‘Need to Be Quiet, Meek, and Compliant with White Counterparts’: Two Black Teachers Allege Years of Abuse, Retailation and Threatens at California High School
Two Black high school teachers filed a racial discrimination lawsuit against the Beverly Hills Unified School District, alleging they were underpaid, subjected to racial harassment and threats, and that school and district officials failed to adequately address multiple racist incidents at the school.
The lawsuit filed by Natonda “Bella” Ivory and Jarvis Turner on April 25 in Los Angeles Superior Court alleges that the district and ten of its staff and supervisors acted together to racially discriminate and retaliate against them while fostering a racially hostile environment for students at the school.
Turner has been a teacher and basketball coach since 2010 at Beverly Hills High School, where he taught sports marketing and business for seven years, and more recently, career technical education (CTE).
According to the complaint, in February 2018 Turner learned about a group Snapchat post by a female Beverly Hills student disparaging the Black cheerleaders at Santa Monica High School. His attorney, Brad Gage, told Atlanta Black Star that the post, by a Persian Jewish student, called the girls “monkeys.”
After the offending student received a one-day suspension for the slur, Turner sent an email expressing his disappointment at the “lenient” discipline to school officials. BHUSD administrator Mark Mead responded “by assuring him that the school takes offensive racial speech seriously,” the lawsuit says, and “outlined steps to address the incident and promote healing within the school community.”
Turner said that the primary action taken by the school in response to the incident was a meeting in which only Black students were gathered in a classroom to discuss racism, during which they were asked to explain “why they often call each other ‘the N-word,’” Gage said.
In December 2019, Turner received an email through his school account stating, “You are a ni—er.” He sent it to his supervisor, Tim Ellis, who was “nonchalant” in his response to the email, the lawsuit says.
Concerned for his safety, Turner filed a police report with the Beverly Hills Police Department. A week later, he followed up with Ellis to see what action he had taken regarding the racist email, but Ellis did not respond.
Turner then filed a complaint with the district’s human resources director, and hearing nothing, sent a complaint to BHUSD Superintendent Michael Bregy, detailing his experiences at Beverly Hills High “as a Black man,” the complaint says. They included students calling his cellphone late at night “making racial epithets” and parents walking into his office “spouting derogatory racial stereotypes,” the lawsuit says.
Turner also claims that he suffered from disparate treatment in pay and benefits compared to non-Black colleagues who held similar job positions but had less experience and fewer accomplishments.
He further alleges that Ellis, his direct supervisor, took funds from the school basketball account and paid non-Black employees with those monies, but not Turner or other Black coaches.
Meanwhile, in the summer of 2020, Ivory was hired by Beverly Hills High School as a CTE teacher, and in the following school year, she taught three fashion classes and co-taught costume design with Karen Chandler, the theater teacher.
Throughout that school year, she says Chandler yelled at, spoke down to and humiliated her with racist comments and microaggressions, sometimes in front of her students. Ivory complained regularly to school administrators, who responded by meeting with Chandler and then informing Ivory she was no longer allowed to co-teach costume design.
After learning that Chandler’s assistant was chosen to teach the costume design class, Ivory questioned a BHUSD administrator as to why, but got no answer.
In February 2022, a cafeteria employee refused to serve Ivory and “cussed” at her after she asked him his name, in front of numerous school employees and students, the lawsuit says. Assistant Principal Torray Johnson then “took Ivory to a back office and told her, because she was a black woman, that she needed to be quiet, meek, passive, and compliant with white counterparts,” the complaint alleges.
Around this time, Black students began to confide in Ivory about their experiences with racism at the school. Mead made an appointment with Principal Mark Mead to discuss their concerns, but Mead cancelled the meeting and never rescheduled it, she claims.
In December 2022, Ivory began pushing for a pay raise and to be given a union contract that would increase her salary and benefits. She also complained about not receiving holiday pay.
In January 2023, BHUSD advised her that she would be receiving a pay increase, and on that basis she says she discontinued her employment with the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising. By March 2023, her salary was still lower than other CTE teachers, and that May she complained about the disparate pay and told school officials it was “creating undue hardship” on her.
