Complaint:

IX: ​I believe my suspension is reflective of a pattern of discrimination by MCCSC administrators,

which have treated me differently on the basis of my race since or near to my employ at BHSN
in violation of the Bloomington Human Rights Ordinance, as amended, and/or of Title VII of the
US Civil Rights Act of 1964, as amended.

X: ​I want my students to understand what happened to me as outlined in this complaint and

other relevant materials. I want a chance to return to class, tell my story, and finish the semester
provided there is a documented and written plan that would reasonably assure I would no longer
be subjected to racial discrimination on the part of Mr. Michael Akers, Dr. Andrea Mobley, or any
other MCCSC administrator or other persons who may hold authority over me. I want to model
for my students the power and ability that the research practices I have instilled in them have to
change institutions and bring about a just and equitable society. I want access to my email
correspondences and my original lessons, content, and assignments stored on Google Drive
and Canvas restored. I want the unjust administrative leave removed from my personnel file,
and I want a strong, positive letter of reference from MCCSC, Dr. Andrea Mobley, and Mr.
Michael Akers. I want a written apology from said parties. I want Mr. Akers to begin attending
the Cultural Response Teams trainings instead of excusing himself from that part of faculty
meetings. I want an improved internal mechanism for filing grievances and complaints. I want a
public question and answer session to be paneled by Mr. Akers, Dr. Mobley and myself
moderated by Dr. Julius Hanks with questions selected at random without pre-screening. And I
want any other remedy to which I am entitled by law.

Narrative:

I am, to the best of my knowledge, the sole African American male to have worked for
Bloomington High School North as a licensed content area teacher in close to, if not more than,
a decade.

I began working for Monroe County Community School Corporation at Bloomington High School
North on or about August 17, 2017. My position is temporary halftime language arts instructor. I
am paid about $20,000 a year and I have a one school year contract.

I teach 3 honors courses. I love doing so and know that I am more than fully qualified for this
position based on my education and experience. I believe I do my job well and that the progress
my students have made in their time with me serves as incontrovertible evidence that this is the
case.

On March 29, I was informed that I was being placed on administrative leave pending the
results of an investigation into a conversation that occurred in class. As of this date, April 3,
2018, some 30+ days after I was placed on administrative leave, I have received 1) no
clarification as to which conversation that occurred in class MCCSC deemed it necessary to
place me on suspension while they investigated, 2) any correspondence from MCCSC as to the
progress of that investigation, 3) any written explanation of the conditions and restrictions of my
administrative leave, 4) any information related to when or if I might be able to return to the
classroom, 5) any clarification on why they barred me from speaking to any administrators about
this process, 6) any explanation as to why I was escorted off of BHSN’s campus, nor 7) any
information about why I am barred from all MCCSC property. Additionally all my email
correspondences and original lessons, content, and assignments stored on Google Drive have
been confiscated by MCCSC.

I believe all of these actions are the result of and/or motivated by the racial, ethnic, and cultural
biases MCCSC and the principal of BHSN have demonstrated they possess and/or consistently
bring to fruition.

Because I have been permitted access to what amounts to zero information about my
suspension from MCCSC, I cannot prove that to be the case in this specific instance, but do
have contemporaneous and detailed records, some of which I do not have access to because
MCCSC has seized my correspondances, that establish that I have felt for some time that
MCCSC administration has singled me out for discriminatory treatment on the basis of my race,
culture, and/or ethnicity since, or in very near proximity to, starting my position with BHSN.

What follows is an outline of what is most likely the inciting event for my suspension followed by
a brief history of my feelings of being discriminated against by MCCSC administrators:

In March of 2018, many of my students went to Washington D.C. for the March for our Lives
Rally and several others reported attending similar regional rallies. Many BHSN students
appeared in the national news coverage of the Rally some even being interviewed as
representatives of the group they created in response to the Parkland school shooting:
Bloomington Students Against Assault Weapons.

