Yet Melanie Sloan, the mother of an African American fourth-grader, told me she has been asking the school for several years to teach more about racial issues, without much success. Like many private schools in the United States, Washington International has few black students. The school’s sometimes clumsy responses to Sloan’s suggestions for dealing with race — and its initial resistance to embracing Black History Month — reveal the discomfort that can arise in such matters. I consider Washington International one of the best schools in the country, but even it struggles with this.

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When her daughter was in kindergarten, Sloan, a lawyer and media strategist, said she “asked why they didn’t celebrate Black History Month and was told many parents appreciated that they did not mark the month.” An administrator told her a picture of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. on a bulletin board had some of his quotes. Sloan pointed out that most kindergartners can’t read.

“When my daughter was in second grade,” said Sloan, who is white, “I obtained tickets for the entire school to visit the then-newly opened African American history museum. The school was less than excited about the field trip and only after I all but called the school racist did the principal agree to the outing.”

“And last year, in one of the kids’ Spanish textbooks there was an illustration including the rare brown kid wearing a T-shirt with Michael Jordan’s number . . . behaving badly toward non-brown children,” she said. She called it racist. An assistant principal first denied it, she said, then played it down. “When I asked whether textbooks were reviewed for this sort of thing,” Sloan said, “I was told, no, that would be too time-consuming.”

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Washington International’s head of school, Suzanna Jemsby, said, “We integrate teaching about race, racism and hatred into our curriculum in many ways.” In the past year, she said, the school had a group of faculty and staff members hold a second annual session on topics of identity and race, added a statement about diversity and inclusion to its website, had guest speakers discuss microaggressions with faculty and students, and had a diversity workshop for faculty and staff.

That’s impressive, though not relevant to whether the school listens to parents.

Jemsby said she had not heard back from the departed administrator who mentioned the Martin Luther King quotes. She said the museum tickets that Sloan offered conflicted with other scheduled field trips. She said Sloan’s account of the Spanish textbook illustration conversation was not accurate. Teachers reviewed textbooks using a checklist, Jemsby said, and the offending textbook was withdrawn after Sloan’s complaint.

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When I sought Jemsby’s views on Black History Month, she challenged the presumption that it was “the only or best way of teaching” about race.

She said the school did respond to Sloan by eventually observing Black History Month, letting the field trip happen and tossing the Spanish book.

Still, communication at the school could be better. Jemsby told me the April 18 email to parents was intended to reveal that what was written on the door was the euphemism “n-word.” Sloan and other parents didn’t read it that way, thinking the inscription was the actual unprintable word. That epithet was used in the earlier incident.

Even the best educators find parental criticism irritating, just as many people do when their work is questioned. Parents can feel ignored or rejected. Sloan said an African American family she knew left the school largely over racial insensitivity. The mother confirmed to me that was true, as did another mother whose biracial son left the school.

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Last year for the first time, the primary school acknowledged Black History Month, Sloan said. “In mid-February an email went out to parents,” she said, “asking if any of us would like to come in and share anything related to black history.” She recommended looking for experts at the Duke Ellington School of the Arts, a D.C. public high school where most students are black. Ellington sits across the street from Washington International. “I was told it was not possible to get someone,” she said. When she found a willing Ellington faculty member, the school let him talk to students.

Jemsby told Sloan in an email, “You can probably appreciate that race-related teaching in international schools looks quite different from other independent schools in our area.” The school website has a chart identifying 13 different ethnic categories among students, although only 7 percent are African American or African.

In one email to Sloan, Jemsby said: “I do not accept your opinion that WIS is insensitive to race. As always, I am happy to discuss further, but you should know that I question your family’s fit at WIS if you” believe that.

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