White teacher sues Evanston/Skokie School District 65 for alleged race based policies
EVANSTON, Ill. - A middle school drama teacher is suing Evanston/Skokie School District 65 in federal court for alleged discrimination.
Stacy Deemar, who is white, filed the lawsuit Wednesday, claiming the teacher training and lessons about race and racism discriminated against her.
Deemar's attorney, Kimberly Hermann, explains that the lawsuit is centered around how the District's race-conscious training, policies and curriculum violate federal law through "segregating its students and treating them differently because of their race."
"The district is doing several things, one of them is segregating its teachers in its teacher training by their skin color," Hermann said. "You put the white teachers in one room, and the non-white teachers in another room, and you actually give them different training."
District 65 outlines its race-conscious policies in detail, saying on its website that they are "identifying practices, policies and institutional barriers, including institutional racism and privilege, which perpetuate opportunity and achievement gaps.
"The department of education spent 18 months investigating District 65 and actually found that, earlier this year, only to be withdrawn several days after the Biden administration took office," Hermann said.
Hermann also claims the policy discriminates against her due to its use of a children's book titled "Not My Idea: A Book about Whiteness."
"When you read through this book, quite frankly it is teaching non-white students to hate, and it is teaching white students to hate themselves," said Hermann.
Hermann claims the lawsuit is not about whether or not we should teach children about racism, but that it is about what the district is telling students to think.
"When you have a picture of a white person dressed as a devil, telling the students that whiteness is a bad deal, and telling students that they need to sign away their whiteness, or in the classroom, saying an anti-racist pledge and putting it up on the board to look at every single day, you are telling students that they are either oppressed or the oppressor solely because of their skin color," Herman said. "Let's get back to teaching people to look at the inside of people, and not put skin color as the only thing that we are looking at about a person."
Deemar is represented by a conservative law firm, the Southeastern Legal Foundation, based in Georgia.
The district released the following statement Thursday in response to the lawsuit:
"Evanston/Skokie School District 65 was made aware that on June 29, 2021, Stacy Deemar filed a lawsuit against it. The School District has not yet been served with the lawsuit nor evaluated its claims with the Board of Education and legal counsel, and makes no comment concerning the lawsuit at this time."