Community members rally in front of Fort Worth Academy of Fine Arts on Aug. 31 to call for the resignation of board chair Cheryl Bean.
Maven Navarro
A group of around 20 students and parents rallied in front of the Fort Worth Academy of Fine Arts on Monday to call for the resignation of Texas Center for Arts + Academics board chair Cheryl Bean, following a string of racially motivated social media posts.
During the school board meeting that followed the rally, a dozen parents and community members spoke in support of, and against Bean.
Superintendent Anika Perkins spoke for 15 minutes before public comment addressing Bean’s social media posts, which she said were “characterized as racist.” Perkins said that she received numerous racist threats for not releasing a public response to Bean’s social media posts.
Flyers handed out at the rally had 13 of Bean’s social media posts printed out. One depicted New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani as a plane flying into the twin towers on 9/11. Another was an AI generated image of Jasmine Crockett that called her “The Queen of the ghetto frontier.” Another showed a picture of Osama bin Laden saying “I won” following the election of Mamdani.
The post that brought the most controversy was an AI generated image of WNBA player Sophie Cunningham depicting the “Washington crossing the Delaware” image. In the image, the Black players wore floaties and the white players did not. The photo was captioned “IYKYK A little humor for the day.” Bean later deleted her post, and Perkins issued a statement that said the intent of the post was to show support for female athletes.
At the time of publication, over 2,000 people signed an online petition calling for the removal of Bean from her position as board chair.
Bean said she wishes that parents that are unhappy with the problems at the school would become “part of the solution.”
“They obviously love it here because the same parents have been complaining for years, and they never leave,” Bean said.
Showing support for Bean
During the public comment section of the board meeting, five people spoke in support of Bean. April Williams Moore said that like art, Bean’s social media post of Cunningham could have been interpreted multiple ways.
“For that reason, I do not blame Cheryl for posts that her team did not recognize as culturally sensitive at the time,” Moore said.
Daniel Bates, former chair of the board also spoke on behalf of Bean, telling the audience that referring to her as racist is “simply absurd.”
Bates told the board to “continue to follow the law, continue to have the 10 Commandments in the classroom, continue to have no males in girls’ bathrooms, and vice versa,”
Bean is currently running as a Republican for the Texas House of Representatives to represent District 94.
Rallying against Bean
Among the students at the rally were FWAFA, 10th graders Paisley Clements and Alaiya Mays. Both students agreed that they wanted Bean to learn respect and stop posting “truly hurtful” things.
“I just think that it makes our school community really unsafe and unfair for the students who got deeply affected by it,” Mays said “There’s just no room for that in a learning community at all whatsoever.”
The rally was organized by Alycia Bennett, a parent of children at Texas School of the Arts, who said she wanted to bring awareness to Bean’s posts, which she called “not acceptable.”
Former employees of the school also joined the rally. Jessica Creedon was a teacher at FWAFA for six years, before she said she left due to harassment of students and staff.
“If you don’t support the kids here, if you don’t support fine arts, why are you here?” Creedon asked regarding Bean.
Bean addresses concerns
After the meeting, Bean told the Star-Telegram that she does not intend to step down from the board, and that she regretted the “Washington crossing the Delaware” post.
In the five years since Bean has been on the board, she said that a “small percentage” of parents have always criticized the board.
“My heart breaks because these parents are making it hard on their kids, and if they’re really unhappy, there’s other schools they could go to, but they stay, and they create havoc, and they complain about the same thing year after year,” Bean said.
Bean said she hoped the parents and board could “get on the same team.”
“My goal is unity,” Bean said. “That’s my only goal and that’s the only goal of this entire board.”
Fort Worth Star-Telegram
Maven Navarro is a local news reporter at the Star-Telegram. She covers Fort Worth and Tarrant County.