As I commonly do the first day of class following a weekend or break, I asked my students if
anything noteworthy occurred in our time away. Many expressed a desire to speak of their
experiences at the marches in D.C. and elsewhere. As the conversation ventured from them
discussing their experiences to discussing their desires for policy change, it became clear that
there were several factual distinctions between the capabilities, histories, and terminal ballistics
of firearms that they were either not informed of or not taking the time to factor into their stated
preferences.

Being the excellent teacher I am, able to turn unforeseen happenstances into teachable
moments directly relevant to class curriculum, I seized upon the opportunity to model for them
the type of work I would be expecting from them in their final research project, which was quickly
approaching, and would have had them 1) Select a poorly argued societal topic, 2) Select 10
necessary facts that must be mutually understood by any parties interested in discussing said
topic , and 3) Evaluate those 10 facts with an eye towards explaining why they are so
fundamentally crucial to having discussions on said topic. I called this an “inside-out multimodal
research paper.” Given that the subject of gun violence was 1) current, 2) interesting to the
students, and 3) literally a matter of life and death for them (especially considering that one
threat of gun violence to Bloomington High School North was reported to me by one of my
students months earlier, and I immediately, and to my knowledge solely, reported it to the
administration), I felt it to be entirely consistent with every educational norm I have found
backed by the research in my Bachelor’s degree program at Indiana University in Secondary
English Education, my Master’s degree program at Indiana University in Literacy, Culture, and
Language Education, and my PhD program at Indiana University in Curriculum Studies.

The approach that I thought most pedagogically and contextually appropriate in approaching my
modeling of the types of facts I would expect from my students in their inside-out multimodal
research papers was that of my Drill Sergeant, who trained me in the capabilities, history, and
terminal ballistics of the AR-15 based weapons platform and the rounds it typically shoots (5.56
NATO and .223 caliber). This discussion took place with all of my classes between March
26-27.

In this discussion I explained why the round from an AR-15 based weapons platform is more
lethal than most others in a mass shooting situation; I explained the manner in which the United
States Government and several other NATO allied countries decide to adopt the weapon and its
round as an international standard; I explained that in the state of Indiana it is not legal to hunt
deer with the typical Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) AR-15 round; I explained how the
velocity, mass, and shape of a bullet result in more or less lethality; I explained how the 4th U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals had recently ruled that the AR-15 weapons platform (and weapons with
similar capabilities) and similarly capable weapons, were not, in fact, subject to protection under
the 2nd Amendment. I explained a great many facts to my students on that day, most of which
came from my time and experience in the military with the very weapon being discussed, and I
did so completely and verifiably accurately.

During this discussion I explained that there does not exist a single political organization with
any real influence calling for a ban on all guns and that the 2nd amendment, according to
almost everyone of any import that writes on or researches the topic, is so deeply ingrained in
the fabric of our country that banning and/or taking away all firearms from civilians is a literal
impossibility swathed in a straw man of an argument resting upon a slippery slope.

During this discussion I shared that I am a gun owner, that I keep my weapon secure with a
trigger lock, a bolt lock, and store my ammunition locked in a separate location from my rifle.

During this discussion there were no indications that any students were experiencing any
distress. Many were engaged and entertained (as evidenced by an excerpt of this discussion
recorded covertly by one of my students and posted by their parent to a publically viewable
Facebook group). Despite my making it clear that there were many types of questions they were
asking that I could not answer due to my responsibilities as a teacher to keep my political
opinions out of our discussion, students continued to attempt to craft their questions such that I
could answer them (exactly the type of critical thinking I have always attempted to instill in my
students), and they were rewarded for their efforts as all of the research I have studied in my
Bachelor’s degree program at Indiana University in Secondary English Education, my Master’s
degree program at Indiana University in Literacy, Culture, and Language Education, and my
PhD program at Indiana University in Curriculum Studies says they should have been.

One student made a comment to the effect of, “I literally think I just learned the most I have ever
learned in my whole life in the last thirty minutes. This is what school should be like.” The
comment was met with widespread agreement and in each of my classes comments of the
same nature were shared by several students.

