White power hand gestures in photos prompt Petaluma school yearbook recall

Kenilworth Junior High School in Petaluma is asking students to return their yearbooks, after publishing at least four pictures of students posing with hand gestures that have been linked to groups espousing white supremacy.

One of the images is a team photo of Kenilworth’s eighth grade basketball team. Of the six students sitting on a bench in the portrait, three flashed an upside-down OK hand signal above their knees, a once innocuous sign that has evolved into a hate symbol representing the letters WP for white power, according to the Anti-Defamation League.

After about 350 yearbooks were distributed last week, the team photo at issue was soon shared throughout the Petaluma community, causing an uproar on social media and a tense public discussion at Tuesday’s Petaluma City Schools Board of Education meeting.

Kamala Brown, a mother, Jewish resident and former science teacher at Kenilworth, acknowledged that the gesture may not have been intended to signal white supremacy, but that shouldn’t be the takeaway.

“In this case, I believe that intent does not matter,” she said. “I feel that impact is what matters, and the impact was to perpetuate white supremacist terror.”

Amber Szoboszlai, a marine biologist and local activist, thinks school officials were asleep at the switch. “There needs to be someone tasked with understanding what might be considered hate speech, and monitoring it. That should be someone’s job.”

Petaluma schools officials said an investigation began last week after the administration became aware of the photos at issue.

In a statement Tuesday, Kenilworth principal Bennett Holley said disciplinary measures are being taken. Details about the penalties are protected under a federal privacy law for students.

Assistant Petaluma superintendent Dave Rose said Tuesday in an interview that, in addition to the team photo, there were “a couple others” in the yearbook, in which students were flashing offensive gestures. He also mentioned “a campus incident, several months old,” but would not elaborate.

“The photo we are focusing on is the formal team photo in terms of parent concerns. I would not want to comment on the other photo until I am sure of the content,” Rose said in an email to The Press Democrat.

The Press Democrat was provided a different yearbook picture of two female students sitting across from one another at a desk. One is flashing a P, the other a W.

An employee at the school, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of career repercussions, confirmed that there are at least four pictures in the Kenilworth junior high yearbook with students flashing the controversial hand signals.

Holley said in a statement the administration’s plan is to cover the images with stickers since most students had already gathered messages and signatures from classmates.

The Kenilworth faculty convened before school began Tuesday, and held “life skills” discussions to allow students to have a voice, but also gain an understanding of the effect of what was done, Holley said.

“This has been a teachable moment for the students, staff and community as a whole,” Holley said. “Conversations are happening at the dinner table that weren’t happening prior. I do think there’s a silver lining to this, and it’s about us coming together as a community.”

To some in Petaluma, the administration’s response to this controversy fell short, and was simply the latest blemish for a district grappling with incidents involving racial bias or discrimination.

A 2017 survey by the Sonoma County Junior Commission on Human Rights found that 60% of area students had witnessed or heard about verbal discrimination against racial minorities. Once white respondents were taken out, the results were almost 100%.

Zahyra Garcia, a commissioner on the Sonoma County Commission On Human Rights, criticized the Petaluma school district for its lack of an ethnic studies curriculum, and a shortage of educators “properly trained in issues of social justice.”

A Petulaman and self-described “queer woman of color,” she said she hopes that by the time her three preschool children reach elementary school, training for and awareness of these issues has been significantly raised.

Former Kenilworth counselor and school board trustee Joanna Paun, who in November became the first black elected official in Petaluma history, has two daughters at Kenilworth, and said her family was hurt by the image.

“We’re having to explain that (gesture),” Paun said. “As a black parent, you have to sit down and have those conversations with your children - it’s the responsible thing to do. But I would have liked to have this conversation with my first-grader a little later than I had to.”

Despite a string of excellent performance reviews, Paun was dismissed from Kenilworth after her second year, getting “nonreelected” to a third while on probationary status. Her ouster led to a public backlash when she was told she wasn’t “a good fit.”

Now the counseling director at St. Vincent de Paul High School, Paun thinks this incident underscores a broader need for unconscious bias training that she and other newly elected trustees called for on the campaign trail last year.

Petaluma superintendent Gary Callahan agreed.

“This is not acceptable,” he said. “Moving forward, we’re going to put together a professional development plan that involves staff, students, parents. We also want our other sister districts to be involved because most of our kids at Kenilworth come from Old Adobe and Waugh. This is a Petaluma issue, but we want to take the lead on it.”

Petaluma school district officials said they’re going to conduct a deeper investigation to identify any related behavior at Kenilworth over the past 16 to 18 months, and will turn to their community partners to get a better idea of what sort of white supremacy messages are being circulated by today’s youth.

Regarding the basketball team photo containing the hand signals in question, Rose said: “Here’s our bottom line - we’re talking about a formal team photo. Intent, we’re never going to know, but it’s not allowed, and there’s no hand signs that are appropriate.”