Parent Entitlement is a Black Educator Retention Issue

From Letters from the Lab

When Melissa Leonard-Goodlett, EdD. talked about working in a school run by parents, the first image that came to mind was a screenshot.

Screenshots from a group chat I was never supposed to see.

A Black mother let me know that White and Latino parents were organizing behind my back. Then, throughout the school year, she sent me screenshots of what they were saying. They were discussing who would come to my classroom to observe me. They were deciding what day they would show up. They were talking about emailing my principal and my principal’s boss until they got what they wanted. They were planning to go to the school board and make a case for why I should be fired.

By that point, their children were no longer even in my class.

That part matters.

This was not about a parent wanting a different option for their own child. Their children had already been pulled from my sixth-grade humanities elective. They had already been placed with another teacher, a white male colleague who was paid extra to teach those 17 students during his planning time.

But that was not enough.

They still wanted me gone.

They still wanted the curriculum changed for the students who remained.

They still wanted power over what other people’s children were allowed to learn.

The class I taught was a sixth-grade humanities elective required for one semester. Around 90 students were enrolled. This was my second year teaching it and my third semester with the course. I had written the curriculum from the ground up, and it had been approved by my principal.

The course was organized around one essential question:

What happens to society when humanity is lost?

We began with humanity. What does it mean to be humane? What does it mean to recognize the dignity of another person? From there, students named the issues they were hearing about in the world around them. They brought up race and racism, people experiencing homelessness, animal cruelty, women’s rights, LGBTQIA+ identity, and other topics connected to inhumanity in society.

I did not walk into the semester with a prewritten agenda. I built the curriculum based on what the students said they wanted to understand.

But once parents objected, the question was no longer about what students wanted to learn.

It became about what powerful parents did not want taught.

They did not offer another curriculum. They did not say, “Here is what we believe sixth graders should learn instead.” I was simply told what I could no longer teach.

No social justice.

No humanities.

No race.

No gender equality.

No LGBTQIA+ communities.

Something else. Anything else. Just not that.

That is when I understood the difference between parent choice and parent domination.

Parent choice would have been removing their own children from a class they did not want them to take. That had already happened. Parent domination was continuing to organize, surveil, pressure, and escalate until the curriculum was changed for everyone else’s children, too.

This article is not anti-parent.

It is a dream to have involved parents. Some of the best parent engagement I experienced in my 15 years of classroom teaching was simple. A parent attended at least one conference. A parent checked in because a pet had died over the weekend, or because there was a divorce happening at home, or because they wanted us to be on the same page in supporting their child. A parent asked how their child was doing. A parent let me know what their child might be carrying into the classroom.

That is partnership.

That is care.

That is not what I am talking about here.

An involved parent works with the teacher. A parent who is mobbing works against the teacher.

I am talking about the dog whistle. I am talking about the underlying harm that can be carried through the language of concern. I am talking about parents and caregivers who are steeped in white supremacy, anti-Blackness, and racialized control, then use the language of protection to harm Black educators.

They are not trying to support the child with the teacher.

They are trying to control the teacher.

At first, there was a form of protection. My principal responded to parents, and I was mostly in the background. I was not in all of the meetings. I did not know everything being said.

But that did not last.

Within about a month, the shift happened.

I was no longer protected from parents. I was managed for them.

I was told I had to change my curriculum. Not because the curriculum had not been approved. Not because students had not chosen the topics. Not because their children were still in the class.

I had to change it because the parents kept complaining.

No one handed me another curriculum. No one said, “Here is what we would like you to teach instead.” I was told to come up with something else from scratch or find something somewhere, as long as it had nothing to do with social justice or humanities.

Parents could come into my classroom. They could take pictures of my slides. They could email those pictures and their concerns to my principal. Then I would be pulled into the office and questioned about my teaching.

Parents surveilled.

Administrators questioned.

I was forced to answer.

Parents remained unchecked.

When I told the students who remained in my class that we had to change the curriculum, they protested against the principal. Instead of asking why students were upset that a curriculum they had chosen was being taken away, the district investigated whether I had told them to protest.

I was placed on leave for two weeks.

When the investigation ended, it was found that I had not told students to protest. But when I returned, I was told to get to my classroom and do what I was told.

I will never forget that day.

It helped me understand something I hadn’t wanted to understand so clearly: white supremacy in schools does not survive only because of white people. It survives because institutions train people across races to protect power, preserve order, and punish those who disrupt the arrangement.

When Dr. Melissa described a school run by parents, I knew exactly what she meant. Not because I had worked in her school, but because I had worked in the same kind of power structure.

In her episode, she talked about learning to inflate grades because parents challenged grades. She talked about parents pushing back when their children received grades they didn’t like. She talked about a school with status, reputation, and resources, but also a culture in which parent satisfaction exerted too much control over teacher practice.

That resonated with me.

In that same school where I worked, students could not receive lower than 50% on an assignment, even if they never turned it in. Teachers questioned how that was fair. If one student turned in an assignment and earned a 45%, but another student turned in nothing and received a 50%, what exactly were we saying about learning?

I also remember being called into an administrator’s office because quite a few students had C’s in my class. The expectation seemed to be that I would change the grades. I explained that students had opportunities to redo assignments and retake assessments, but because my class was considered an elective, many students chose to prioritize retakes in math, language arts, science, or social studies.

Still, there was this underlying question: Why do these students have C’s in your class?

Underneath that was another question: What is wrong with you as the teacher?

