A lunch lady at a Cambridge, Massachusetts elementary school was serving up more than soup when students reported that she spewed the n-word at their Black classmate.
Cambridge’s superintendent of schools, Kenneth Salim said on Friday that the lunch aide has since been fired after it was discovered she used the racist term toward a student while supervising fourth- and fifth-graders at Cambridgeport School during recess, Cambridge Day reports.
The woman “used an unacceptable racial slur and addressed the students in a disrespectful manner during recess,” Salim, said in a statement.
“After praising the students for knowing when to report such unacceptable behavior, the principal investigated the incident and terminated the employee effective immediately,” the statement said.
The school’s principal Katie Charner-Laird, sent an email to parents explaining “your children … shared their concerns with me about the language and approach to discipline that one of our lunch aides was using.”
The aide, however, is not white as some assumed but instead an African American woman who works part-time at the school. She reportedly tried to “discipline” several students used the “N-word” toward a Black child.
—‘Ugly Black bastard’: Airline under fire for failing to remove racist passenger—
Parent John Summers told the Boston Globe that his fourth-grade daughter came home distraught.
“I could hardly believe it,” Summers said.
The superintendent’s said that Cambridge is actively working to “dismantle systemic oppression in our schools” and is “committed to altering power dynamics and structures in order to elevate underrepresented voices and to recognize and eliminate bias.”