Grass Valley Teens Stand Up to Racist Bullying as School Board Election Becomes a Battleground

Thomas Gruver, 16, was well into his freshman year at Nevada Union High School when he hit his limit. His school of some 1,500 students, in the mountain town of Grass Valley, in Nevada County outside Sacramento, is 80% white. Gruver identifies as Afro-Latino and white, and he said that, from the beginning of ninth grade, he was getting racist comments.

“I had a student say, ‘Let's lynch Tommy.’ I had a lot of other friends have things said to them. I witnessed a lot of things, too. Kids that were LGBTQ+ getting rocks thrown at them at lunch, things like that,” Gruver recalled.

Another Nevada Union student, McKinley Nguyen, also 16, said she had anti-Asian slurs thrown at her throughout middle school, but it wasn’t until she was at Nevada Union that she felt compelled to speak up — after seeing one of her peers scream the N-word at a Black student in the hallway.

McKinley said that after she and several other students reported the incident to school staff, nothing happened. “No one really blamed the person that did it,” said McKinley. “A lot of people didn't really think it was either that big of a deal or they didn't believe that it happened.”

Principal Kelly Rhoden said she couldn’t comment on the situation.

It was events like these that led Nevada Union High students to begin organizing in the school library during their “flex time,” to demand school officials hold offending students accountable for racist and homophobic bullying and harassment.

Over the next two years, that experience would lead them toward a political awakening, one that would eventually focus their activism on trying to defeat conservative school board trustee candidates in the November 8 election. Students say they are working to help elect candidates they hope will take racist and anti-LGBTQ+ behavior more seriously.

'That is not a 15-year-old's job'

Anthony Pritchett, now 18 years old, was a senior at Nevada Union last year. Pritchett took action by getting himself elected as student trustee on the school board, in order to have an official voice in bringing the harassment issues directly to the school board.

Pritchett, who is Filipino and white, said his frustration had built over four years of experiencing multiple racist comments. He reached his limit after a peer approached him with a noose.

“Someone tied a noose for me at lunch and gave it to me,” Pritchett said. “I was just hanging out with my friends at school, at lunch. It was in an almost casual manner, too. Just like, ‘Oh, here's a noose, man, like, how funny this is.’”

Pritchett said this form of racism is “insidious and stealthy” because the offenders afterward typically deny they meant any harm, or say they didn’t understand the meaning of what they did.

“I think a lot of people don’t understand that racism isn't just a bunch of rednecks getting in some white hoods and lynching people. Yeah, that's racist, but that's not what racism is now. It's completely evolved,” he said.

Students of color at the school say that, in many cases, school officials failed to take their complaints seriously — and that when they did, both parties often were brought into the school offices, and made to apologize to each other.

That’s what Marlee Anderson, who is Black, said happened to her during freshman year. After she heard a classmate directing homophobic slurs at peers, she intervened, and then that classmate called Anderson the N-word, she said. Principal Kelly Rhoden called Anderson into the office along with the offending student.

“She made me explain how I felt, which was OK. But then she was like, ‘Explain to him how the N-word makes you feel,’ and made me explain to him racism and how being called slurs felt,” Anderson said.

“And I, when she said that, I was completely blown away because … that is not a 15-year-old's job to do, who just got in this huge argument with this kid who's being racist and homophobic towards her. Like … that's not why I'm here. I'm here to learn.”

Marlee’s parents said they emailed Rhoden several times to object to what happened, but never heard back from her. Shortly after, they moved their daughter out of the district entirely, to a more diverse school closer to Sacramento.

Principal Rhoden said she couldn’t comment on that incident either, but she said calling in both the alleged offender and the student who complained for restorative practices is something she’s stopped doing.

“We all need to learn. It goes for the adults just as much as it goes for the kids,” Rhoden said. “We have restorative practices within our school that we use all the time. We do restorative circles. We're doing more and more training with that, which is great. That doesn't always work when it's a racial issue.”

Rhoden said that after Thomas Gruver complained that one of her staff members who had been called in to mediate a racist incident told Gruver he would have to “deal with” it, she took action, mandating anti-bias training for all staff. She said the casual use of the N-word in the hallways has since declined, and Gruver agrees.

Meanwhile, students met with the district, demanding it implement and publicize a strengthened anti-bullying policy whose language included clear consequences — not just for overt harassment, but also for microaggressions. The district responded by launching a Race, Equity and Inclusion Task Force.

And that caught the eye of Nevada County conservatives.

A history of racism in Grass Valley

Nevada County is one the six whitest counties in California. Grass Valley was historically a mining and logging town, and also reportedly a sundown town until the 1960s, meaning that if you were Black, you were not allowed in Grass Valley after dark. In the 1870s, Grass Valley ran its Chinese residents out of town. In nearby Nevada City, Chinatown was burned in 1880.

