By Aria Brent
AFRO Staff Writer
abrent@afro.com
On the evening of Nov. 12 the Special Education Citizens Advisory Committee (SECAC), a parent advocate committee that partners with the Howard County PublIc School System (HCPSS), held a virtual meeting that welcomed students, families and community members to join a discussion focused on mental health. However, as the meeting came to a close, spammers began to call out racial slurs.
“The actual words were, ‘I hate the n-word’ over and over again,” said Dianne Henry, secretary of the Howard County SECAC.
SECAC is a state agency that partners with school districts across Maryland to help advocate for students in special education classes and advise districts on how to better serve their special education students and families. The team that helps provide resources and support to Howard County’s special education community is made up entirely of Black women– which is suspected to be the main reason their call was targeted.
“We are unique. We are a board that is made up of five Black women and that’s different, especially in the climate of Howard County,” said Darria Wise, co-chair of Howard County’s SECAC. “When I was asked to do this I wanted to bring more diversity in regards to our special education population because it is a taboo within African American culture to talk about it.”
As a result of the breach, the Nov. 12 meeting was shut down, leaving parents and community partners concerned about what happened.
“I did have a few concerned parents reach out because the meeting abruptly ended. Some people were shocked, they weren’t sure what they heard,” said Henry. “We also have a board of education member that is a permanent liaison to our committee that comes to every meeting. She reached out immediately and said she was going to handle an investigation by HCPSS. At that time, we assumed that because they paid for the Zoom [subscription] they could conduct the investigation.”
In the days following the verbal attack the committee discovered that an investigation could not be conducted by HCPSS. They were told that although the district pays for the Zoom account, when it was first created, during the COVID-19 pandemic, it wasn’t registered with HCPSS credentials– leaving the committee to handle this situation independently.
Once SECAC communicated what happened in the meeting to their community, support came flowing in from individuals and organizations alike. On Nov.14, the Autism Society of Maryland (AUSOM) released a statement against the racially motivated attack.
“The Autism Society of Maryland vigorously condemns the hate speech made during the Howard County Special Education Citizens Advisory Council Meeting on November 12, 2024. This was a cowardly attack on the volunteer leaders of SECAC,” the statement read. “This event is especially painful for AUSOM because of our strong and ongoing partnership with SECAC. We call on all leaders in Howard County to join us in speaking out against hate speech and bigotry that have been spreading across the nation and sadly now have reached Howard County.”
While Autism Maryland was quick to release a statement against the racist verbal attack, the SESAC leaders told the AFRO they took issue with the fact that HCPSS at large was not. They allege that HCPSS representatives who were on the Nov. 12 call in real time were slow to denounce the spammer’s actions– and only did so after other orgs publicly denounced what happened in the committee meeting.
On Nov. 15, HCPSS superintendent issued a press release titled, “Update from the Superintendent on the Special Education Program Review.”
The message, sent by Superintendent Bill Barnes, mostly focused on the topic at hand, with one graph that mentioned the incident in the SESAC meeting.
“I lend my voice to the chorus of individuals and groups advocating profusely to eradicate hate and hateful language. I denounce this deplorable act of cowardice and was extremely saddened that SECAC leadership were targets of such a horrible demonstration,” said Superintendent Barnes. “I am committed to ensuring that students, staff and our families experience a nurturing and safe environment and any acts of hate that threaten and negatively impact these experiences, will not be tolerated.”
The SESAC leaders are questioning the handling of the incident, and expressed concern, stating that the perceived lack of concern from HCPSS officials in this incident makes them wonder how students are supported if they are met with verbal racist attacks.
The AFRO reached out to ask why the district took multiple days to address the issue and if the statement was in fact only released as a result of AUSOM’s public denouncing of the incident. HCPSS superintendent, Bill Barnes responded to the inquiry and spoke out against the incident, along with clarifying the steps he took to rectify the situation.
“Quickly following the SECAC meeting, I worked with my leadership team to react to this harmful act to try and prevent it from happening again. But in my efforts focused on preventing future incidents, I failed to call SECAC leadership to check on their wellbeing,” the comment stated.“When I realized that no one from my team had connected with SECAC leadership immediately following the incident, I made the decision to address it directly with SECAC membership at their in-person meeting and offer my sincere apology and intolerance for what occurred, albeit too late.”
Moving forward, the SESAC leaders plan to implement a registration system for future meetings to help monitor who is joining them.
The AFRO contacted Zoom about protocol for identifying IP addresses of call participants and the handling of hate-fueled spammers committed to wreaking havoc on the virtual platform.
Their response was empathetic, but lacked solutions.
“We are deeply upset to hear about this incident and Zoom strongly condemns such behavior. We are committed to maintaining an equal, respectful and inclusive online environment for all our users,” said company representatives. “We encourage users to report any incidents of this kind to Zoom and law enforcement authorities so the appropriate action can be taken against offenders.”
“We have a number of default settings and features to help hosts easily access in-meeting security controls, including controlling screen sharing, removing and reporting participants and locking meetings, among other actions,” continued the statement from Zoom.
Even after being targeted, the ladies of Howard County’s SECAC continue to serve their community and represent minority students with special needs.
“We want to say ‘Hey, we’re here,’ and we are advocating,” Wise said. “And we want to bring more awareness and let people know that there’s no color to special education.”
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