Karen Fitzgibbons, a teacher at Bennett Elementary School in Wolfforth, Texas, is being investigated by the Frenship Independent School District after posting racist remarks on her Facebook page.
UPDATE: She’s been fired. She also issued a lame apology, below.
From Raw Story:
“I’m going to just go ahead and say it … the blacks are the ones causing the problems and this ‘racial tension,’” Fitzgibbons said. “I guess that’s what happens when you flunk out of school and have no education. I’m sure their parents are just as guilty for not knowing what their kids were doing; or knew it and didn’t care.”
The veteran teacher expressed regret that black Americans were no longer legally obligated to live in segregated neighborhoods and attend separate schools from whites.
“I’m almost to the point of wanting them all segregated on one side of town so they can hurt each other and leave the innocent people alone,” Fitzgibbons said. “Maybe the 50s and 60s were really on to something. Now, let the bashing of my true and honest opinion begin….GO!”
More at the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal.
“It was not an educational post; it was a personal experience post,” Fitzgibbons told the paper, adding she has a personal connection to the McKinney incident, in which a white police officer abused black teenagers at a pool party.
She added, “I apologized to the appropriate people,” declining to identify those people.
Fitzgibbons insists her post “was not directed at any one person or group.”
UPDATE 12pm PT, Thu June 11: The school district fired her.
FISD Statement Concerning Employee Electronic Media Use
FISD Seal On Wednesday afternoon, Frenship Independent School District was made aware of a statement posted on a Facebook page by a Frenship ISD employee earlier this week.Frenship ISD is deeply disappointed in the thoughtlessness conveyed by this employee’s post. We find these statements to be extremely offensive, insensitive, and disrespectful to our Frenship community and citizens everywhere. These comments in no way represent the educational environment we have created for our students.
The employee whose account is responsible for the post will be relieved of her teaching duties at Frenship ISD.
We hold our employees responsible for their public conduct even when they are not on active duty as district employees. Employees are held to the same professional standards in their public use of electronic media as they are for any other public conduct. This recent conduct was unacceptable.