A 9-year-old student took a school board to task over its apparent 180 on a policy barring teachers from displaying Black Lives Matter posters.
The viral video, making the rounds online this week, shows the girl speaking before a Lakeville Area School Board meeting on June 8.
The student, who only identified herself as “Novalee,” said she saw posters of Black Lives Matter and Amanda Gorman on her teacher’s wall at Lakeville Elementary School. The presence of these posters, she said, contradicted what the school board said at a prior meeting: “no politics in school.”
The student said she informed her principal about the Black Lives Matter poster. She said she requested it be taken down but the principal refused.
When she cited a school board policy prohibiting Black Lives Matter posters in the district’s schools, the principal allegedly told her that the school board members were the ones who made the posters.
“When I was heard two weeks ago, you told us to report any BLM in our schools. Apparently, you know they’re in our schools because you made the signs,” the student said.
She said that any effort to change the color or font does not erase the posters’ fundamental political message: “getting rid of police officers, rioting, burning buildings down while King Gov. (Tim) Walz just sits on his throne and watches.”
“I am nine years old and I know that,” she said. “You expect to believe that you did not know what you were doing when you were making these posters? C’mon people!”
She clarified that she does not judge people by their skin color but “by the way they treat me.” She then quoted a line from Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous “I Have a Dream Speech,” regarding not judging someone by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
“That dream has come true. I do not care or look at the color of skin. But you make me think of it,” she said.
A woman, who said she works at Eastview Elementary, spoke immediately after the girl, praised the work of the board and the teachers before saying “Black Lives Matter” six times in a row. She then quarreled with the nine-year-old girl before repeating “Black Lives Matter” five more times.
The school district is located in Lakeville, a suburb of Minneapolis, where George Floyd’s death last summer at the hands of a White police officer touched off global protests on racial injustice and police brutality.
As protests in major cities devolved into rioting, much of the public blamed Black Lives Matter for stoking the more radical elements.
As 2020 drew to a close, the Lakeville School District became embroiled in a controversy over the use of Black Lives Matter posters in classrooms, KARE 11 reported.
In September, the district sent out a memo highlighting Policy 535, which stated that the goal for the district was to “maintain neutrality as to all political campaigns and issues.”
In the subsequent months, parents have spoken in support of and against Black Lives Matter and political views being taught in the classroom.
Fox News has reached out to both the district’s superintendent and its board members seeking comment on the matter.
*story by Fox News
