African-American School Principal Received Racially-Charged Letter, Quits, Probe Launched

An investigation was launched to find the source of a racially-charged letter intended for an African-American elementary school principal in the city of Highland, San Bernardino County, California, which ultimately resulted in her quitting the position, a report said Thursday.

"It had horrific comments in it related to race, derogatory comments, unconscionable comments," Dale Marsden, San Bernardino City Unified School District superintendent, said about the letter which was discovered Tuesday. “Although the letter didn’t directly threaten physical harm to any staff or students, the contents of the letter were disturbing, unacceptable and sufficiently threatened the climate and culture of Lankershim Elementary School.”

In an emergency meeting held with parents and school administrators Thursday, the school administrators said Lankershim Elementary School principal Crecia Robinson has taken up another administrative job for the sake of her own well being and health. She was not present at the meeting.

The letter received by Robinson this week in her mailbox at the school was discussed in the meeting.

"Weeding out racism is a lifelong work," Marsden said. "We will find who this person is, we will prosecute them, we will fire them. I'm firm on that."

According to school administrators, the culprit behind the letter is probably a school staff as only employees had access to the portion of the building where mailboxes are kept. Marsden said the content of the letter suggested the same as well.

This was not the first time Robinson received anonymous racially derogatory mails. It was her third letter in her three years at the school, according to a report in ABC 7.

In 2015, when she first joined the school, she received a similar note posted on the board in the staff room. "Thanks, [N-word], for the collaboration," the letter said referring to the weekly meetings held by Robinson. Another note was placed on the principal’s car windshield, according to a report in NBC Los Angeles.

Many parents were concerned about their children’s safety after the incident came to light.

"The first thing that ran through my mind is the safety of my kids," Tony Ramirez, a parent, said. Anaceli Garcia, parent of a sixth-grader at Lankershim, too raised the same concern and said, "Is my kid safe at school? Are any of the kids safe at school? You don't know what is going on."

"It's disgusting," Leanna Smith, another parent, said. "I have a child who is mixed and it's not acceptable. I actually want to pull my child out of this school until this is handled."

“If you wanna be evil, there’s a lot of other places you can go to be evil and comfortable. But our school is not that place,” school board member Danny Tillman told parents at the meeting adding he understood if parents felt their children weren’t safe at the school. He said he would help facilitate moving children to another campus if required.

"It's just very disappointing," Linda Bardere, a school district spokeswoman, said. "We are all appalled. We're shocked to see that this blatant form of racism is still persistent here."

"This behavior will not be tolerated. Racism is a learned cancer and our hope is to shine a light on this cancer and remove this cancer," Marsden added.