At 10:30 p.m. on Nov. 5, Christian Ledesma, the principal of Roosevelt High School in Minneapolis, penned an email to his school community. The presidential election hadn’t been called yet, but Ledesma was an assistant principal in 2016 when President-elect Donald Trump was first elected—he saw the big feelings then, and he knew he had to say something early that reaffirmed the school’s values of care and welcome, and to get out ahead of what was to come.
“This is not like a sports championship outcome where we may show up wearing the team colors the next day and boasting and trash-talking our friends,” he wrote. “Tomorrow, if you see someone upset, take care of them. Elections carry the weight of our own internal values and the hopes for a future we dream about. It is more than a win or loss.”
In 2016, a student had turned to another, and told them that they’d be deported. It had a terrible impact on the community, Ledesma said. He thinks his initial email to families, before the race had officially been called, helped deescalate the situation. They haven’t had a similar incident this time, he said.
But then a student received a racist text invoking slavery—one that many Black men, women, and students across the country received in the days following the election.
“I don’t even know how to put it into words how harmful a text like that can be to our Black community,” Ledesma said. “That’s the part I think that I noticed the most—that more than just the individual receiving the text, that one had an impact on the greater whole.”
Black students—as young as middle schoolers—in several states have received the anonymous text asking them, sometimes by name, to report to a plantation. Some of the texts referenced Trump’s victory. The FBI and Justice Department are investigating the messages.
Inflammatory rhetoric from the campaign trail is also making its way into schools following the election: Educators say they’ve heard instances of students telling others they might be deported now and using misogynistic language. Such comments have created an unsettling atmosphere for students of color and LGBTQ+ youth—many of whom fear that Trump will follow through on his campaign promises for mass deportations and an end to gender-affirming care.
It’s not the first time this has happened. During Trump’s first campaign and after his first victory, Education Week reported hundreds of similar instances of hateful messages occurring between January 2015 and December 2017, targeting mostly Black and Latino students, and those who are Jewish or Muslim. The largest number of reports on a single day was Nov. 9, 2016—the day after Trump was elected.
That uptick of hate speech in 2016 has provided educators with a roadmap for handling such instances, educators say. But there’s a level now of desensitization, said Lindsay Pérez Huber, an education professor at California State University, Long Beach, who edited a book on how racist rhetoric in politics seeped into schools and universities after Trump’s 2016 election.
“This is now almost 10 years later that we find ourselves about to enter another era of this racist rhetoric, and so I think it’s really concerning considering what we know happened in 2016, and the years that followed,” she said. “Now there seems to be more of this process of desensitization of racist rhetoric because it’s been around now for so long.”
Districts responded to the news promptly, with 2016 in mind
Many school leaders, because of what they saw in 2016, knew they had to act early. In Omaha, Neb., Elkhorn Valley View Middle School Principal Chad Soupir said a group of 8th graders came to him well before the election with reports of derogatory language they’d overheard 6th graders using.
The school had planned a curriculum for after the holidays to talk about how language can harm others, but administrators moved that programming up because of the 8th graders’ concerns. A group of 8th grade leaders now teach and train a group of 6th graders about offensive language and how to stop it when adults aren’t around, empowering students to set the culture in the building, Soupir said.
“I do think last election caught us off guard. It created just some unruliness. People were saying things out of bounds. It was like, ‘Hold on, this is not how we operate as a school,’” he said. “This one, I think we kind of knew from our past experience what was going on, so it was easier to get ahead of things.”
In Beaverton, Ore., Shelly Reggiani, executive administrator in the local school district’s office of equity and inclusion, said district officials did a temperature check with staff two weeks before the election. Afterward, administrators met with the superintendent to discuss what was happening in classrooms and what support was needed.
The superintendent sent out a message reaffirming that everyone was welcome. District leaders reached out to teacher advisers for student alliances, which represent students of color and LGBTQ+ students, to make sure those students knew they had a supportive adult.
“Pretending that they don’t have big feelings about it is just letting the elephant sit in the room and take up space, and that doesn’t help students being able to process what’s happening in the world around them in a productive way that recognizes their mental health, that recognizes their social-emotional needs, and in a way that’s constructive to being able to process,” Reggiani said.
Still, in the aftermath of Trump’s victory, it wasn’t business as usual, Reggiani said. There was an instance of one student saying another would be deported.
Though that type of language is not widespread in the district, she said, there is a concern that it could repeat—and district leaders intend to be proactive to ensure it doesn’t. They taught staff how to have constructive conversations and make classrooms safe spaces—making sure they’ve having a dialogue in class, not a debate, and making sure they interrupt negative talk quickly, to stop immediate harm.
Even as school leaders set the tone, politics can seep into schools
Katie Law, principal of Arapaho Charter High School in Arapaho, Wy., wanted to make the election a celebration for her students, as she took the first-time voters to cast their ballots. Days later, after Trump’s resounding election, someone left a racist message and symbol in the boys’ bathroom.
“It was really disheartening,” Law said. “I’m in a school with nearly 100 percent Native American students and to have that message and that symbol out there was just like mind-blowing.”
Law called the boys together to discuss the incident, relying on the skills they’re working on as a school community: respect, responsibility, self-control, empathy. Some said they were upset by it, but she was surprised by the lack of empathy from others.
Days later, a student said inappropriate things to a teacher that alluded to the bathroom message. Students in the class were upset and saw the comments as out of line, Law said—a shift from the original reaction some had the week before.
She’s thinking of addressing these incidents in smaller groups, by grade level.
“It’s definitely something I’m going to continue to talk to the kids about, bringing in historical context as much as I can and just leading through self-discovery,” she said. “I can’t make people feel anything, I can’t teach the feeling of what it means to have empathy, but I can instill the actions that coincide with that in my school, so that’s kind of the approach I’m looking at now.”
Though students were more reticent when it came to talking about politics this election cycle—and many of their teachers didn’t intend to open up the floor either, partly out of fear the students wouldn’t behave respectfully—they are saturated with the news of it. Crisis hotlines for LGBTQ+ students reported higher-than-normal call volumes as the election results came in.
Francis Myers, a junior at Sitka High School on Baranof Island in Alaska, said conversation among his peers stalled after the election results came in. In a politically divided school, it’s hard, he said. Political discussions can turn into arguments quickly. But he’s seeing his peers post on social media—some saying that regardless of the results, the community needs to come together; others arguing it is personal, fearing for their rights as a marginalized community.
When Francis asked his friends in a group chat what they were feeling, four or five responded with paragraphs about not feeling supported, and being worried about the future. One was thinking about potentially speeding up hormone treatments, out of fear that access to gender-affirming care could be taken away.
“In my school, having that feeling of fear definitely is impacting students, it’s impacting my friends, it’s impacting the way they make choices about their future,” he said.
Francis’ school leaders did not send out any messaging around the election. He isn’t sure if it would help—it could escalate tensions. But protecting and ensuring student rights could outweigh that tension, he said.
“I would prefer the silence in my school to stop,” he said. “I don’t mind if tensions would increase if students who felt very strongly about this election, and unsafe, felt more safe in the building.”
