Mason Middle School teacher won't be suspended or fired for 'lynching' comment
The white teacher who told a black student his classmates would form a mob and lynch him if he didn’t focus will not be suspended or fired.
Mason Middle School teacher Renee Thole made the comment in December, according to the child’s mother and Mason City Schools officials.
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The school district investigated and determined Thole will be required to attend cultural training, according to a formal letter of reprimand placed in her personnel file on Thursday.
"This is a serious miss on her part," said district spokeswoman Tracey Carson, adding that Thole's comment is especially disturbing given the horrific national context of slavery, segregation and lynching.
Between 1882 and the height of the civil rights movement nearly a century later, more than 3,440 African-Americans were lynched in the U.S., according to the NAACP's website.
"There's nothing that could be done that would ever take back those words," Carson said. "And so, the next piece is trying to really determine what is the right recourse that offers restitution for the family and also sets expectations for the staff member."
District officials noted in their reports that this is Thole’s first offense, but news about her punishment is sure to ruffle some feathers. On change.org, there’s a petition that labels the school district’s response as “dismissive and flippant at best” and calls for Thole to be fired.
Tanisha Agee-Bell, mom of 13-year-old Nathan, said she was not satisfied with the district's discipline.
"That’s not a clear punishment," she told The Enquirer. "That’s not satisfactory at all. I still want her out of the classroom until she gets that training."
Thole teaches social studies at Mason Middle School. She was hired in 2002, and her personnel file shows largely positive reviews and no disciplinary action.
She makes $79,383 a year, according to the Ohio treasurer’s office.
The lynching comment was made on December 4. Nathan was off-task several times and didn’t respond to Thole’s directions for him to focus and get his work done, according to Thole’s statement in the investigation file.
“I said to him, (redacted) get to work,” Thole wrote. “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.”
Thole wrote that Nathan immediately called her remark racist, and she walked over and talked with him. She said she apologized to Nathan and told him she didn’t mean it “the way it came out."
On December 12, Nathan’s mother called Thole to complain, and on December 13, at the mother’s request, Thole apologized to her class. According to her incident summary, this is what she said:
“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.”
Mason City Schools is a large, well-performing district in Warren County, about 30 minutes north of Cincinnati.
It's a wealthy district, relatively speaking, with about 8 percent of students considered economically disadvantaged.
The student body is 63 percent white and 4 percent black, according to Ohio Department of Education data.