These discussions took place on Monday March 26 and Tuesday March 27, 2018 and were
completely impromptu. Because I felt that I owed it to my students in the following class to
support my ethos (coming from a subject matter expert with both experiential and research
based understanding) based claims on March 26 and 27 with evidence, as that is the entire aim
of the course that I teach, I spent the evening of the 27th attempting to create a more accurate
model for them of the type of work I would be expecting from their inside-out multimodal
research project as none of them have served in the military nor could speak from that type of
training and/or experience. I, therefore, felt it was incumbent upon me as a teacher to provide a
formal example of the type of supporting evidence I would require in their inside-out multimodal
research projects.

For this reason I found videos of a ballistics gelatin terminal ballistics demonstration made by an
ammunition manufacturer to display the terminal ballistics of their 9mm round (commonly used
by police forces) and their AR-15 platform round (also commonly used by police forces, but also
most commonly used by mass shooters of schools) to display both how multimodality is a
powerful tool of exposition as well as how differentiation allows for what Stephen Krashen
(1989) would call “comprehensible input.” The resulting video, which included an audio clip from
a History Channel documentary on the history, capabilities, and terminal ballistics of, as
described by what I believe was a Sergeant Major of an infantry unit in the Army, but cannot
affirm because MCCSC, since placing me on leave pending the results of their investigation has
barred me from accessing any of the original teaching materials that I have stored on my
Google Drive, was shown to students as a “bell-ringer” at the beginning of class on March 28,
2018.

The next day, March 29, 2018, Mr. Michael Akers, the principal at BHSN, phoned me to ask that
I come in before my scheduled work hours. I acquiesced and arrived within the 15 minutes that I
told him I would from the time of our phone call. When I got there, Mr. Tim Hudson, a
vice-principal at BHSN also sat in on our meeting, his face upon arriving to the meeting and
seeing me struck me as one of great despair; I recall feeling deeply sad for him in that moment
and holding the perception that whatever was about to happen had already brought him much
distress.

Mr. Akers then told me that he could not talk to me without my union representative present. I
informed him that I would waive that right. He then made it clear that though I would consent to
discussing the matter at hand without my union representative, he would not speak to me until
my union representative was present. He informed me that my union representative would
arrive in an hour or so, and that I would wait to speak with him until the union representative
arrived.

As I was making a decision as to what my next steps would be, he encouraged me to respond
affirmatively to his demands and leave his office. I asked that he understand that given this
seemed a serious and completely unexpected issue and that because I showed up within 15
minutes, at his request, only to be told that he would not speak with me without union
representation which would arrive in an hour, I would need a minute or two to process the
situation, consult with peers, colleagues, and my own schedule (given this meeting was well
outside my work hours) before responding to his uniquely unsettling demands. I spent less than
3 minutes processing in his office before he informed me that I would not be allowed to teach
until I met with him and my union representative. At that point I left his office to await the arrival
of my union representative.

An hour or so later my union representative, Mr. Paul Farmer, arrived, and Mr. Akers informed
us that I was being suspended with pay pending an investigation into “a conversation that
occurred during class.” When I asked what the topic of that conversation was, he again
responded that he could only say that it was in relation to “a conversation that occurred during
class.” When I asked him what the nature of that conversation was, he again responded that he
could only say that it was in relation to “a conversation that occurred during class.”

Mr. Farmer and myself then privately met for 15 or so minutes before Mr. Cory Irwin, a
vice-principal at BHSN who also sat in on the meeting, let us know that Mr. Akers would like to
speak with us. We, within a minute wrapped up our conversation and returned to Mr. Akers’
office, where he told us that he would not be ready to speak with us for another 15 minutes. Mr.
Farmer and myself then, again, privately spoke, for another 15 or so minutes before returning to
Mr. Akers’ office where he asked if we had any more questions. I again asked what the nature
of the conversation was, he again replied that he could only say that it was “a conversation that
occurred during class.”

As it was clear that Mr. Akers was not at all interested or permitted to let me know why I was
being suspended, the only other question I had for him was whether or not I could grade my
students’ work while suspended. It was at this point he let me know that I had been disallowed
from all of my original lessons, content, and assignments stored on Google Drive and would not
be permitted to access any of MCCSC’s computer networks. In short; I could not grade while I
was suspended, and whoever my replacement would be would not have access to the rubrics
and data necessary for much of my students’ work to be fairly assessed.

