After spending months of late nights helping her son as he struggled to learn to read, one South Carolina mom was thrilled to discover that her child’s school had a special program to help students who were falling behind.
But after inquiring about the program, she was shocked to learn that he wouldn’t qualify for the tutoring, she said. The reason: He’s white.
The book club, designed to provide extra help in reading at St. James Elementary School (SJES) in Myrtle Beach, welcomed black children only, a district spokeswoman confirmed.
“How does that make sense?” asked Laura, who requested to not be fully identified in order to protect her son.
“We are supposed to be equal and have the same opportunities,” Laura said in exasperation while speaking to an Epoch Times reporter. “It just seems very unfair.”
Three days after the publication of this report, a spokeswoman for Horry County Schools confirmed that the reading program at the school focused on teaching African American students.
“The goal of the club was to support them academically so they could achieve at the same level as students of other subgroups that were meeting reading growth targets,” Lisa Bourcier, the district’s director of strategic communications, wrote in an email to The Epoch Times.
“Each student was assigned a mentor, and the students met with the media specialist twice a month during their independent reading time to read culturally reflective texts.”
The program was active for seven months during the 2020–2021 school year, Bourcier said in her email.
“St. James Elementary School administration is not aware of any parent who requested that his/her child participate in the book club and was denied participation,” she said.
She added that Horry County schools hold “data team meetings to address the academic needs of all students.”
Racially Segregated Reading Help
Laura’s son likes to help others, meet new people, and play with Pokémon and superhero toys, she said. But school is difficult because he struggles to read, likely because of his attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
She got little help from the school as she watched her son fall behind, she said. Finally, a doctor diagnosed the reason for his struggle.
She questions why the school didn’t recognize the problem, “even though they have the resources to diagnose him,” she said.
Laura bought a special learning program for them to tackle together during the summer, trying to “teach him at home what they should be teaching him at school,” she said.
“He never was pulled out to get extra attention for reading, even when he was struggling,” she said.
There were others who didn’t qualify for the school’s reading help because they didn’t fit the right racial profile.
In 2021, there were 21 students in third grade and 19 in fourth grade who were behind in reading, according to state statistics.
Yet only 17 students—all of them African American—were allowed to participate in the reading club, according to documents obtained through a public records request by the local Moms for Liberty chairman.
Exclusion in the Name of Equity
According to documents obtained by David Warner of Moms for Liberty, the 2020–2021 school year was “the only year that a book club was specifically designed to address the African American subgroup.”
The club was part of SJES’s new initiatives to boost diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), the documents state.
Exclusion in the name of equity infuriates Moms for Liberty members.
“We don’t stand for that,” Warner told The Epoch Times. “We want it to be all students that get help, not just African American students.”
The book club program did seem successful. Of the 17 students who participated, 11 boosted their proficiency, school documents show.
Warner said he first learned of the book club’s existence after hearing SJES had received a national award.
“Gender, race, and ability levels are used to create balanced classrooms with equitable opportunities to grow and learn, to promote cultural awareness, and to foster appreciation for diversity among students and staff,” the school’s application for the award read.
The application also praised its “change project” to increase African American reading scores.
School principal Felisa McDavid conducted an “equity audit” from 2020 to 2021, records showed.
The Epoch Times contacted McDavid but received no response.
After the COVID-19 pandemic, SJES committed on its website “to keep educational equity front and center by providing assistance, resources, and partnerships.”
The commitment to equity included response teams to work with “family needs,” attempts to “address discrimination, biases, and student conduct,” increasing “awareness of the diversity among families,” support for “social-emotional needs,” and other initiatives.
Fighting the ‘Whiteness of Curriculum’
The audit discovered that SJES’s student body was 90 percent white, 4 percent black, 5 percent Hispanic, and 2 percent Asian. The teaching staff was 98 percent white.
After the audit, McDavid set out to make changes. Gym classes began to include African dance and a multicultural mural was painted on the walls, McDavid said in YouTube videos. And the reading club for African American students was put into place.
“What they did was segregation,” Warner said. “They literally segregated children for a reading program.”
Training for teachers at the school also focused on equity.
Teachers attended Equity in Education conferences put on by the Center for the Education and Equity of African American Students at the University of South Carolina, the Blue Ribbon Award application notes.
Facilitating the training was University of South Carolina professor Gloria Boutte. She describes schools as places of “physical, symbolic, linguistic, curricular/instructional, and systemic suffering” for African American children in her book “We Be Lovin’ Black Children: Learning to be Literate About the African Diaspora.”
In the book, she describes the “Whiteness of curriculum” as “violence,” and writes that, in school, African American children undergo “spirit murders.”
Race-Based Hiring
McDavid committed to hiring teachers at the school based on race.
“My targeted equity commitment is to recruiting and retaining a diverse teaching force in my school,” she said in a video posted to YouTube.
In the video, McDavid cites studies that found that minority students learn better and obey better when taught by teachers of the same race. Having the “rich experience and expertise” of African American teachers would benefit all students, she says in the video.
In a video, McDavid notes that 59 percent of African American students failed state expectations for learning English.
In another YouTube video, McDavid shares that her school’s teachers reported that African American students weren’t getting enough educational support from parents. She blames the feedback on “a bias” and vowed to eliminate the complaint.
“We are working to dispel that bias through more culturally responsive unit planning and professional development,” she said.
When questioned, the school said the book club was just a club. Documents provided to The Epoch Times describe the program as an “intervention.”
“Intervention should never be based off of a child’s race, but their educational need,” Warner said.
When he asked how the reading program worked, the school stopped giving him details, he said. It was unclear whether the students met with teachers after school or were pulled from class during the school day.
“They’re not willing to talk about what happened,” Warner said.
Knowing the school has provided racially segregated programs that exclude her son has prompted Laura to plan for private school next year. It destroyed her trust, she said.
“I just don’t feel like they have my son’s best interests at heart,” she said.
An estimated 1.4 million students left public schools for private schools, charter schools, or homeschooling during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Editor’s Note: This article has been revised after publication to add a comment from Horry County Schools.
