Community

Nyack Mayor Don Hammond has released the following statement:

The Village of Nyack Board of Trustees wishes to express our support for the student-athletes of the Nyack School District, who were subject to a sad and shameful display of racist behavior by some spectators at Wednesday’s night’s basketball game at Pearl River High School.

We fully support the request made by the Nyack Board of Education to the Pearl River School District for a full investigation and report, and the request made to Section 1 Athletics to review the incident. We applaud the Nyack School District for their quick action on this matter, and for making counseling available to any Nyack students needing that support.

Further, while we appreciate the Pearl River Superintendent’s quick action in releasing a letter deploring the conduct, we were disappointed that the Superintendent did not extend an apology to the student-athletes involved, an apology that they deserved for the way they were mistreated at the Pearl River High School. The behavior is unacceptable at any level, but is particularly egregious at a scholastic event for children.

We hope that the Pearl River school administration and school board will look upon this as an opportunity not just to address and correct the offensive behavior, but to educate and enlighten those students and community members about the underlying causes and effects of racism in our schools and society. We encourage them to take this terrible incident and turn it into something positive for the students in the Pearl River school district, to help them see just why this conduct is so hurtful and wrong.

Certainly, we hope that they will accept the offer from the Nyack NAACP to meet with their leadership and administration to start an open and constructive dialogue on the incident.

Moreover, an incident like this should serve as a wake-up call to those who question the need for ongoing efforts to achieve diversity, equity, and inclusion in our school systems. We thank the Nyack Board of Education for leading the way in their Strategic Plan for Excellence Through Racial Equity, and for their ongoing work to dismantle systemic racism in our schools.

We often hear that we have come a long way in establishing racial equity and understanding in our community, but incidents like these show us that we obviously have a lot more work to do.

The Board of Trustees stands ready to join the efforts to build a stronger, more inclusive community in Rockland County.