Representation gap at Highland High concerns former teacher, student

SALT LAKE CITY ( ABC4 ) — Tiffany Rasmussen believes her vocal advocacy for black students at Highland High School played a role in her not keeping her job.

When the school board voted to close four elementary schools in the Salt Lake City School District, Rasmussen said teachers with seniority were prioritized to keep their jobs. It was her first year with the district but had taught in the Jordan School District for several years before that.

She also said she was the only black teacher at Highland High and the only black history teacher in the district.

When the year was over, Rasmussen said she was asked to reapply for her job but then was ultimately told there was no longer a job for her.

She told ABC4 she had never received a bad review from her administration in the year she was there until her job was in question.

“No, I never had the opportunity to work on any of the things that you mentioned. And are you holding this across the board or is it just directed towards me? And that is an issue and thing that we’re going to look into,” Rasmussen explained.

Madina Yassin was one of Rasmussen’s students. She said she never had a black teacher in her time as a student in the district until Rasmussen.

She believes Rasmussen gave a voice to a student population that was voiceless.

“We never feel like we’re being understood at that school,” Yassin said. “So every single time there was a problem going on in school or outside of school, we could go to her and she would try to help us out.”

Yassin described to ABC4 racially charged incidents that she claims have taken place at Highland.

“A lot of people that are non-black are saying the N-word. And we tried speaking about that multiple times, but it’s always gone unheard,” she claimed. “And they will call, like, the black people monkeys and just call them out of their names and nothing still has been done.”

In her year at Highland, Rasmussen started a step team and advised the Black Student Union. Her work with the step team was covered by ABC4 back in February of this year.

Rasmussen described her heartbreak that she could no longer provide the representation to her students that she craved for when she was in school.

“It really hurt to put so much effort into something and to make those connections and then just to be pushed away. I could feel and understand what the students were saying when they said they didn’t feel like they were welcomed. They were showing me that I wasn’t welcomed,” she said.

ABC4 has reached out on multiple occasions to the district this week to comment on the allegations made by Rasmussen and Yassin. We have yet to receive an answer to our requests.

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