A white Louisiana school secretary is out of a job after a leaked text message shows her allegedly calling the Martin Luther King holiday “n—-r day.”
The text message thread was posted to social media and sparked a flurry of outrage.
“When you are trying to be hateful and send the text to the wrong person,” Joseph Burks wrote on Facebook before showing the text thread.
“People like this have no business in the educational system,” another user replied.
A screenshot of the text message thread made the rounds on Monday after Baton Rouge, Louisiana, activist Walter Geno McLaughlin shared the texts alongside a photo of Newlyn Fontana. Fontana was an office secretary at Ouachita Parish Junior High School in Monroe, Louisiana.
The text thread is between Fontana and an unidentified school coach. The conversation discusses scheduling leading into the week of the MLK holiday.
Amid spelling and grammatical errors, Fontana refers to the holiday as “N—-r day lol Mark Luther King.”
She tells the coach to remind the players Monday is a day off.
The coach appeared caught off guard by the comments as he stated,” ‘Huh? Say what? Where did that come from?”
Fontana later writes, “I’m very sorry coach, I didn’t mean to send that first text to you please forgive me.”
The string of texts reached the high school principal, Darren Wheeler.
“Unfortunately, on Friday evening, a text message which contained a racial slur from an employee was brought to our attention. That employee is no longer employed by the Ouachita Parish School System. We do not condone any form of racism in our schools and community,” Wheeler said.
One Monroe resident said of the incident, “God is exposing some folks.” The post received more than 700 comments.
“They need to do an investigation to see how many children this evil person has potentially harmed with her racist views. This lady interacted with kids every single day,” Chris Arant posted.
“Why they’re taking books out of schools and teaching a false history, these are the people left to educate our children,” McLaughlin said.
Ouachita Parish School Superintendent Don Coker also confirmed to the Monroe (Louisiana) News Star that Fontana is no longer employed by the school board.
Poland could not be immediately reached for comment about her alleged comments.
Ouachita Parish Junior High School had roughly 400 students enrolled last school year. The Black student population is “98 percent higher than the state average of 57 percent,” according to Public School Review.
