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Hate-filled messages sent to students at South Jersey school

Published  December 9, 2018 12:49pm EST
U.S.
FOX 29 Philadelphia

WOODSTOWN, N.J. (FOX 29) - Vile messages filled with hate were sent to students at a South Jersey school. Now, a mom is afraid to send her daughter to class. Parents tell FOX 29 they feel like they were left in the dark and the school should have told them sooner.

"I would have left work and I would have went and got her." This parent, who does not want to be identified, says she never learned of a group message that threatened African-American students at Salem County's Woodstown High School.

"I was very sad as a parent that my daughter was there all day going through that and I didn't know," she said.

FOX 29 obtained the messages involving students at Woodstown High, threatening violence. Another message uses the n-word.

This parent's daughter is bi-racial.

"She said students were upset.They were segregating themselves.They were not talking to each other. White students weren't talking to African-American students."

"There were horrible words, mortifying words posted," Superintendent Virginia Grossman said.

Superintendent Grossman says the racist messages were made on Monday and that the Woodstown-Pilesgrove administration did not learn of them until Thursday.

The district finally told parents about it in a recorded message released Friday. "This incident was fully-investigated, we followed our protocols and discipline was administered accordingly."

Parents say school officials have known about it and acted much sooner.

"They could have let us know that there was an incident of threatening nature and give us parents a chance to decide whether or not we needed to come pick up our children if we felt like the environment was unsafe," the parents said.

"If something is immediate. Parents are immediately contacted. This was quite different from that," Superintendent Grossman said.

The administration tells FOX 29 the student who wrote the messages received the maximum punishment possible. Next week, they plan to meet with students and discuss the incident further.