A sexually explicit image shown on a screen during a Baltimore City school board meeting Tuesday night is being investigated as a hate crime, city school officials said.

“An unauthorized individual accessed our meeting and displayed racist, antisemitic, and obscene adult content that was deeply offensive, threatening, and inappropriate in nature,” the school system said in an email to the school community Wednesday.

The school system livestreams all of its meetings, and the image appeared during the public comment portion of the meeting that included prerecorded videos. The explicit image also included antisemitic text.

The meeting was immediately paused when the image appeared during the public session. The board ended the online meeting, but continued the in-person public meeting. A recording of the meeting will be posted on the school system’s YouTube account.

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The image wasn’t visible to those watching online, but was seen by those attending the meeting.

In its email, the school system apologized to the community.

“We strongly and unequivocally renounce this criminal act,” the statement said. In its hurry to pause the meeting, the statement said the board regretted failing to “acknowledge the harm that the image caused. We take this matter very seriously and are committed to doing everything possible to prevent a similar incident from happening again.”

The incident is being investigated as a hate crime by Baltimore City School Police in collaboration with the Baltimore Police Department, the school system wrote.

The school system said it was working to add measures that would prevent the issue from happening again.

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A similar incident occurred in October 2020 when inappropriate audio was played during an online Baltimore County school board meeting. An inspector general investigation did not conclude where the “sex like noise” came from.

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