NAACP drops complaint against Babcock Neighborhood School

The NAACP has agreed to meet with Babcock Neighborhood School after dropping their complaint.

The NAACP claims the Babcock Neighborhood School enabled a “racist culture” on their campus. The school is at the center of multiple discrimination lawsuits and a civil lawsuit filed by the NAACP.

What’s changed is both Lee and Charlotte NAACP now feel a sincere want and urgency from Charlotte County school board members, the superintendent and parents to address racism among other issues at this school and make things right.

In October, the Lee County NAACP President told WINK News he did not feel the school was sincere in working with his organization to stop alleged racism at the school. Now, they feel everyone wants to come together to solve the problem.

Insults like monkey, cotton picker and the n-word said directly to students at the Babcock Neighborhood School led to a federal civil rights complaint. It is now postponed after NAACP leaders said they saw a willingness from Babcock to “make a request to the Department of Justice to come in and do training.”

It’s all part of a national program called United Against Hate. Lee County NAACP President James Muwakkil said he now feels everyone is in a good place. He said the Department of Justice can come in as a friend to the effort, conduct trainings with students, teachers and parents, instead of a group investigating and looking for a reason to punish.

“We have reassurance that this is being taken serious,” said Muwakkil, “that it’s not being taken lightly, and that there’s some training that can take place to resolve this, but of course, the number one thing is to have moving forward zero tolerance.”

WINK News asked what trainings would look like, and Muwakkil said it will be a proper professional having mutual conversations with staff, students, teachers and parents on how to deal with racial issues, identify, report and prevent them.

The NAACP dropped their complaint, but the families have not dropped their lawsuit and are still proceeding through the courts.