The Kennedale school board of trustees decided not to discipline the district’s superintendent at a Tuesday night meeting after a parent said the superintendent racially targeted her child at school in early May.
The district board, family and NAACP officials met in closed session at a special meeting at 6 p.m. Tuesday. The board returned with a decision at about 9 p.m.
Teressa Turner-Austin said Superintendent Chad Gee told her son he was “what’s wrong with Kennedale” because he is black. The Arlington NAACP represented Turner-Austin, her husband, Curtis Austin, and their son, Cameron Lyles.
The family said Gee accosted Cameron in the hallway and the office at Kennedale middle school. Cameron and a classmate were instructed by a teacher to stay back to finish their lunches as the rest of the class returned to their classroom. When Cameron was in the hallway near the classroom, Gee approached Cameron and started to yell at him and ask why he was out of class, Turner-Austin said.
Turner-Austin said Cameron made to throw his straw into the trash can and missed. Gee told him to pick up the straw, addressing him as “boy,” she said. Cameron said his name was not “boy.”
Gee took Cameron into the office and “continued to direct his undue ire at the young man,” “yelling, slamming his hands on the conference room table, calling the student ‘boy’ and ‘dude,’” a statement from the NAACP said.
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