In the past decade, according to census figures, the county population has shifted to become slightly less non-Hispanic white, declining from 86.5% in 2010 to 81.0% by 2020. That slow increase in diversity is reflected at the high school, too: From 2017 to 2021, the white population at Nevada Union dropped from 81.2% to 73.6%.

All of this underscores the need for ethnic studies to be taught at Nevada Union, says physics and chemistry teacher Eric Mayer. “They need it now. So that's another thing that's at stake with this board,” Mayer said. “Are we going to have a progressive ethnic studies that addresses these issues that students in our society now face? Or are we going to have something that just checks the box?”

Mayer said that talk of how to teach ethnic studies has become a political “third rail” in the district.

Enter a group of people, led by Grass Valley resident Judy Wood, calling itself “Protecting American Ideals.” Wood and other members began showing up at board meetings to argue against diversity, equity and inclusion measures.

“Equity divides people by race, and ensures race-based equality of outcomes. It encourages discrimination to get there,” Wood told the board at a raucous meeting last November.

Some 400 people showed up, with American flag-waving folks on one side and anti-racist students and their supporters on the other.

“It was genuinely terrifying,” said Pritchett, recalling how it felt to be seated with other board trustees in the center of the tension.

“We had our two vice principals at our school there, these two larger men, and they had to escort people away from us a couple of times when things got very tense.”

At the heated meeting, Wood falsely accused the district and school board trustees of allowing critical race theory, an academic theory that argues that systemic racism is part of American society, to be taught in Nevada Joint Union High School District schools.

The board explained that it allowed a presentation about it so it could “hear the other side.” Student organizers and their supporters were furious.

At subsequent board meetings, Gruver and other students spoke up during public comment, pleading with the board to acknowledge their experiences and do something to make district high schools safer for kids of color and LGBTQ+ students.

In May, the board rejected the students’ proposed anti-bullying policy change, objecting to the inclusion of consequences for racist and homophobic bullying. Pritchett said it felt like a punch in the gut.

“A lot of people felt a lot of defeat,” he said. “People felt there’s a lot of hope lost. It's like, where do we go from here?”

It was at this point that the November 8 election for NJUHSD board trustees suddenly took on significance for student organizers, said Pritchett.

“These elections really do bring some of that hope back,” said Pritchett. “Because now we have a chance to put people that will listen into a position of power.”

Pritchett’s mom, Olivia, was so disturbed by the board’s inaction that she decided to run for trustee. So did another parent, Wendy Willoughby, and a former teacher, Ken Johnson. All three candidates held a student listening session and assured students that, if they got elected, student voices would be heard.

Their opponents are backed by the Protecting American Ideals group. Stephanie Leishman, a granddaughter of the late ultraconservative U.S. senator from Utah, Orrin Hatch, is running for trustee, along with Jay Adamson, son of current board member Pat Seeley, a board trustee who rejected the students’ stronger anti-bullying policy. The third candidate supported by PAI is Jenny Scicluna.

All three of these candidates in the race for school board trustee declined to appear at a League of Women Voters forum and also declined interviews for this story.

They did, however, get a tacit nod from the Nevada County Tea Party. The party does not officially endorse candidates, but links prominently on its local elections website to Protecting American Ideals, among other groups, and indicates that the group’s candidates will uphold Tea Party values, if elected.

'What's at stake is the students' voice'

Pritchett is now a freshman at University of California, Berkeley. He has turned 18 and is registered to vote, along with many of his Nevada Union alumni friends.

“Absentee ballots have been something that we've all been trying to figure out as a whole, as new college freshmen,” he said.

Pritchett has been helping fellow Nevada Union alumni register to vote in their hometown, get their absentee ballots and mail them in. He half-jokingly said that students, used to doing everything on their phones, are having a hard time finding mailboxes.

So far, Pritchett’s friends report that about 30 of them have sent their ballots in.

Some Nevada Union students who are still too young to vote, like sophomore Thomas Gruver, say they are still participating in the election by putting up lawn signs, convincing their parents to vote and talking with anyone they can about the race.

“What's really at stake is your voice and ability to bring positive change,” Gruver said. “If you are happy and content with the way everything is now, they’re [the candidates backed by conservatives] the people for you. But what's at stake is really the students’ voice.”

Gruver argues that students are the board’s constituents, and he’s concerned about what the outcome of the election could mean for students who attend Nevada Union after him.

He tears up as he brings up his 7-year-old sister, who is also white and Afro-Latina, and recounts how she already had a student ask her, “What are you?”

“For my sister, it honestly terrifies me that something like that was already said to her because in a way, that's like, that's my little girl, too, you know? That's kind of my kid, so … ,” he said.

Gruver said his sister is a big part of why he has learned to be brave this past year and speak up to adults.

For many Nevada Union High students trying to make change, like Gruver, the school board election is the last chance — while they are still in high school — to get things right.

Editor's note: As of this writing, all three progressive candidates for the Nevada Joint Union High School District Board of Trustees were in the lead.