Black Alabama students and parents are speaking out after a student leaked a teacher group chat Thursday calling one student the n-word and speaking down on another’s intelligence.
In the chat dubbed “Bad A B’s,” educators allegedly accused Ashford High School student Anastasia Williams of being pregnant and said she isn’t the sharpest student and is also quiet, according to WDHN.
In another part of the chat, teachers allegedly called former Ashford High student Preyun Snell the n-word, WDHN reported.
“That n—– so slow he can’t walk and chew gum,” the teacher allegedly said.
Preyun told the news agency although he knows the teacher who used the slur and didn’t think she used language like that, he’s had a bad experience at the school before due to race.
“I don’t like this school, period,” he said. “They racist, all of these folks racist.”
A student WDHN interviewed reportedly saw the chat, took video of it and sent it to several people.
Anastasia told the news station after the video was leaked, one of the teachers apologized to her.
“She was like she didn’t mean anything that she said or anything like that,” Anastasia said.
Multiple parents told WDHN there have been incidents in the past with teachers at the school.
Some sprayed the chairs of students due to smell and called them less fortunate, the news station reported.
Venissa Wilson, Preyun’s aunt and also an alumna of Ashford High, told WDHN she had issues with educators at the school even when she was a student there.
“I stood up to them,” she said. “I stayed back and forth from alternative school because I came to learn, and with the teachers doing the same thing when I was in.
“I just did my days and [came] back because you ain’t gonna bully me.”
Houston County School Superintendent David Sewell said Friday several of the unidentified teachers have been suspended effective Monday. The teachers will eventually tell their side of the story in front of the Houston County Board of Education, which meets every Monday at 5pm.
“There are a lot of gray areas when it comes to anything that takes place on a cell phone,” Sewell said to local news publication Dothan Eagle regarding safeguarding the teacher’s identity. “I hate that it happened. We try to put policies and procedures in place to make sure things like this don’t happen. We’ll go back and try to reinforce.”
Parents are calling for the teachers to be fired because they’re no longer “good examples” for the students.