"A throwback to the bad old days," CNN anchorwoman Christine Romans called it.
"Antiquated, offensive and completely irrational," Fox News' Sean Hannity charged.
The Huffington Post declared, "Pennsylvania's McCaskey East High School has come up with a controversial plan to help the school's black students: to segregate them."
There it was: the "S" word.
It would be repeated again and again — much to the chagrin of School District of Lancaster officials — as news of the city high school's effort to boost black student achievement with single-sex, all-black homerooms and black mentors went "viral" last week, appearing on websites and cable news, in tweets and on blogs.
The story first appeared Monday on the front page of the Intelligencer Journal/Lancaster New Era and on LancasterOnline.com, complete with video filmed at the school.
By Tuesday, the work of veteran education reporter Brian Wallace was all over the Internet, from the Drudge Report to the United Kingdom's Daily Mail website. (Regional Fox, CBS and NBC TV affiliates and the Philadelphia Inquirer eventually filed their own reports on the controversial new program.)
A statement from the School District of Lancaster on the aolnews.com website, read: "The intent of mentoring at McCaskey High School is to build strong teacher and student relations, not separate students by race. The high school is disappointed by the negative perception and focus on single racial composition programming."
For his part, Wallace, the original reporter, admitted he was "a little surprised by the attention, but not that people had strong opinions" about the program. (He's been stopped in the street by readers offering him their take on it.)
It did seem to him that it was "a bigger deal to other people" than it was to those in this community. Wallace likened the phenomenon to the widespread — and also largely negative — attention focused on Lancaster city's security cameras a couple of years ago.
Asked about the publicity, SDoL Superintendent Pedro Rivera, issued this statement Saturday:
"The media attention has been trying-— a mix of responsible journalism and sensationalism. The genuine conversations about urban education and struggling students are welcome. The real story, though, is the teachers' amazing commitment to transforming lives. Ultimately what matters is our students, and that our community knows we'll continue to do the most we can for our kids."
Local NAACP support
Some observers recognized the mentoring program's good intentions, but more decried the setup. National/international reaction was generally more negative than the local response, with the local NAACP chapter and a prominent local black minister who is a McCaskey alumnus voicing qualified support.
On CNN, Pedro Noguera, a New York University professor who is black, worried that the sessions organized by black teachers for black 11th-graders — six minutes daily supplemented with two 20-minute sessions monthly — would be "stigmatizing" and "inadvertently reinforce stereotypes."
On Hannity's panel, Michael Meyers, a black man associated with the New York Civil Rights Coalition, was more forceful in his disapproval: "In America we no longer have colored sections," he said.
His opposing panelist, Fox News contributor Deneen Borelli, a black woman, defended the program.
As did the Rev. Louis Butcher Jr., pastor of Bright Side Baptist Church in Lancaster. "It's not a bad idea. It's not a reinstitution of segregation at all," he said Saturday. The school and the teachers are trying to "help students deal with challenges unique to their culture."
Moreover, "it is led by teachers who really have a heart for their students, and that is encouraging and admirable," Butcher added.
He said the word of it might have been rolled out earlier to parents and the community to prevent any misunderstanding.
The Lancaster Branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored people and its president, Blanding Watson, also weighed in on the side of the school district and the program.
"The relationship between adult mentors and students strengthens the shared societal values and principles of achievement, goal oriented vision and productive citizenship," his statement said, in part. "Let us pull together and recognize hope, achievement and the values that keep us together as a nation. Let us recognize the role of the mentoring program and the School District of Lancaster," it concluded.
Principal Bill Jimenez issued this own statement Saturday:
"All of our students deserve the kind of energy and guidance these teachers have shown with this mentoring initiative to help them. But we failed to think through the broader implications, and though it's a voluntary program, we're going to step back, get input, make adjustments, and invite the community to partner with us as mentors."
In a Philadelphia Inquirer article by Kathy Boccella, SDoL board President Richard Caplan, an attorney, was quoted as saying that from now on the program is going to be "race-neutral."
"We're going to offer it to everybody ... to eliminate an image of impropriety," he said in that article, adding that the district did not want "a civil rights lawsuit by a disgruntled white person or Latino."
The public is invited to discuss the mentoring program at the 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, Feb.1, meeting of the SDoL Board's Public Engagement Committee at the school, 1051 Lehigh Ave.
Jo-Ann Greene is a Sunday News staff writer. Contact her at jgreene@lnpnews.com.
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