It's Black History Month at Celerity Nascent Charter School. Let's fire a couple of teachers to celebrate!

"Administrators at a Los Angeles charter school forbade students from reciting a poem about civil rights icon Emmett Till during a Black History Month program recently, saying his story was unsuitable for an assembly of young children.

Teachers and students said the administration suggested that the Till case — in which the teenager was beaten to death in Mississippi after allegedly whistling at a white woman — was not fitting for a program intended to be celebratory, and that Till's actions could be viewed as sexual harassment.

The decision by Celerity Nascent Charter School leaders roiled the southwest Los Angeles campus and led to the firing of seventh-grade teacher Marisol Alba and math teacher Sean Strauss, who had signed one of several letters of protest written by the students.

The incident highlights the tenuous job security for mostly nonunion teachers in charter schools, which are publicly financed but independently run. California has more than 600 charter schools, and their ranks continue to swell. According to the California Teachers Assn., staff at fewer than 10% of charter schools are represented by unions....

Celerity co-founder and Executive Director Vielka McFarlane said, "We don't want to focus on how the history of the country has been checkered but on how do we dress for success, walk proud and celebrate all the accomplishments we've made."

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Righteous indignation from Firedoglake :

"Ahem.
Dear Celerity Nascent management: Let me fill you in about Emmett Till.

His murder — and the acquittal of his killers (the all-white jury was out for all of 67 minutes, and would have been done even sooner had they not taken a "soda break" just to stretch the time out to "make it look good"), and the worldwide revulsion that followed — is what gave rise to the modern civil rights movement in America.

In a sense, it is to the civil rights movement what the Crucifixion is to Christianity — and somehow, just somehow, I'm betting that this charter school's principal has no problem with kindergarteners hearing the graphic details of Jesus' death and resurrection."

Commentary from FireDogLake; story by the Los Angeles Times.

Photo from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmett_Till