded stores, made several trips to Home Depot, met up with friends at a coffee spot, been to a dinner party in someone’s home, and gotten a haircut.”
Um, NO. Who has been going to dinner parties and coffee shops?!?! And if you got your hair cut, you were probably alone for a short period of time with your stylist, and both of your were wearing masks. I mean, if you’re doing this right.
I may not agree with how this teacher went about his point, but he’s obviously not wrong about the kind of people he’s dealing with if you think people have been spending the year having dinner parties and hanging out in coffee shops.
Good job trying to defuse the nasty comments of Mr. Harmony et al by making more nasty comments.
Get involved, join California School Choice Foundation. Go to http://www.californiaschoolchoice.org/
In the meantime, get your kids out of public school. Just when you think it can’t get any worse than it is today, they implement a critical race theory and BLM curriculum. Remember, everyday that your kid is enrolled, the public school gets allocated funding. Get out now. What do you have to lose? Really?
All of what you said Damian Harmony is purely your radical opinion. Your job is to teach and if you want to stay home then you should be fired. Find a different job where you don’t need to be at work. Online schooling cannot replace in class learning. There is nothing wrong with parents demanding schools to be open. In fact all parents should demand schools to be open and also demand all teachers to pass a moral, hygiene, and importantly IQ test to continue teaching.