Update: At the Tuesday, May 18, board meeting, President Millerick apologized for using the used of the fully articulated “N-word.”
Marinscope
When Mary Jane Burke, the Marin County superintendent of schools, showed up to speak at the last Novato Unified School District Board of Trustee meeting, she dropped two bombshells.
First, she said the trustees need to ditch plans for closing an elementary school next year because it was causing upheaval within the district and the district can ill-afford to lose any more students.
Second, she said in addition to that she would be stepping in to stabilize the district and to calm the waters following an allegation of a hostile workplace environment in the Novato district.
At the time, the audience viewing the meeting had no idea what she was talking about.
They do now.
It was revealed last week that NUSD Board of Trustees President Ross Millerick uttered the fully-articulated “N-word” during a meeting with Superintent Kris Cosca and Assistant Superintendent Jonathan Ferrer. Cosca and Ferrer were upset with the language, but did not say anything at the time.
Millerick didn’t use the fully articulated “N-word” in a pejorative way, all agree, but he used it to describe what exactly was shouted by students during a 1998 San Marin High School basketball game where some students shouted the racial epithet. He used it to make the point that basketball games need more supervision.
After the incident, Superintendent Cosca called back Millerick to say it was inappropriate for him to use the word in any context. Word then circulated through the district about the incident and the issue took on a life of its own in the rumor mill.
Cosca then reported the incident to Mary Jane Burke and a private investigator was hired to fully investigate. The official report found that “Instead of referring to the epithet as ‘the N Word,’ he used the entire word to describe what was said,” adding that “Mr. Millerick “thought more supervision at sporting events could help crucial similar situations in the future.”
The report goes on to say: “The anecdotal story by Mr. Millerick was intended to be supportive of minorities and was designed to inform superintendent Cosca and assistant superintendent Ferrer of what happens where there is a lack of adult supervision at high school events. There was no evidence Mr. Millerick endorsed the use of the word toward African Americans or other people of color.”
Millerick has stayed mum on the controversy. He’s been on the board for 30 years.
The legal counsel for the County Office of Education ad hoc committee, Robert Henry, told the Independent Journal that a second phase of the investigation will continue by circling back with those who heard the rumors and informing them of what was said and the context in which it was said.
“Once the telling, and the retelling, and the retelling of what the board president said occurs, you always are concerned that everybody who is hearing this understands what the context was. Once I saw what the context was, it was my strong recommendation that we needed to get this out to the school community.”
Cosca said more training is needed “in the area of disrupting casual language, behavior and systems that are rooted in overt or system racism.”
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