Bedford, Katonah-Lewisboro Districts Address Post-Election Incivilities

BEDFORD, NY — Tensions over the recent election have prompted school officials in the Bedford and Katonah-Lewisboro district to address both the truth and rumors.

Fox Lane High School Principal James Donnelly penned an open letter to students that said “In the past week some hateful things have been said by some students toward others. Things have gone on in the election that have motivated some to rejoice and some to be very sad and scared. In expressing their views people on both sides have humiliated others and made them fear.”

Donnelly said he had heard even before the election white students saying bad things to black and Latino students and he witnessed black kids attacking white kids.

He said he has also seen bullying of Jewish students by non-Jewish students.

“Although this has been only a small percentage of our student body, we need to know that when one hurts, we all hurt,” Donnelly wrote. “It all has to stop! We are better than this! You are better than this!”

Donnelly said in a letter to parents and guardians that the incivility has been addressed and he is continuing a dialog with student leaders.

Andrew Selesnick, the superintendent of schools for the Katonah-Lewisboro district, posted on the district’s website that the days following the election had been “both emotionally charged and challenging.”

He said that John Jay High School Principal Steven Siciliano spoke Nov. 10 over the school’s public address system to the entire school and told the students they now had to work to understand their differences, rather than judge one another.

“What I won’t accept, our faculty won’t accept, and most importantly, our student body shouldn’t accept, is a climate where people’s dignity is being assailed because of who they supported (regardless of who you supported), or who they are. We don’t do that here,” Siciliano said, according to Selesnick.

Selesnick urged parents to have conversations at home about “the importance of respecting the fact that students, just like other citizens across our great nation, hold very different views on any number of issues.”

“We are at our best when we take advantage of and work to understand our differences, and at our worst when we attack one another because of those differences,” he said.

Image via Shutterstock.