The Student Body Is Deaf and Diverse. The School’s Leadership Is Neither. Student protests over the hiring of a white hearing superintendent have roiled a school for the deaf that serves mostly Black and Hispanic students in the Atlanta area and have focused attention on whether school leaders should better reflect the identities of their students.
(non-paywall link available here)
Students protested the hiring, accusing the school and the Education Department of racism and disability-based discrimination against the deaf community known as audism. They noted that the school’s top leadership included no people of color or deaf people.
The Daily Moth covered the story as it developed through the fall here, here and here (in ASL, subtitles available in English, transcript linked from each page).
Despite the GA DOE’s argument that they interviewed all qualified candidates, they did not choose to interview Glennis Matthews, who applied. Matthews, a graduate of Spelman college (a HBCU), was a Black, Deaf science teacher at the school who served as the Science Chairperson. After not being granted an interview by GA DOE, she took the position of Superintendent of the Learning Center, a Deaf School in Framingham Massachusetts. Matthews is the first Black, Deaf Woman Superintendent.