Mr. Akers then verbally instructed me that I was not to speak to any persons serving in an
administrative capacity for MCCSC, any of my students or their parents, barred me from all
MCCSC properties, and had me escorted off of campus by my union representative.

As of this date, May 4, 2018 (35 days after my suspension became effective), MCCSC has not
in any way clarified what or which conversation is the subject of the investigation they claim to
be carrying out to determine whether I should be suspended or not. Several students and their
parents have reached out to me with heartfelt, and wonderfully written (as their English teacher,
I take very much pride in that) expressions of support and affirmations that they do not know of
any students in any of our classes that have been questioned in this investigation. I responded
to each and thanked them for their support, but informed them that due to the nature of my
suspension could not comment further.

On Monday, April 2, 2018, a sympathetic party directed me to a public Facebook group:

Bloomington North Parents and Guardians. On this site, Mr. Mark Stonecipher, presumably the
parent of one of my students, posted a 30-minute mostly audio excerpt from (what is most likely)
our Monday March 26, 2018 class.

Mr. Stonecipher’s posts seem to indicate that the topics of the conversation under investigation
are those that concerned the capabilities, history, and terminal ballistics of the AR-15 weapons
platform. As he indicated in his posts, “I met with the principal and had what I feel is a
productive talk. They are taking this very, VERY, seriously. There is an investigation currently
underway all the way up to the top levels. We discussed the severity of what was said in that
classroom. [Mr. Akers] is now aware that it was not just the 10th grade class that get [​sic​] his
opinion forced on them. This can and is viewed as bully tactics… I did feel an air of agreement
that something has to be done and that that process has started… During and after the meeting
I do feel Mr. Akers is genuinely looking for the best for the students at North and not just doing a
[Cover Your Ass] thing as I have seen previous administrators do there before. There was
certainly more cooperation and open dialogue established.”

At the time of this writing there have been reports, though due to the nature of my suspension I
cannot verify their accuracy, that there was a private meeting between Dr. Judy DeMuth,
MCCSC superintendent, and several teachers including half, if not more of the 6-ish teachers of
color at BHSN on or around April 5th to report their feeling that Mr. Akers has demonstrated
many of the cultural insensitivities that MCCSC as a whole has frequently, consistently, and
recently shown themselves to be capable of committing.

I believe that my treatment at the hands of Mr. Akers, his approach to administration at BHSN,
and MCCSC’s decades’ long indifference to the astronomically disproportionate representation
between the student population and its teachers are neither accidental nor lacking design.
Given that I have extensive knowledge of MCCSC’s recruitment efforts with Indiana University’s
School of Education, having served from 2014-2017 as a graduate assistant in Indiana
University’s Office of Clinical Experiences, which oversees and certifies the graduation and
licensing processes of the teacher candidates, I can say that I never received a request for,
heard about, or witnessed a single instance of MCCSC attempting to recruit a person of color
from Indiana University’s School of Education. I can, however, report that students that
identified as Caucasian have an excellent placement rate in the district.

At the conclusion of the 2016-2017 Indiana University academic year, given all that I had
learned about the historical and current lack of diversity present in MCCSC’s teacher pool, I
decided, as I had just completed all of the coursework for my Curriculum Studies PhD program
and would no longer need to be a full time student, that the situation present in MCCSC, and
BHSN specifically, was too dastardly not to attempt to ameliorate.

For this reason I happily applied for, was hired, and began working for BHSN. It quickly became
clear, however, that my time at BHSN would be unlike any of the numerous teaching positions I
have held over the course of my career as I was constantly harassed by or at the direction of
Mr. Akers who consistently called into question my pedagogical and curricular motivations. As
one of the most highly educated teachers at BHSN whose research specialty is literally the
delivery, creation, and efficacy of curriculum, I simply could not understand the haranguing I
was being subjected to by or at the direction of Mr. Akers.

