The Affton School District welcomed more than 50 members of the community to a meeting on Mon. evening, March 31, for an open discussion about combating hate and antisemitism. The meeting was scheduled shortly after March 7 when racist graffiti—including a swastika—was spray-painted on the outside wall of Affton High School.
A second incident occurred at Rogers Middle School in the Affton district before an arrest was made March 13 by the St. Louis County Police Department. In mid-March, the district superintendent Travis Bracht decided to open up a dialogue with parents and other community members as soon as possible.
“After the very first incident happened, we knew we needed to bring people together,” Bracht said. “We didn’t really know how the story would end as far as who did it, and why. We have got to all stand together. For people who aren’t sure what to do and how to help, this is a space for people to come together and affirm that support.”
Bracht said the incidents do not reflect the values and culture of Affton schools, which celebrate diversity.
“Thank you for standing up to ensure that this incident doesn’t define us—our response does,” Bracht said. “That response needs to reject hate, it needs to reinforce our shared values of respect, inclusion and safety. Acts like this will never divide us. We’ll continue to stand together, and we’ll become even stronger.”
The meeting included an introduction to the resources available from the Anti-Defamation League to combat hate, provided by Jordan Kadosh, Heartland regional director. Lauren Abraham, director of the Jewish Community Relations Council’s Student to Student program, then told the audience that Affton High School has been an eager participant in the initiative for 20 years.
“Our Jewish students have embraced coming to Affton as one of the highlights of the year,” said Abraham, who reported 300 Affton students learning about Jewish culture during seven presentations in the fall of 2024.
John Bowman, Sr., present of the NAACP of St. Louis County, then provided a message of hope to the gathering. “I choose love over hate,” Bowman said.
The meeting concluded with questions from parents, one of whom asked how they should explain to their younger kids how serious graffiti can be if you add hate speech to it.
“We keep a library of lesson plans, but we also have table talks for families for how to talk about this around a kitchen table,” Kadosh said. “A lot of them are very timely, but they mostly revolve around hate incidents, sometimes political violence, things that are really just tough discussions to have. They’re available on our website at ADL.org.”
Another audience member asked how the school administration and faculty communicated with students in the days immediately following the vandalism.
“It was important for the district to get a message out quickly and make sure people know this is not OK,” he said. “We need to condemn it for what it is. We have to stand against it and if there’s anyone that’s struggling, we have support here. We’ve got trusted adults that they can go to. We want to make sure that folks know there are people here that you can lean on. We thought it was timely to make sure that our students, especially, also kind of got that same message.”
