Renee Thole, a middle school social studies teacher who told a 13-year-old black student that he would be lynched if he didn’t behave, will not be suspended or fired.
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According to Cincinnati.com, Thole, who teaches at Mason Middle School in Mason, Ohio, made the comment in December. Thole submitted a statement during the district’s investigation of the incident that said the student was off-task and not responding to her instructions.
“I said to him, [redacted] get to work,” Thole wrote in her statement. “Your classmates are tired of you costing them points. When you come in tomorrow without your homework completed, you [sic] classmates are going to be angry and then become a mob who will want to lynch you.”
The statement matched what the student’s mother, Tanisha Agee-Bell, told Cincinnati.com in an earlier article this week. Agee-Bell told the reporter that her son had called out Thole’s comment in class for being racist, but a week before telling his mother what had happened.
Agee-Bell said that her son was afraid he would get in trouble because he had talked back to his teacher.
Agee-Bell, who has sat on the Mason school district’s diversity council for a decade, met with Thole about the incident. She said the middle school teacher expressed that she was frustrated, to which Agee-Bell replied, “‘Next time you’re frustrated, are you going to call [my son] a nigger?’”
Thole issued an apology to her social studies class after her conversation with Agee-Bell. The full remarks are included in Thole’s incident summary, according to Cincinnati.com:
I made a public comment, so I would like to make a public apology. Today is a day where we can learn the importance of thinking before you speak. I made a comment the other day where I didn’t stop and think before I spoke. As a result of that I deeply hurt a student and I regret that. Just because I never meant to hurt anyone, doesn’t mean that didn’t happen, so [redacted], I’m sorry. If I had just taken two seconds to think before used the world lynch, I would have not hurt a student. I didn’t think about all of the ugliness and horrible history surrounding that word before I used it. [Redacted] I am deeply sorry and I hope that you can forgive me.
Agee-Bell noted that Thole never explained why the comment, which was made to a majority-white class, was so wrong.
Mason City Schools, instead of firing or suspending Thole, has required the teacher to attend cultural training. A formal letter of reprimand will also be placed in her personnel file.
District spokeswoman Tracey Carson said that the comments were a “serious miss” on Thole’s part and that they were especially disturbing given the history and practice of lynching in this country.
Following the incident, Agee-Bell also had her son removed from Tholes’ social studies class.
Read more at Cincinnati.com.
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