Racist messages at St. Francis High in Sacramento reopen a painful debate. What to know

Black families at St. Francis High School in East Sacramento are again raising alarms after racist and antisemitic messages were found on the all-girls Catholic campus in August 2026. The incident has reopened old wounds at a school with a documented history of racial controversies, and arrives amid broader change in Sacramento’s Catholic school landscape.

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Here are key takeaways:

• Two students who wrote racist and antisemitic slurs and images on St. Francis property on Aug. 26 are no longer enrolled, and the Board of Trustees has launched an independent third-party review of the incident and the school’s response, The Sacramento Bee reported.
• The school’s Black Student Union Parent Group is demanding greater accountability from President John Moran, criticizing a Sept. 3 letter to the community as vague about consequences and faulting leaders for being slow to communicate with families, according to The Bee.
• A 2021 incident drew national attention when a white sophomore used a Snapchat filter to imitate blackface and mock a biracial classmate, prompting the Black Parent Group to lobby for the student’s expulsion and hold a news conference at the school.
• The biracial student’s parents, Peter and Samara Palko, later spoke out about what they called an inadequate institutional response, describing how administrators pushed to “move past” the incident without fully acknowledging harm — a story detailed in a 2021 Sacramento Bee opinion column.
• A separate 2023 civil lawsuit alleged St. Francis administrators knew or should have known that former track coach Aaron Daniel Rios was grooming a 15-year-old student; Rios was convicted and is serving a sentence of 16 years and 8 months, as outlined in court filings reported by The Bee.
• Separately, Jesuit High School in Carmichael — an independent all-boys Catholic school with ties to many St. Francis families — announced in October 2025 that it will begin educating girls in fall 2027 under a “co-divisional” model keeping most classes separate, per a letter sent to Jesuit families.
• A group of prominent Jesuit alumni and donors, including Angelo Tsakopoulos and David Leatherby, has pressed to reverse the co-divisional decision and offered $100,000 to pause the transition for a feasibility study, but school leaders have called the decision final, according to Bee reporting on the open letter.

This story was originally published October 12, 2026 at 10:30 AM with the headline “Racist messages at St. Francis High in Sacramento reopen a painful debate. What to know.”

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