A teacher in Texas claims she was fired from her job because she refused to stop wearing a homemade Black Lives Matter face mask.
As 10 WBNS reported, art teacher Lillian White was let go from her position at Great Hearts Western Hills in San Antonio just a week before classes started up again because her face mask apparently went against charter network’s dress code.
Back in July, White began attending in-person training sessions for teachers in preparation for the return to school.
During this time, the educator would wear homemade masks printed with the phrases, “Black Lives Matter” and “Silence is Violence.”
“For about a week and a half I was wearing these masks and no one said anything,” White recalled to 10 WBNS . “A couple of the other teachers came up and asked for some if I had any extras and I made them some.”
However, not everyone was pleased with the statement she was making with her face masks.
First, White received a text message from the assistant principal of Great Hearts Western Hills.
As the educator recalled, the email read, “We’d like you to stop wearing these masks anymore, parents will be coming around more and we don’t discuss the current political climate.”
After being asked several more times to stop wearing the masks, White received an email from the school’s headmaster, Matthew Vlahovich.
According to a copy of the email White shared online , Vlahovich wrote,
“We deeply respect your convictions, and we sincerely wish you well in whatever advocacy you might choose outside the school. However, the organization maintains a dress code in order to sustain a scholastic culture of learning in which students and faculty participate together across time.”
At the end of the email, the headmaster wrote that White’s “decision and refusal to report to work as directed is a ‘quit’ without good cause.”
“It was really stressful because I have a financial obligation to help support my family,” White told 10 WBNS. “It’s also kind of heartbreaking that this is the kind of — this is the reason that I lost my job.”
She added, “This is human rights and it should be something that is promoted at our school. It’s an excuse to not talk about it by saying this is politics, talk about it on your own time. It’s just an excuse because they’re uncomfortable with the conversation.”
Great Hearts Texas Superintendent Daniel Scoggin explained the charter network has a policy against any face masks with “external messages.”
In a statement to 10 WBNS he wrote,
“Great Hearts was founded and exists today to serve the innate dignity and worth of every human being. We stand with the Black community and all who are suffering. Great Hearts deplores bigotry and its crushing effects on all those subjected to it. Great Hearts is committed to an America where racism, violence, and injustice do not happen, because such acts find no home in the hearts of a great people.”
In the wake of her firing, White has started a petition urging Great Hearts Academies to implement an Anti-Racism Action Plan.
“I am asking that they recognize the level of support needed for those in pain, and do more than pay lip-service,” the teacher wrote in her Change.org petition , which currently has over 1,100 of its goal of 1,500 signatures.
The Anti-Racism Action Plan, she explained, would include “anti-racism training for all employees (including board members etc.), diverse representation in curriculum, and a team on each campus to implement and monitor this plan.”
White emphasized that her push for this Plan comes back to her decision to keep wearing her masks, despite repeatedly being asked not to.
“Part of the huge Great Hearts philosophy is that it’s not just about (standardized test) scores,” she told Texas Public Radio . “It’s about morality, morality, morality. Truth, goodness, beauty, morality.”
“What is moral about standing down and not supporting every student in your community?”
h/t: 10 WBNS , Texas Public Radio , Change.org
