A Black mother in Springfield, Ill., is crying foul after she says the school district let her son’s bully off way too easy.
Kierra Nabors ripped into Cherokee Middle School officials for failing to take action after a student photoshopped her son’s face onto a cartoon depicting slaves. According to station KY3, the student in question edited four photos in all, one of which was made to show the principal branding 8th grader Isaiah, whose face was superimposed over that of a slave.
Springfield school officials said the bully was disciplined, but stopped short of saying what exactly the discipline was. (Getty Images)
It wasn’t long before the image, captioned “slave branding,” was circulated across social media.
“I’m not shocked, I’m disgusted,” Nabors told the station. “But I’m not shocked.”
School officials said the student who made the photos has been punished, however, state law prevents them from disclosing the nature of said punishment. Frustrated, Nabors said she feels the discipline — whatever it was — didn’t go far enough.
“He wasn’t expelled. Isaiah still sees him at school …,” she said of the student accused of racially harassing her son. “He’s still there, so how is that zero tolerance? To me he got a slap on the hand.”
“[Isaiah] is in a hostile environment right now,” Nabors added. “And yeah, I feel like my hands are tied.”
Stephen Hall, the communications officer for Springfield Public Schools, defended actions taken by the school district and explained that discipline for bullying cases can range from in-school suspension to up to three days of out-of-school suspension.
“If students are participating in that type of behavior, we will investigate it and make sure that that activity ceases and that is what has happened in this case,” Hall told KY3.
Watch more in the video below.
