In Monroe schools, families allege rampant racism left unchecked

MONROE — Unpunished racist slurs and violence by classmates as well as false accusations from staff have dominated school life for Black children in the Monroe School District, families allege in a lawsuit filed this week.

The racial reckoning in Monroe schools led to revelations about former Superintendent Justin Blasko, resulting in his resignation in 2022.

But the district’s issues with racism didn’t end there, according to the complaint filed by five families Thursday in Snohomish County Superior Court. The defendants include the school district and over a dozen current and former school officials, like Blasko.

The families are represented by James Bible, who also represented the family of Tirhas Tesfatsion, a woman who died by suicide in the Lynnwood jail. A lawsuit in that case resulted in a $1.7 million settlement with the city.

In this case, the families are asking for financial damages and judicial oversight of the district “to ensure no disparate disciplinary practices, neglect of student rights, or other harms befall students in the future until the court is sufficiently reassured that future noncompliance will not occur,” the lawsuit states.

“My kids will live with this for the rest of their lives,” mother Junelle Lewis said in an interview last year. “They will go into the world thinking every white person is racist. They will go into classrooms feeling like no one is going to support them or no one is going to stand up for them. There’s no price tag on that.”

In a statement Friday, the district said it was aware of the lawsuit.

“The District conducted investigations into the allegations when these families made the claims,” the statement reads. “Due to the legal requirements of student confidentiality, we cannot disclose specific information regarding these claims and related investigations. Further, as the District is now the subject of a lawsuit against the District for money, we have been advised by our legal counsel to not make any further comment.”

For these kids, the discrimination can come as early as first grade. For example, in 2022, a classmate told Lewis’ youngest son, “I’m not talking to you, little Black boy,” according to the lawsuit. In second grade, a white girl told the boy’s older sister she was mean because “all Black people are mean” in front of her entire class.

Others were told they were disgusting because of their race, compared to feces or monkeys or faced references to slavery. Racist slurs can be heard frequently in some of the district’s schools, the families say.

Lewis said the name-calling began about a month after the family moved to Monroe from northern California, where they never experienced racism in school.

The public reckoning about racism in the district was sparked by a video of Stephanie Holliman’s son. The footage showed a white classmate hitting the Monroe High School student over the head with a water bottle. She called her father, who told Holliman’s son he was “going to (expletive) all you (N-word) up” and “if I see you I’ll kill you.”

The father eventually pleaded guilty to a felony hate crime charge. A judge sentenced him to nine months in jail.

The experiences have left the kids running the gamut of negative emotions. A therapist diagnosed Holliman’s son with PTSD, according to court documents.

Lewis, who ran unsuccessfully for Monroe City Council last year, reports her youngest son has trouble falling asleep and has nightmares when he does. Some parents have moved their kids to different schools or, in some cases, out of the district entirely in response to the abuse they say runs rampant in Monroe.

Another of Lewis’ children, then a Park Place Middle School student, stopped reporting the discrimination because it was “normal” at Park Place, according to the families’ complaint.

The families allege much of the mistreatment went unaddressed from school and district leaders.

“The most frustrating part for me is that they don’t do anything about it,” Lewis said.

Staff ignoring complaints has started to affect the self-worth of these kids, the lawsuit stated. Staff are supposed to support them, but have repeatedly refused to validate their concerns, the parents say. This makes them feel they deserve the mistreatment.

In fact, the families claim staffers have pointed to their kids as troublemakers, without evidence. In October 2021, for example, Aj Crecelius’ son, a sixth grader, was on the bus to Park Place. The bus reportedly smelled like marijuana. He was singled out as a culprit without evidence and sent to the counselor’s office.

In May 2023, district officials interrogated a fourth-grade student of Egyptian descent about false allegations he threatened to shoot up Fryelands Elementary, according to the lawsuit. So traumatized, he never returned to the school.

Crecelius told The Daily Herald repeated attacks on her son had left him heartbroken.

“This has forever affected his life,” she said in 2021.

The lawsuit states half a dozen times these students’ school experiences were “not that of a normal child, and she has lost out on numerous services, activities, experiences, and opportunities that she would have enjoyed but for the discrimination and harassment she experienced within Monroe School District.”

In the past seven years, the district has lost over 1,300 students, from nearly 7,100 enrolled in 2017 to fewer than 5,700 this past school year, according to state data. Most local school districts lost students during the pandemic, but Monroe’s dissipation began years earlier.

In this time, white students have dropped from almost 69% of the enrollment to 61%. The percentage of Black students in Monroe has stayed about the same for nearly a decade, hovering around 1%.

Meanwhile, the district has made mild strides to diversify those teaching its pupils, state data shows. In the 2022-2023 school year, however, nearly 92 in every 100 teachers were still white. Black teachers made up less than 1 in every 100.

Jake Goldstein-Street: 425-339-3439; jake.goldstein-street@heraldnet.com; X: @GoldsteinStreet.