A West Hartford teacher is under investigation after being accused of using a racial slur in the classroom. A parent says her son was stunned when it all unfolded.
“We were excited initially. This is our first year in the neighborhood and just trying to figure out how things work.”
It was the third day of school for Che' La’Mora Hardy’s son at Sedgwick Middle School. She says he attended his math class as usual last week. During class, a teacher went over classroom policy on profanity when her son asked a question.
“He’s a rule follower and he just wants to make sure he’s understanding all the things that are going on,” she said.
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Hardy says her son told the teacher they didn’t use profanity. The teacher responded there were words students shouldn’t use even if they weren’t cursing.
“He told me when he asked the teacher about specifics of what she was talking about, and she said the n-word,” she said.
Hardy says the teacher used the word twice telling them she heard students say it all the time.
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“She said ‘You don’t even know what it means. It means ‘my slave’, and all the kids were in shock in the classroom.”
Hardy says the teacher went further.
“She’s like “Yeah, well, I know you guys are shocked that I said it. I said it, and I can say it because I’m a teacher. You guys can’t because you’re students’,” Hardy said.
West Hartford Public Schools Superintendent Paul Vicinus says the district couldn’t comment on specifics, but says the teacher was removed from the classroom with the incident under investigation with suspension and/or termination possible. In a statement he wrote: “I want to make it unequivocally clear that derogatory language, racial slurs, and hate speech have no place in our schools and work against our mission to develop a sense of community and belonging.”
The West Hartford Education Association president Brian Putkkonen in a statement says the teacher was responding to a student question saying in part: “…the teacher made a poor choice and used a racial slur as an example. The teacher quickly acknowledged their mistake stating that it would be the first and last time that the word would be heard in the class.”
“There’s a thousand different words that adolescents use that they probably shouldn’t. For her to come out with no hesitation as that for an example, it’s egregious,” Hardy said.
She says her son doesn’t feel safe with the teacher and wants to see her fired.
“She’s unprofessional and she needs to be removed because she has proven herself to not be a safe adult. Period,” Hardy said.
