Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District representatives apologized last Thursday, Aug. 20, for sending out inappropriate passwords to 14 elementary school students.
“For simplicity,” Superintendent Dr. Ben Drati explained, “elementary students received passwords that are a combination of a color and an animal, for example: PurpleDog. The random algorithm matched two words that may be considered racist.”
Superintendent Dr. Drati said that SMMUSD “could not have predicted that an easy to memorize color and animal combination for elementary students could cause this unfortunate incident.” SMMUSD was “deeply sorry” that this had occurred and “immediately corrected it.” The superintendent pointed The
Malibu Times toward his anti-racism letter and SMMUSD’s anti-racism resources. He said he hoped the community understood “the importance of this work in our school district, and my personal commitment to continuously improve to eradicate systemic racism in our world.”