A group of parents attended Tuesday night’s meeting of the Cullman City School Board to call on the board to address racist attitudes and behaviors in the city’s schools. 

The group attempted to speak at last month’s board meeting after a Snapchat video was spread that featured two Cullman High School students — including the son of board President Amy Carter — chanting “white power” and “kill all the n—-rs.” They were not allowed to speak at that meeting because they had not called ahead to be put on the agenda, but did speak during the board’s December meeting on Tuesday. 

Jocelyn Logan, who said she is the mother of one of only a handful of Black students, faculty and staff in the system, asked the board’s members to put themselves in her shoes and ask themselves how they would feel if someone made a video shouting to kill all the redheads, marching band members or board members.  

“At that point, you would take this threat very personally as my family has,” she said.

Logan also pointed out several other racist incidents that have occurred at the high school and middle school involving her child or others, including another student being called the n-word, hispanic students being called racial slurs and a group of students wearing “Klan” hoods in the hallway.

Students feel comfortable enough in the school system to behave in that manner in person and on video, she said. 

“This board owes it to all students of Cullman City Schools to make this a safe learning environment for every student, not just the white affluent students,” she said. “This board needs to start this change with their actions to demand better, but also prove that it isn’t just lip service.”

Logan said the board needs to establish a no-tolerance policy for hateful words and actions and begin enforcing it immediately. 

“Your actions or lack thereof are short-changing the future of this community because you are refusing to demand better,” she said. 

Laura Doss also spoke to the board after attempting to yield her time to Logan but being denied, and said the board and the administration and faculty of each school need training to address the changes in diversity that are happening in Cullman as it grows. 

She said the training should be conducted by someone outside of Cullman who has experienced the issues first-hand, and that training should then be passed on to the system’s students and offered to families of students. 

“If these racist actions are truly based in ignorance, then parents need to take the bull by the horns and teach their families to do and be better,” she said.

Doss also said the student leaders — athletes, Key Club members, band members and others who represent the school — should be held to a higher standard and held accountable for their actions when they go against the mission of the school system. 

“Board members, this starts here, and it starts with you,” she said. “We can disagree on this particular instance, but we all should agree that the system needs to move forward and grow.”

Before the public comment portion of the meeting, Cullman City Schools Superintendent Kyle Kallhoff said the system’s counselors and social workers have been working with adolescent students to have discussions about diversity and acceptance of others. 

He said the system is also issuing a survey to some students to find out if they have experienced discrimination as a student, and that data will be used to invite students into small-group listening sessions at the middle school and high school. 

Kallhoff said those listening sessions will be conducted by a third party group and will feature motivational speaker and Fellowship of Christian Athletes advocate Devin Wyman. 

With Wyman, the system will conduct workshops with teachers and staff, assemblies with grades 6-12, and he will lead the listening groups with adolescent students, he said. 

Kallhoff said that will all be used to gather data that could lead to modifications in the system’s procedures and processes related to diversity and diversity awareness. 

Wyman will join the system for the first two weeks of January, and more follow-ups will be conducted through the spring and fall, he said.