School Officials Forcefully Denounce ‘Segregation’ Assembly But Steps Ahead Are Vague Beyond ‘Conversations’

Interim Superintendent LaShakia Moore and School Board Chair Cheryl Massaro denounced in the strongest terms yet the faculty-led assembly that segregated and admonished as “problems” exclusively Black students at Bunnell Elementary School last week. “There’s work for us to do,” Moore said.

The denunciations were forceful and Moore’s air of command over the most serious crisis of her tenure as interim evident. But the steps ahead, beyond community meetings, more encounters with parents and students, and talk of “professional learning” with school employees, are far less clear even as the district positions itself against potential litigation.




“The district does not, does not in any way, support the activity that took place at Bunnell Elementary School,” Massaro said. “To the parents of students and students affected by these actions of the Flagler County community, we make no excuses but extend our apology. All of our apologies. It should not have happened. If we had known about it, it wouldn’t have happened.”

Massaro and Moore spoke in the first press conference the district thought necessary since Flagler Palm Coast High School Senior Curtis Gray was gunned down in April 2019. Then-Superintendent Jim Tager held a less formal press conference outside the Government Services Building to address concerns about student violence.

That murder did not implicate the district (the murderer is serving 45 years in prison). The Bunnell incident implicates the district to the core of its values and identity, the incident’s consequences amplified by growing outrage and disbelief every day since the story broke, with national media now reporting it. None was present today among the dozen-odd television stations and half dozen other reporters covering the press conference. The thicket of cameras was nevertheless unprecedented, as was some of the language the district’s top school officials felt compelled to use–at least not since the 1970s.




In a show of unity, the superintendent and the board chair were flanked by the rest of the school board members, who did not speak–Christy Chong, Colleen Conklin, Will Furry, and Sally Hunt.

“The Flagler School Board does not support segregation. It hasn’t. Not this group, not for many, many, many years,” Massaro said. “So please understand, yes, a horrible, horrific mistake was made. This district will do all that it can to get us back on track and continue moving everyone forward.”

Moore placed Donelle Evensen, the principal at Bunnell Elementary for less than a month, and Anthony Hines, the faculty member who conceived of the “problem” assembly, on paid administrative leave pending the results of an ongoing internal investigation by Mike Rinaldi, who heads the district’s Office of Professional Standards. Moore and Evensen are close: they rose through the ranks together and worked together at Rymfire Elementary, where Moore eventually became principal. Moore said her judgment will not be clouded whatever steps are ahead, since she will not be the one making recommendations about what disciplinary steps to take.

“Based on the investigation we will get a detailed report of what happened,” she said. “That information will go to a committee prior to even coming to me. Those individuals will review that information. They will make a recommendation that will be provided to me. I will then review the investigation and I will assign discipline as appropriate based on the information that we have.”




“We offer our apology, and we offer actionable actions for us to move forward in supporting our students, supporting our schools, and supporting this community,” Moore said, citing as one of those actions a community forum next Tuesday involving the NAACP, the district’s African American Mentoring program, and other local organizations.

While the district was slow to take the measure of the crisis–it’s been six days since the assembly, four days since it was first reported, six days since the school officials noticed accounts of it on social media–it is now responding with defensive urgency calibrated to a larger context that may have the district on guard: 11 years ago, the Southern Poverty Law Center filed a federal lawsuit against the district, accusing it of targeting Blacks for harsher discipline and disproportionately targeting Black faculty when layoffs were necessary. So the district has been here before, relatively recently.

The district settled the lawsuit in 2015, pledging to have in place measures to address the concerns raised by the complaint. The district doesn’t want to face another such lawsuit.

More recently, in 2020, JaWanda Dove, a teacher at Indian Trails Middle School, sued the district in federal court, alleging she was overlooked for promotions numerous times because she’s Black. She had been advised by her attorney to settle on the district’s terms, but she refused, pressing for a trial, which is scheduled in coming months.




Whether the Dove case has merit or not, Friday’s incident weakens the district’s case absent aggressive measures proving the contrary. On the other hand, Moore’s position, either as interim or as the district’s permanent superintendent, by itself would considerably defang any potential litigation ahead: she is Black.

Still, the district’s recent history of litigation instigated by allegations of racial disparities will almost certainly frame the superintendent’s disciplinary responses to the Bunnell Elementary incident, and inform other measures, however vague those may be for now.

Moore said an investigation is ongoing. The investigation will reconstruct who and what led to last Friday’s assembly, and what was said there. “At the conclusion of that investigation,” Moore said, “that information will become public knowledge and we will know what was said, who stated it, and we will also as a school district, I will respond appropriately based on that information.”

She did not say what sort of disciplinary measures may be taken against those who organized, led and approved the assembly. Her priority, she said, was to contact every one of the families of the 4th and 5th graders called out of class and summoned to the cafeteria for Friday’s presentation.

There, the students were told that they were a “problem” because of their low scores in English and math, even though the group of students included those who scored high, and even though numerous white and other non-Black students or disabled students perform low as well. None from those groups were called out. The Black students were also told that they’d be made to compete against each other for higher grades, with winners rewarded with fast food.




Racist implications aside, the rank vulgarity of the message and the objectification of the students as nothing more than a “subgroup” is causing at least some parents at Bunnell Elementary to rethink their children’s enrollment there. “I have had families that did ask that question,” Moore said, referring to parents seeking to transfer their children. “We have open choice here and Flagler County and so those families that want that, we will help to assist that. The majority of the families that I’ve spoken to, they have been longtime people at Bunnell elementary school, and they know the hearts of the educators there. And those families are not wanting to just make that decision. They’re wanting to stay where they know that their children are loved, that their children are getting a great education.”

There have been no direct conversations between the superintendent or faculty and the students who’d been brought into the assembly. “That is a very sensitive topic and I am working with families in order to do that,” Moore said. “And I want to make sure that as I’m speaking to those families, we’re identifying what do you need for your child and going from there.”

State law now restricts how school employees, including teachers, may address matters of race. State law also forbids diversity training for employees, or anything resembling it for students. When asked after the press conference how Moore intended to have the needed conversations without risking violating the law, she said the discussions did not have to do with diversity.

“We’re not going to talk about diversity,” the interim superintendent said. “When we talk about speaking up about things, that’s across every area. People need to speak up when they know or feel something is wrong. speak up about it. When we talk about improving our student outcomes, we still can talk about subgroups and the information to our teachers that we have to improve that that is required at the federal level. But we monitor how all of our students are performing and that’s what we’ll continue to do,” without specifically talking about race.

Moore, as she has in her two previous statements this week, made another appeal to the community, this time taking umbrage at suggestions that she was doing so to deflect from her responsibility. “I am not deflecting this. I own this,” she said, “but I have been a longtime educator here in Flagler schools. I am committed to the success of these students not only because I am an educator but because I am a member of this community. So I need you as a community member, I need every community member, I need our business partners, I need our faith base, I need everyone to come together one, around let’s have a hard conversation. Let’s identify what happened here and what we need to go forward.”

Some members of the audience, not reporters, addressed Moore not to ask questions so much as to offer their own observations–and express their support for the superintendent.

It was a clipped presse conference: after Massaro’s and Moore’s statements, Moore took questions for only 17 minutes before the district’s chief spokesperson cut them off, even though reporters clearly still had questions to ask. Moore filed out, the board members behind them–and went behind closed doors in a huddle with the board members.