Alabama parents, students outraged after student uncovers racist chat group among teachers

Students and parents in a small Alabama town want several teachers to be held accountable after a student at their school leaked a “racist” chat group that targeted children with racial slurs, demeaning jokes and implications that students are dumb.

The group chat, named “Bad A B’s,” started at a high school in Ashford, Ala. with a teacher speculating that one of the students was pregnant, according to southern Alabama ABC-affiliate WDHN. The station did not identify the teachers, due to legal reasons stemming from how the information was leaked. WDHN did name students who agreed to be identified.

The teachers then crudely joked about how a supposedly pregnant student rarely speaks and isn’t considered to be smart .

“I guess she mime sex?” WDHN quoted one teacher as writing.

Soon after in the thread, a male student was referred to as a racial slur. “That (slur) so slow he can’t walk and chew gum,” the station reported.

The student who leaked the chat told WDHN that he discovered it after a teacher gave him her phone during school hours. He then screen recorded it and sent the video to others.

The messages were sent to the TV station.

Soon after, parents and students gathered outside of Ashford High School in disgust. Some parents told the station they were surprised at some of the teachers who allegedly participated, but not shocked at the presence of others.

The student who was called the slur said he knew the teacher who made it, but didn’t suspect she used that type of language.

“I don’t like this school period,” he told WDHN. “They are racist, all of these folks racist.”

The boy’s aunt said he had accused other teachers of being racist but it was downplayed by the school’s principal.

“That goes to show that every time when he was letting them know they was being racist to him, that it was true and the principal was saying it wasn’t,” she said. “It has to be true for you to put it in the group chat.”

The station also reported that parents who requested to be interviewed off-camera said there have been incidents where teachers behaved inappropriately around students, spraying students’ chairs allegedly because of odor and singling out students as being less fortunate.

The boy’s aunt is an Ashford High graduate. She said such behavior is similar to when she attended the school.

Her son also goes to Ashford High. He told the station he’s upset at the revelations.

“This is a real slap in the face, you know, because you never know if someone comes to the school doing something they have no business doing, you know?

“The teacher might think in her head, ‘Well, I’m not going to protect this student the way I’m going to protect that one,’ so that’s the way it really makes you feel,” he said.

Houston County Schools Superintendent David Sewell said Friday that several of the teachers in the chat have been suspended effective Monday. They will have to explain themselves before the Houston County Board of Education at Monday’s meeting.

“There are a lot of gray areas when it comes to anything that takes place on a cell phone,” Sewell told local newspaper Dothan Eagle in response to not identifying the teachers in the alleged incident. “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.”

In the meantime, parents are demanding that the teachers are fired because they’re no longer “good examples” for students.