A Miami Catholic school confronted racism after George Floyd died. Parents complained.

In the wake of nationwide protests after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis last summer, calls for racial equity led to changes in workplaces, neighborhoods and schools, including Carrollton School of the Sacred Heart, an independent Catholic girls school in Miami’s Coconut Grove.

Ahead of the current school year, the school took note of complaints about its culture, adopting an inclusion policy and an amended mission statement to include a commitment to denouncing discrimination and tackling structures that perpetuate racism.

But the steps the school took led to a backlash: More than 150 parents and alumni — including former Florida House Speaker José Oliva and Coral Gables Vice Mayor Vince Lago — signed an 11-page letter addressed to Carrollton administrators and board members stating that the school’s efforts to address racism were incompatible with its Catholic foundation.

“What we are seeing time and again is that what is being shared in Carrollton classrooms is, at the very least, controversial political rhetoric and often extends to anti-Catholic indoctrination,” states the Oct. 23 letter, which began to circulate in recent weeks and was shared with the Miami Herald.

The tension between the school’s response to the Black Lives Matter movement and the pushback from parents comes as Miami grapples with issues of racism, religion and a deep-seated belief among a wide swath of Miami that the ongoing movement for racial equity is rooted in socialist teachings.

Echoing a conservative viewpoint, the letter stated that phrases such as “systemic racism” and “racial equality” stem from critical race theory, a philosophical offshoot of a German school with a foundation in Marxism. The letter also says students who express Catholic viewpoints on abortion and euthanasia, among other topics, are “targeted and ostracized” by their teachers.

Lago, a leading candidate to become Coral Gables mayor in the city’s April 13 election, told the Miami Herald that he signed the letter because he hoped for the school to return to the institution his wife and sister remember, with nuns in the classroom and a stricter adherence to Catholic teachings. He said talking about issues of race is important, but “shouldn’t be the focus of their education.”

“It should be walking in the footsteps of Jesus Christ,” said Lago, who proudly noted during a Miami Herald Editorial Board interview that he was the only elected official in the city to kneel with police and protesters during a summer rally that made national headlines.

“My wife and I make significant sacrifices to send our daughters to Carrollton,” he said. “The reason why I signed [the letter] is because I want Carrollton to uphold the value and focus on faith-based education for my daughters.”

Being Black at Carrollton

Though parents who signed the letter said they’d seen the school shifting away from its Catholic roots for years, the conflict at the 60-year-old institution came to a head following last summer’s protests, and the founding of a “Being Black at Carrollton” Instagram account purportedly created by students and alumni to amplify their voices and stories about overt and subtle racism at the school.

“Carrollton has given me so much opportunity, but it has also given me so much trauma,” one anonymous post read. “For a long time, Carrollton made me not want to be Black.”

The moderator of the account did not respond to requests for comment. But in September, she gave an anonymous interview to Telemundo in which she said the account was created to “educate the entire Carrollton community of the reality of racial injustice Black students have faced in the past and continue to face at Carrollton.”

On Thursday, the account posted testimonies for the first time since Oct. 25, 2020, two days after the date on the signed letter.

According to the school’s website, Carrollton’s Board of Trustees adopted a Social Justice, Inclusion and Diversity Statement on Aug. 2, 2020. The web page listing Carrollton’s mission and goals also changed after Oct. 31, 2020, according to archives of the website.

Goal III, titled “Schools of the Sacred Heart commit themselves to educate a social awareness which impels to action,” now includes: “The school, drawing from Catholic Social Teaching, educates students to analyze and work to eradicate social structures, practices, systems, and values that perpetuate racism and other injustices.”

The school serves girls from early childhood through 12th grade.

Asked if the school’s Social Justice, Inclusion and Diversity Statement was in response to the @BlackatCarrollton Instagram account, Carrollton Head Master Olen Kalkus said through a spokesman that the school has “always supported a commitment to social justice, inclusion and diversity.”

Whatever the reason for the change, the Oct. 23 letter stated that “when our community experienced criticism this summer, our school’s reaction was to immediately assume an apologist strategy and create committees that presume we are ill-equipped to handle these issues from within and adopt a mission statement using outside sources instead of using our existing goals and Catholic social teaching.”

Bruno Barreiro, a former Miami-Dade County commissioner who signed the letter alongside his wife, said Thursday that he didn’t plan on pulling his daughter out of school or withholding any donations.

“I just wanted to reaffirm that I support giving a Catholic-based education to our children and am making sure their religion is prominent and the core education,” he said.

Oliva, the Republican speaker of the Florida House during the 2019 and 2020 legislative sessions, did not respond to requests for comment. He and his wife, Jeanne, are listed as signatories on the letter.

The Herald also reached out to more than a dozen other Carrollton parents and alumni who submitted comments in support of the letter. None would agree to be interviewed.

A summer of change

Carrollton’s leadership received the letter from its parents and former students following a summer of turmoil and on the eve of an election in which Miami-Dade County tilted hard to the right. Republican candidates won seats in the state Legislature and in Congress, and then-President Donald Trump gained around 200,000 votes on his 2016 totals in the blue-leaning county.

Many credited — or blamed — the summer’s Black Lives Matter protests and racial rhetoric for the shift, saying the “defund the police” rhetoric around the protests and the occasional use of communist symbols drove Hispanic voters to the right. On some Spanish-language radio programs, hosts said the racial equity movement was based in Marxist philosophies. One host whose comments were picked up nationally accused one of the founders of the Black Lives Matter movement of being a witch.

The letter called for the school to examine its policies, revise its handbook and “conduct a thorough examination” of its Catholic identity.

“Allowing for this foundational shift to take root will lead Carrollton down a limitless destructive path wherein the pursuit of the metrics of ‘diversity’ will be upheld as the moral imperative,” the letter stated.

The school, however, doesn’t appear to have budged.

Kalkus said in a statement that the letter did not lead the school to make any further changes.

“We always value feedback and input from our community,” he said. “The curriculum at Carrollton is periodically evaluated to best serve the fulfillment of our Sacred Heart mission and the goals of the academic programs. No resulting changes to the curriculum have been made.”