The woke Seattle school board chief who shuttered its gifted and talented programs because they had too many white and Asian students was previously accused of racism by a colleague, documents from the probe show.
Along with another board member, in 2021 Chandra Hampson was found to have violated the policy against harassing, intimidating and bullying over their treatment of two black employees who were working on an anti-racism plan.
The anonymous complainants accused Hampson of launching ‘an orchestrated campaign of bullying, escalating intimidation, gaslighting and retaliation’ against them, according to the investigation report.
Although investigators did not find ‘clear evidence’ that Hampson and her board colleague Zachary DeWolf discriminated against the staffers because of their race, it did conclude that they ‘used their positions and authority to their detriment’.
Three years later, Hampson is embroiled in a new race scandal at the school over the closure of its controversial gifted and talented programs.
The district began phasing out its Highly Capable Cohort schools and classrooms for advanced students in the 2021-22 school year because they found it had too many racial inequities.
School bosses said black and Hispanic students were underrepresented at the schools.
According to Seattle Public School data, of the highly capable students in the 2022-23 school year, 52 percent were white, 16 percent were Asian and 3.4 percent were black.
During a January 22, 2020, school board meeting, parents of black students in the Highly Capable Cohort asked the board to consider finding ways to incorporate students of color into the gifted program rather than shut it down.
Then school board vice president Chandra Hampson slammed those parents saying, ‘this is a pretty masterful job at tokenizing a really small community of color within the existing cohort.’
Hellbound and Down 