Photo Courtesy of Video Footage
A white teacher at a Charlotte, North Carolina, elementary school must have lost her rabid ass mind after yoking up an 11-year-old boy in her class while cursing him out in front of his fellow students. The boy’s parents are outraged.
On February 7, a shocking video surfaced of Kelly Russell, an art teacher at Ashley Park Elementary in Charlotte, verbally and physically assaulting 11-year-old Kayden Franklin while his flabbergasted classmates watched.
The 42-second video began with Russell grabbing Franklin by his jacket with both hands and pushing him into a seat.
“Who the f*uck do you think are,” she screamed at the boy, who didn’t resist. Children were also heard screaming in the background as she slammed the student down.
There was an unintelligible dialogue between the pair as another student was heard saying, “If that was me, I swear to God…”
Another pupil told the student to stop “instigating.”
Russell’s dialogue with Franklin picked back up with her asking him, “Do you hear me?”
The burly bully then aggressively grabbed the boy’s chair and slid it under a table with him in it.
“Over here walking around my classroom, cussing at a girl, trying to fight her. Is that what your family does?”
The out-of-pocket art teacher became even more brazen with her questioning, “The men in your family put their hands on women? Your dad hit your mom?”
Franklin responded, “She started it.”
Russell barked back, “No, she didn’t. She was sitting next to me.”
“She literally,” Franklin tried to rebut before she screamed at him to “shut your mouth.”
The children in the room were outraged by Russell’s blatant disrespect of the student.
“How old are you,” she asked, and he answered.
“11–years-old. You are a child,” she said before the video ended.
The video horrified the 11-year-old boy’s parents, Cortney Pickett and Deon Franklin. They became aware of the incident on February 8.
“I feel helpless,” she said. “I feel helpless as a mother. That my son came into the house and didn’t feel like he could talk to me. I feel helpless.”
Pickett also expressed that she felt disappointed by administrators at Ashley Park Elementary School because her son was supposed to be safe.
“I work hard to make sure my son feels safe. And the one place I thought I could keep him in to be safe, they let me down. I’m hurt.”
About the accusatory questions about domestic violence in his family, Deon said, “I don’t know whatever movies she’s watching, whatever music she listens to, whatever gives her this attitude that Black men, we don’t care about our kids, that’s false.”
Since the incident, Franklin’s father said that his normally outgoing son had been withdrawn.
“He don’t even sound the same. He’s distant. He doesn’t have that excitement in his voice right now. You can tell he’s hurt by this.”
Although Russell was suspended with pay, Franklin’s mother believed that the Charlotte-Mecklenburg School District would have been unresponsive if the video showing the art teacher’s outrageous behavior had not been shared.
“If that video didn’t come out, it was her word against his,” Pickett said. “Because what she said did not match the story of what my son said. Where’s my son safe at? He’s not safe in a church; he’s not safe at school. So, I’m traumatize because I don’t know, how can I make him feel safe?”
Amid Russell’s paid suspension, Franklin’s parents have not mentioned if they will assault charges against the abusive educator– but they should.
Ashley Park Elementary School has an almost 82% Black student population.
A staff photo on the Charlotte-Mecklenburg School District website showed a disproportionate number of white teachers, given the district’s student demographic.
Russell’s actions are on par with aggressive behaviors by white teachers against Black students.
A 2020 study indicated that white educators are harsher on their Black students than white students.
“Black boys lost 132 days of school per 100 students enrolled, compared with white boys who lost only 21 days of school per 100 students. Black girls had the second-highest rate, at 77 days per 100 students enrolled, which was seven times the rate of lost instruction experienced by White girls at the secondary level.”