She also told them her Crohn’s disease had created difficulties with her work schedule and sought accommodation. The district failed to respond, she says.
In June of 2023, Ivory met with two BHUSD personnel who were white, telling them she had “quit other employment and forsaken other opportunities in reliance on the district’s promise of increased pay and benefits.” As she explained the financial hardship on her and her son, she says the district officials made light of her plight and ridiculed her, reducing her to tears. The officials then said they would try to have another Black person in attendance at meetings going forward, which was not what Ivory was seeking, the complaint says.
Ivory’s effort to increase her pay rate that summer was unsuccessful. A day before the start of the 2023-24 school year, she says she received a “probationary” contract from BHUSD including terms never discussed with her, with a demand to sign it immediately.
In August 2023, she sent an email to Superintendent Bregy complaining about “continuous racism and adverse employment actions,” and also met with other BHUSD personnel and detailed her experiences of racism in the district, as well as those of Black students.
Soon after that, a “similarly situated” white CTE teacher was given a much higher pay rate than Ivory, despite similar educational and professional levels, and was not required to sign a probationary contract, “asap,” the complaint says.
Ivory says she immediately raised the disparate treatment with BHUSD officials, who did not meet with her until October 2023, when they gave her “several illegitimate, inconsistent and pretextual reasons to justify the disparate salary and employment practices.”
Later that month, Ivory attended a district board meeting and “publicly shared her disparate treatment,” after which Horvath, the assistant superintendent, became increasingly angry and vindictive toward her, she says.
Harassment of Black teachers and students by non-Black students and employees was also on the rise in October 2023, the lawsuit says. Beverly Hills High School has a large population of Iranian-American students who are Jewish, and the plaintiffs say these and other Jewish students targeted Black students in a variety of hate crimes and civil rights violations.
Among them was an incident on Oct. 31, 2023, when a Black student was confronted by a group of Jewish students and threatened for a pro-Palestine Instagram post. Law enforcement, the school district “did nothing to protect the student or uphold his First Amendment rights,” the lawsuit says.
In November 2023, the Black student was attacked by a Jewish student, and teachers and staff, including Turner and Ivory, attempted to intercede to reduce racial tensions at the school, the lawsuit says.
In another incident, the N-word was drawn on a wall in the boys’ physical education locker room. In December, another racist video appeared on TikTok, this one showing a pile of excrement on the boys’ restroom floor and then a shot of the words, “I hate ni—ers” scrawled and underlined on the wall. It is unclear who made the video, said Gage, but it was widely shared among students at the school.
While school and district officials were aware of the posts, they took no corrective action, the plaintiffs claim.
This led Black students, who comprise about 3 percent of the 1,230 students at Beverly Hills High School, to tell staff that they feel marginalized, invisible, devalued, and unsupported by the school community. Many reported being called the “N-word” on a daily basis, and said they felt unprotected and unsafe.
Black students are “particularly distressed that the focus on the campus is primarily centered around the Israeli-Palestine conflict and the pain of the Persian Jewish students, while their own experiences of discrimination and racism are overlooked,” the lawsuit says.
In October, a Black student was allegedly followed home by a group of Jewish students, who verbally accosted and threatened him.
On Election Day, Nov. 5, 2024, around noon, students at Beverly Hills High, including some enrolled in Ivory’s class, marched through the school holding Trump signs and banners, stopping outside Ivory’s classroom, where 7 to 10 students in the Black Student Union, a school club, were meeting. The students congregated outside the door chanting “F—k Kamala” and beating on the door, Ivory says.
The lawsuit notes that prior case law has made clear that “‘The First Amendment guarantees wide freedom in matters of adult public discourse’ but that does not mean that ‘the same latitude must be permitted to children in a public school.’ … ‘The conduct of students, including their speech, may be restricted if it might reasonably [lead] school authorities to forecast substantial disruption,’ or if students are targeting specific classmates ‘with vulgar or abusive language.’”
District officials downplayed the discrimination taking place at the school to the public, Gage said.
“We do not have evidence that suggests that there was racism at the recent spirited demonstrations, however, BHUSD has implemented proactive measures to ensure that any concerns related to racism and antisemitism – perceived or real–are addressed promptly and effectively,” BHUSD Superintendent Michael Bregy said in a statement at the time.
