When La Sonya Brummell-Pitts was approached about helping to craft an anti-racism policy for the Palm Springs Unified School District by Superintendent Dr. Sandra Lyon, she initially didn’t want to be part of the effort.
“I’ll tell you, when I responded to her email, my response was I don’t want to be a part of a committee,” Brummell-Pitts said. “I don’t want to write white papers and do all of that. I don’t want to do it.”
The reluctance of Brummell-Pitts, a 19-year district employee and director of classified human resources for the district, wasn t just about concerns over another committee that might produce nothing. It was also about her own raw emotions over the death of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man killed during an arrest in Minneapolis on May 25, 2020.