One such meeting took place sometime in late October or early November 2017; I would
provide exact dates, but my access to all of my original lessons, content, and assignments
stored on Google Drive as well as my email records have been confiscated from me by
MCCSC. When I left this meeting between myself, Mr. Akers, and Ms. Gayla McAdams, which
he called a “fact finding mission,” I was as stunned and perplexed by the events of the meeting
as I was when Mr. Akers informed me that I was being suspended.
After processing, researching, and validating through said research my impression of the nature
of Mr. Akers’ approach to his “fact finding mission,”I drafted a letter to Mr. Akers in response to
my experience with him and shared it with Mr. Julius Hanks, MCCSC’s Coordinator of Diversity
Opportunities, feeling that there were very many opportunities in relation to diversity he might
want to begin coordinating with and for Mr. Akers. After reading my letter and meeting with me
to discuss its contents Mr. Hanks informed me that I was not alone in my concerns and advised
me not to send the letter to Mr. Akers.

I am including excerpts from this letter because they speak directly to the pattern of treatment,
which differ in no significant way from the process of my suspension, I believe I have been
receiving from Mr. Akers since my employ due to his perspectives on race/ethnicity, culture, and
diversity.

● I left our meeting today with a feeling I have never experienced before as the result of
my interaction with a superior in my decade of experience in education; I left feeling as if
the issue at hand had more to do with cultural differences than actual pedagogical,
methodological, or professional incongruencies.
● As I am the only black male teacher of color at BHSN in, as far as I have been able to
verify, 6 years, I had no peers to consult on this matter. Additionally, you, as am I, are
brand new to the building, so I did not have the opportunity to consult peers that have
dealt and could vouch for your intentions. To further muddy the waters, when I brought
my concerns to your attention you vociferously refused to discuss my concern that you
had a personal disinclination towards me in any way, shape, or form going so far as to
warn me that by expressing to you my impression that you had a personal dissatisfaction
with who I am as a person, as opposed to a professional, I was “going into dangerous
territory.”
● As I said, this experience is novel to me, and I did not trust that I was reading the
situation correctly, so I sought, as a Ph.D. student reflexively does, to consult the
research on scenarios such as the one we find ourselves within; where the sole black
male minority teacher feels as if they are being held to a different and higher standard
than their peers because of their minority status.
● Much of the literature I discovered centers around how fellow teachers can create these
less than ideal situations with “token” (used in the academic, not colloquial sense)
teachers but found that I could not relate to those findings at alI because my colleagues
have been more welcoming and helpful than I could have asked. Literally, and I am very
disappointed to say this, the only source of the experiences that I have had in my time
here or anywhere else throughout my decade of educational work that align with the
following excerpts from the literature come directly and solely from you.
 ● Again, and I am sorry for having to emphasize this, the following quotes are not just
findings I found ​might​ apply to the situation in which we find ourselves. Each of the
following quotes reflect directly my impression of an experience that occurred specifically
with you.
● I do hope you have been able to make it through this email. I have always felt that
situations like these are the ones from which we have the potential to become better
educators and people. I hope you can share that sentiment with me and that, with my
impressions being backed up by the research literature, you might find it within yourself
to approach the experiences I have and am communicating to you with some modicum
of validity going forward.

Again, the letter these excerpts were derived from was never sent to Mr. Akers on the advice of
MCCSC’s Coordinator of Diversity Opportunities, Mr. Julius Hanks, though he did assure me
that I was not alone among educators in my concerns about the nature and intent of Mr. Aker’s
administrative approach, but it does serve to make explicit the existence of my feelings of racial,
ethnic, and/or cultural prejudices towards me by Mr. Akers well before this suspension took
place.

Monday, May 7, 2018 two days prior to filing this charge of discrimination, a circumstance I was
informed by a sympathetic party was most likely due to MCCSC administrators receiving a copy
of a draft of this report sometime between Thursday, May 3 and Sunday, May 6, 2018, I was
contacted for the first for the first and only time by MCCSC since receiving the letter informing
me of my academic suspension some 5 weeks ago.