This is where Dr. Melissa’s story helps us see the larger pattern.

A school can be celebrated by parents and still be dangerous for Black educators.

A school can have a glowing reputation and still have a harmful internal culture.

We talk a lot about students being pushed through in underfunded schools. We need to talk more about students being polished through in affluent ones.

Parental power shapes how teachers are treated. It can distort what students are allowed to learn, what grades they receive, how schools protect their reputations, and how prepared students actually are.

For Black educators, that distortion is often carried in the body.

The 2017-2018 school year was when I came to understand racial battle fatigue not just as a concept but as an embodied experience.

I had hives. Anxiety attacks. Dread.

I did not want to open emails. I did not want to go to school. I did not want to hang out with my family. I was afraid all the time. Anxious all the time. Isolated all the time.

The school became a place to survive, not a place to belong.

I would arrive right before the first bell. If I did not have to leave my classroom, I would stay there. I closed the door. I sat in silence. I stopped visiting other teachers. I left as soon as I could.

And I documented everything.

I printed every email. I printed every screenshot from the group chat. I documented every conversation. I placed documents in my HR file at the school building and my HR file at the district level.

I was teaching children during the day and building an archive of my own harm after every interaction because I knew people might not believe me.

That is racial battle fatigue.

It was not burnout because the root of it was race-based.

Burnout is real. Black educators experience it, too. This was different. This was the mental, physical, emotional, and psychological impact of racialized experiences at the hands of parents, administrators, and the system itself.

And it did not stay at school.

My dissertation focuses on how racial battle fatigue impacts the families of Black educators. I did not choose that topic from a distance. I chose it because I lived it.

What happened at school came home with me.

It impacted my marriage. It impacted my friendships. It impacted my community activities. My husband saw that I was no longer interested in going out or hanging out. He saw me living in a constant state of sadness. He saw that I felt trapped.

The school lived in my body long after I left the building.

I left teaching in 2018. It took about four or five years to feel like I had fully healed from that experience.

That is what schools miss when they reduce racialized parent harm to a communication issue.

The harm does not end when the meeting ends. It does not end when the email thread stops. It does not end when the educator resigns.

It follows us home.

And still, I did not stop being an educator.

The parents did not make me doubt my gift. They made it dangerous to keep using it there.

By that point, I had been teaching for 12 years. I had strong evaluations. My students loved me. My community loved me. I knew my work was valuable.

This small group of parents in one semester at one school did not get to determine my worth.

Leaving the classroom did not make me less of an educator.

Finishing my dissertation helped me remember that. Every time I speak about racial battle fatigue in community, at conferences, or in professional spaces, I see educators recognize something in themselves. Some had experienced it but never had a name for it.

The podcast helped me remember, too.

So many of my guests on The Exit Interview: A Podcast for Black Educators have said some version of, “I’m still a teacher,” even after leaving a classroom, a principalship, a dean role, or a traditional school setting. Hearing them say that helped me understand it for myself.

Some people are born to teach.

The school building is just one medium.

I have been an educator since 2006. It is 2026. That is 20 years of teaching, even though I do not walk into a classroom every day.

When we talk about Black educator retention, we have to stop pretending the only question is how to recruit more Black educators into schools.

Recruitment matters. Pipeline work matters.

But hiring more Black educators does not automatically change the parent culture they are entering.

Parent entitlement is a retention issue.

Parent power is a retention issue.

Parent harm is a retention issue.

We cannot assume that because a school wants Black educators, that school is ready to protect them. We cannot assume that placing Black educators in predominantly White schools will work if the parent culture remains steeped in anti-Blackness and unchecked control. We also cannot assume that parents and families of Color will always be supportive of Black educators, because anti-Blackness exists across communities.

The parents who pressure principals are also the parents who vote for school boards, influence school funding, shape school reputations, and help define what districts believe they can risk.

Their power does not end at the classroom door.

So if districts are serious about Black educator retention, they have to ask harder questions.

• How many Black educators leave not because of students, but because parents made the job unsafe?
• What would it look like for schools to treat parent behavior as part of school culture?
• What policies or norms should schools have in place to protect educators from parent harassment, racialized complaints, or mobbing?
• How are school leaders trained to recognize the difference between parent advocacy and parent intimidation?
• What happens when parent voice becomes more protected than Black educator wellness?
• If you are doing pipeline work, what are you doing about the parent culture Black educators are being recruited into?

Because you cannot recruit Black educators into schools where parent culture is allowed to push them out.

If parent behavior is part of school culture, then parent harm must be part of the retention conversation.

To the parents and caregivers reading this, I want to say this plainly: you have power.

If harmful parents can organize to push Black educators out, then supportive parents can organize to protect them.

Parents who value Black educators cannot stay quiet while other parents tear them away from teaching. You have the power to change what is happening in your schools by showing up with the same energy, force, and love as those who show up to cause harm.

And to school leaders: stop closing your eyes to parents who wield their power.

Stop pretending you do not see what they are doing.

Stop forcing educators to change who they are to appease parents.

You will never satisfy parents who are committed to control. You will only teach them that control works.

When parents have all the power, Black educators are left to carry the harm. When school leaders refuse to intervene, they are not neutral. They are choosing who gets protected and who gets sacrificed.

And to the Black educator who was pushed out, worn down, or left alone with parent harm:

I see you.

I hear you.

I understand you.

You were not wrong.

They were wrong.

You should have been supported.

Your teaching was valuable then, and it is valuable now. Wherever you are, you are still an educator.