Friday's Plano East versus Flower Mound boys basketball game featured three overtimes, multiple lead changes and a white power sign.
It makes sense that the student section at Flower Mound High School's basketball games would have a sign with the word "white" on it. After all, the Lewisville Independent School District school's colors are blue and white. It makes a lot less sense for the kid seen on the right of this photo to have a "power" sign.
This is ridiculous I thought we passed the racial stage of society. pic.twitter.com/xonnf18mUy
— Devin Gifford (@dgiff_) February 14, 2015
Judging from the photo, "power" seems to be in a different font that "white," so it would seem that the sign was made by an enterprising student rather than LISD. A player from Plano East, the school playing Flower Mound at the game the signs were displayed, told WFAA that the signs were held up for about 30 seconds before teachers scrambled to take them down.
Tuesday, LISD Interim Superintendent Kevin Rogers issued a statement.
"As Interim Superintendent of a very diverse school district and community, I have been involved with our internal investigation regarding the unfortunate occurrence at Friday night's Flower Mound High School vs. Plano East varsity boys' basketball game. I want to be clear that this type of incident -- however it has been perceived -- has not and will not be tolerated in LISD. We have always had high expectations for our more than 53,000 students and hold them to those standards both in and outside of the classroom.
As we stated yesterday, the investigation of this occurrence is still underway, and we fully intend to act on our findings. We regret that this unfortunate event has been elevated to this level on so many social media circles.
I am disheartened that the perceived actions of a few may reflect poorly on two great schools -- Flower Mound and Plano East High Schools -- school districts and communities. Ultimately, please know we have the highest respect for the students, staff and community of Plano East High School."
Flower Mound is 83.9 percent white, while Plano is 66.9 percent white, according to the latest data available from the U.S. Census Bureau.