I declined to attend the meeting they asked me to attend because I would not be able to arrange
legal representation on such short notice and I deeply and fervently believed their actions at this
point to be guided by animus. I did so in an email. In response to this email Dr. Andrea Mobley
demonstrably lied asserting that, “​We have discussed with you the topic and nature that gave
rise to the leave.” Then Dr. Mobley, for the first time in the history of creation, provided me with
the first instance of an MCCSC official communicating to me that “the topic [of the investigation]
is classroom discussions regarding guns which was outside of the curriculum for the class that
you have been hired and other class related issues.​” This again, is a demonstrable lie. In my
email records (to which I do not currently have access as they have been confiscated from me
by MCCSC) and discussions with MCCSC administrators and my department chair I have
clarified on numerous occasions that I am entitled to create and coordinate my own curriculum,
as long as my content followed in goal, theme, and skill acquisition the classes taught by my
fellow teachers, as there exists no unified curriculum the bounds of which I might stay within.

On May 11, 2018 I met with Dr. Mobley, Dr. Markay Winston (Assistant Superintendent of
Curriculum and Instruction), Mr. Farmer, and Ms. Sandy Steele (UniServ Director of the Indiana
State Teacher’s Association). In the emails arranging the meeting Dr. Mobley explained that “​we
have reached the point in our investigation where it is time to discuss what we have found to
date with our investigation and to hear your position on the matter… We are prepared to
discuss options of a return to work in a meeting with you.”
Despite these assurances the meeting was actually an interrogation asking highly specific and
pointed questions, which Dr. Mobley said in the meeting were designed to show a pattern of
dissatisfactory performance by myself in my duties as a teacher by asking me about a complaint
from early in the year from a parent. I explained to Dr. Mobley on numerous occasions during
this meeting that without the evidence necessary (my email correspondences) to defend myself
from the stated intent of Dr. Mobley and MCCSC, I would not be able to accurately provide them
the information they sought. I informed them that I would happily provide them with answers to
the questions they have provided they provide them to me in written form and allow adequate
time for a written response.

Dr. Mobley consented after the meeting to provide my email correspondence on a CD drive and
provided me with a list of 10 topics they would like to question me in relation to:

1. Bambi video by Jidenna

2. Lack of clarity in assignments and last minute postings on Canvas
3. Woman in Black video
4. Lack of timely feedback and grading of assignments expressed by multiple families
5. Class periods devoted to discussion of assault weapons and rifles
6. Mr. Akers request of your syllabus

Given the depth and breadth of these topics, I will need access to my lessons, feedback, and
student work as presented on Canvas and Google Drive. As of this writing a request for those
materials is being drafted for Dr. Mobley and MCCSC. There has been no clarification of if
MCCSC intends to provide me with the questions they have for me in written form, but given Dr.
Mobley’s and MCCSC’s general pattern of obfuscating reality in their stated intention to show a
pattern of dissatisfactory performance by their singular black male licensed teacher in what is
likely a decade.

I believe that MCCSC is discriminating against me in employment on the base of race in

violation of the Bloomington Human Rights Ordinance, as amended, and/or of Title VII of the
Civil Rights Act of 1964, as amended. I want my students to understand what happened to me
as outlined in this complaint and other relevant materials. I want a chance to return to class, tell
my story, and finish the semester provided there is a documented and written plan that would
reasonably assure I would no longer be subjected to racial discrimination on the part of Mr.
Michael Akers, Dr. Andrea Mobley, or any other MCCSC administrator or other persons who
may hold authority over me. I want to model for my students the power and ability that the
research practices I have instilled in them have to change institutions and bring about a just and
equitable society. I want access to my email correspondences and my original lessons, content,
and assignments stored on Google Drive and Canvas restored. I want the unjust administrative
leave removed from my personnel file, and I want a strong, positive letter of reference from
MCCSC, Dr. Andrea Mobley, and Mr. Michael Akers. I want a written apology from said parties.
I want Mr. Akers to begin attending the Cultural Response Teams trainings instead of excusing
himself from that part of faculty meetings. I want an improved internal mechanism for filing
grievances and complaints. I want a public question and answer session to be paneled by Mr.
Akers, Dr. Mobley and myself moderated by Dr. Julius Hanks with questions selected at random
without pre-screening. And I want any other remedy to which I am entitled by law.