Bregy added that the school district was meeting with organizations, including the NAACP and the Anti-Defamation League, “to deliver professional development for staff, workshops for students, and community engagement sessions.”
“These initiatives will focus on empathy, active listening and fostering dialogue among diverse viewpoints,” Bregy wrote.
Assistant Superintendent Laura Collins-Williams invited Ivory and Black Student Union students to speak at a board meeting on Nov. 11, 2024, and they did, telling attendees how they had been shunned, called the “n-word,” and threatened. One girl said it was “a nightmare to be a Black student at Beverly Hills High School.”
The students also recounted hearing and seeing racial comments and slurs being uttered and scrawled on doors and walls, including a Nazi swastika drawn onto a cutting table in Ivory’s classroom.
Since that board meeting, Ivory says she has been attacked relentlessly on social media and received threatening, racist emails sent to her school email address, including one in which she was called a “Ni—er b—ch” in a student’s TikTok post. She claims she forwarded the messages to school and district administrators, but got no response.
Her son, then a student at a BHUSD middle school, was targeted and bullied at school, the complaint says. As a result, he was forced to finish the first semester in homeschooling and his second semester in an online school.
In January, “Ivory was placed on medical leave by her physician,” the lawsuit says.
On Jan. 9, 2025, Ivory filed a formal complaint with the school district claiming discrimination, harassment and retaliation.
On Jan. 10, she received a letter from BHUSD informing her that she was under investigation for “potential misconduct” in November 2024 when “you made unprofessional statements to your students in the classroom” in the days and weeks following the election.
Gage told Atlanta Black Star he believes the focus of the district’s investigation was related to an “illegally obtained” audio recording made and posted by a student, including comments Ivory made in a classroom, where she can be heard saying, “If anything happens to my son, I will come for your families.”
Ivory later said she wasn’t making threats but sharing her feelings with students, reported FoxLA. She claimed the audio was edited and didn’t capture the intent of her message, which was that “my family is going to come after any family that hurts me, kills me, whatever — legally, not physically.”
In February 2025, during school hours and on school grounds, a Beverly Hills High School student “announced before an entire classroom that she hated Ivory and wanted to stab Ivory in the chest,” the lawsuit says, adding that BHUSD did not inform or report the threat to police or authorities.
The school district’s “retaliatory investigation” of Ivory proceeded through April of 2025, when, Gage says, she was “threatened with potential discipline” and forced to resign, or “constructively discharged.”
Ivory is now working in the fashion industry, earning a significantly lower salary than she did as a teacher, he said.
The lawsuit accuses the Beverly Hills Unified School District and 10 unnamed district employees of discrimination, harassment, and retaliation against both Turner and Ivory in violation of federal civil rights law, and with failure to take corrective action in violation of California law.
It also alleges that the district failed to provide reasonable accommodations for Ivory when she had “physical conditions that limited major life activities” but was “able to perform the essential duties” of her position.
The plaintiffs seek a jury trial to determine special economic and general damages to compensate them for lost income and earning capacity, back and front pay, loss of future earnings, damage to reputation, medical and psychological bills, suffering and emotional stress, and legal costs.
The lawsuit does not seek a court order to demand changes in policies and procedures at the school district.
Gage said “getting injunctive relief is exceedingly hard in this political environment,” but his clients “want the school district to make reforms so that people of color are treated equally and fairly, without threats, without discrimination.”
“I would like to see more diversity represented among all staff,” Turner told Atlanta Black Star, adding that includes faculty, classified and certified staff. “I would also like to see more diversity among the student population, and to see a relatable person in the counseling and mentoring space for the minority students.”
“And we want our clients to be compensated for the harms they’ve suffered and gone through,” said Gage. “What you can do to effectuate change is by having a very large monetary judgment. You know, money talks, and usually the only way you’ll get racism eliminated is when you make it so expensive for them to engage in it, they decide they’re going to change their behavior.”
Attorneys representing the Beverly Hills Unified School District did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Atlanta Black Star.
The school district and other defendants in the case have until mid-June to file an answer to the complaint.