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Parent alleges racial mistreatment and communication failures during public comment to Red Wing school board
Summary
An unidentified parent used public comment to allege repeated racial misidentification, bullying, staff mockery and delayed communications during a school lockdown; the board acknowledged the remarks but took no formal action during the meeting.
An attendee at the Red Wing Public School District board meeting on Monday alleged systemic racial mistreatment across district schools and raised multiple safety and communication concerns during the public‑comment portion of the meeting.
The unidentified public commenter told the board that school staff had “mixed” her daughter up with another Black student, that the same student’s name later appeared on a bus report, and that staff treated Black and Native students as interchangeable. She said students at Burnside and Twin Bluff Middle School were “stripped of their belongings” and locked in rooms for hours during a lockdown while parents waited outside.
"They had mixed her up with another black student showing that brown children are interchangeable names and faces, not individuals," the commenter said during public comment (public commenter, SEG 231–235). She also said her son was bullied for over a month on the bus, that staff at a school cafeteria verbally mocked special‑education preschoolers, and that her daughter’s knee pain was dismissed by staff until she later required surgery for septic arthritis.
The speaker said she has filed a complaint with the Minnesota Department(s) of Human Rights and criticized district responses as dismissive. "There is racism prevalent in your schools, in the hospital, and in this very town," she said, adding that she records interactions and expects accountability (public commenter, SEG 295–296, SEG 292–294).
Board members acknowledged the remarks and the chair said "thank you," but there was no formal board response recorded during that public comment segment. Later in the meeting, administration addressed a separate item: officials summarized review steps taken following a reported weapon threat on Oct. 10 and said communications and response protocols would be evaluated with the Red Wing Police Department (administration, SEG 1178–1195). That safety review did not appear on the record to directly resolve or rebut the equity complaints raised in public comment.
Status and next steps: the commenter said a Department of Human Rights response to her complaint is pending; the board did not take immediate formal action on the allegations during this meeting and did not announce an internal disciplinary or investigative response on the record in response to the public comment. The allegations therefore remain unresolved in the meeting record.
