Echo Park Elementary reads from book that includes language like “Cops stick up for each other. They don’t like Black men.”
Incidents
A 4th grade class at Echo Park Elementary School in Burnsville was assigned a video read-aloud of the book Something Happened In Our Town: A Child’s Story About Racial Injustice by Marianne Celano, Marietta Collins and Ann Hazzard. The book includes language like, “Cops stick up for each other. They don’t like Black men.” The book also says, “The cops shot him because he was Black.”
There was no teacher interaction during the book report assignment.
The district was unaware the book ‘Something Happened in Our Town’ was being used with a fourth-grade class at Echo Park. The book is a resource cited by the Minnesota Department of Education but is not part of the district curriculum. District and school administrators are looking into how the book was used. — Tony Taschner, Rosemount-Eagan-Apple Valley school district communications director.
Below is the video read-aloud that the students were assigned to watch.
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