Three Wiregrass Ranch High School students are facing punishment after wearing Ku Klux Klan costumes to school Thursday.
Pictures of the students dressed in white sheets with white pointed hoods showed up all over social media.
“Nothing surprises me now,” said parent Michael Gadson.
“It’s kind of sick,” said student Vanessa Dorsey.
Initial reports from Wiregrass Ranch said they were ghost costumes, part of Spirit Week dress up day.
Then came the images.
Superintendent Kurt Browning saw them too.
“Usually ghosts don’t have pointed hoods,” he said.
“Since our kids kneeled at the football game last week, there’s been a lot of racial tension in the community. Never would I have expected that students or even families would have taken it as far as wearing Ku Klux Klan paraphernalia to the school,” said parent Dee Green.
But it turns out that under those sheets were three minority students.
The school district said two are Hispanic and one is Middle Eastern.
“The last thing we need is to have any student regardless of race dressed up in that type of costume,” said Browning.
Along with the three students in sheets, another wore a Confederate flag as a cape.
He was asked to take it off and was not disciplined.
Wiregrass assistance football coach Brandon Tanner said it’s important to address racial issues head on.
“This is not something that should be representative of the school. I live in this neighborhood. I don’t deal with that kind of bigotry where I live,” he said.
The district won’t say how the three students in the KKK costumes are being punished.
But they said it could include up to a ten day out of school suspension.
