A teacher at Washington Academy has been placed on leave after posting comments critical of the school’s new racial sensitivity training program on social media.
The training was implemented this past fall after a noose was found in a Latina teacher’s classroom at the private East Machias school.
Jonathan McBrine, who teaches in the career tech and history departments, has been placed on leave for comments he posted to Facebook about the training, according to our info partners at CBS 13.
“I want to warn all my friends. If someone is making you do equity training, that’s the new code word used by Marxists brain washers,” McBrine wrote. “You will [hear] them promote doctrine like white privilege and whiteness, making you read articles shaming people for being white.”
He also posted memes mocking U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, including one in which she says to U.S.Rep Ilhan Omar “I love what you’ve done with the place” and Omar responds “Thanks I wanted it to feel more like home.” A subsequent photo shows a scene of an urban street that appears to have been heavily damaged by a bomb or a fire.
The teacher’s postings have since been removed from Facebook.
The school hired Boston-based education consulting firm Carney Sandoe & Associates to conduct an “equity audit” and to provide equity training to its staff after the noose was left in the classroom last year.
The training for Washington Academy staff is “ongoing.”
