Javon Jarrett, a 4th grader at Willard School in Sanford, is no longer bubbly about school because an official used the N-word on him.
“He used to love to go to school, pack his lunch, hurry up, drop him off at the bus stop, but now it’s he’s like I don’t want to go school today. My son does not feel comfortable at that school,” Jessica Gouin, mother of the nine-year-old told News Center Maine.
The report said Jarrett had been sent to the principal’s office for allegedly bullying a peer – an act he admitted to, adding he was just joking.
In the office, the assistant principal, Kathryn Davis, asked him, “If I called you a n—– how would that make you feel?”
School authorities have corroborated Jarrett’s narration, however, the Superintendent of Schools Matt Nelson believes it was a lesson gone bad.
“At the end of the day, we screwed up, made a mistake. I also think context is important and when you understand the context, it doesn’t make it better but sometimes it helps to understand it,” Maime further quoted Nelson.
“We’re trying to make an example and we failed in terms of being able to do that. But there was no malice intended. It wasn’t intentional in terms of that,” Nelson told WKYT.
He added: “It’s something we take seriously, something that is not okay.”
The assistant principal in question has since apologized but Jarrett’s parent will not take it.
“The way she apologized is not really, like Javon I’m sorry I called you that name or used the N-word. She’s like Javon I called you a N*****, like she kept using this N***** word…N***** word. like it was nothing,” Javon’s father, Neil Jarrett, said.
“Now every day at school I’m worried about him,” Neil said of his football-loving son.
The parents are pushing for the assistant principal to be suspended.
“They’re just going to brush off and keep it that way and maybe a couple years down the line, it’s going to be the same thing. It may not be my kid but someone else’s kid,” Jarett said in a Black News report.
