Brown v. the Board of Education was meant to end segregation in schools across the country— but what happens when it’s a Black educator who brings back segregation for a shocking reason? In the case of one Atlanta public school (APS), claims of segregation led to a shocking lawsuit from one parent.
Kila Posey and her husband are not only parents to two APS students, but they also work as educators in the Atlanta area. So imagine their surprise when the principal at their daughter’s elementary school, Sharyn Briscoe, revealed the shocking method of how Black students were taught at the predominately white school.
“I found out directly from the principal,” Posey told CNN in a 2021 interview. Her husband, Jason, worked at Mary Lin Elementary, where their daughter was enrolled. The school had a known policy of allowing staff to request homeroom teachers every year, so that’s exactly what Posey did. “I made the selection for our students, and she [Briscoe] called me and asked if I wanted a different teacher.”
After telling Briscoe she was confident about her original homeroom selection, the principal reportedly responded, “If she stays with her, she won’t have anyone that looks like her in the classroom,” according to Posey. Obviously confused by the statement, the mother asked what happened to all the Black students at Mary Lin, and it was the principal’s response that unknowingly sent shockwaves throughout the city.
“‘That’s not the Black class,’” the principal allegedly told Posey before explaining that only two out of the six second grade classrooms were designated for Black students. “It’s disheartening to know that in 2020— after George Floyd, Breonna Taylor— we’ve done all the marching, and I’m here in 2021 having this conversation with someone that looks just like me,” Posey continued to CNN.
This led to her filing a discrimination lawsuit in 2021 against the principal and the district. The U.S. Department of Education even conducted a federal investigation into the racial discrimination claim, according to 11 Alive News. No disciplinary actions were taken after the investigation, but that’s not where the story ends.
In 2023, Posey filed another lawsuit against the school district after several schools cancelled their contracts with her company, which provides after school services across the APS district. She claimed this was done in retaliation to her first lawsuit. 11 Alive reported Posey never got a real reason for why her contracts had ended, even after she investigated the matter on her own.
Two years after that, the school district finally reached a settlement agreement with the mother. The Atlanta Board of Education approved a $500,000 payout on Monday (May 5) based on Posey’s second lawsuit, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution. “We’re happy to just kind of move on with our life,” Posey, now 46, told the AJC. “This has consumed us for quite some time.”