Kansas City teacher was about to be fired for using N-word. He asks to retire instead
The Park Hill school district notified teacher Stuart Sullinger that it was seeking to terminate him after he repeated a racial slur said by a Black student. Sullinger then immediately submitted his letter of retirement, an official said.
The Park Hill school board was expected to consider Sullinger’s retirement as part of its routine consent agenda at its meeting on Thursday. The agenda states that a recommendation to terminate is pending. Sullinger asked to retire effective Tuesday, March 1.
District spokeswoman Nicole Kirby said that Sullinger will remain on administrative leave until then.
Sullinger, a white, Park Hill High School math teacher and basketball coach, was placed on leave earlier this month after he repeated the N-word, questioning a Black student who said it first. A video shared with The Star shows the heated argument that followed, where the student repeatedly tells Sullinger not to use the slur.
The district conducted an investigation before seeking his termination.
Three students and a parent accused Sullinger of previously using the N-word in a similar incident in 2019. They told The Star that Sullinger allegedly questioned a student for saying the slur, and then repeated it several times to a group of students, most of them Black, who felt he was “taunting” them.
Parent Bianca Fennix and the students claimed that they reported the incident, but were frustrated as Sullinger remained on the job at the school in Kansas City, North.
When Sullinger said the slur earlier this month, students soon protested. Video, recorded by a student and shared with The Star, shows Sullinger standing nose-to-nose with a Black male student in the doorway of a classroom.
The student, who is raising his voice and is visibly upset, continues to tell Sullinger not to say the N-word. Sullinger repeated the word while questioning the student.
“Don’t put the f****** N-word in your f****** sentences,” the student says.
Sullinger responds, “You put it in your sentence.”
The student says, “Yeah, because I can.”
“That’s illogical,” Sullinger said.
Sophomore Said Mosis told The Star that he was the student on the video. He claimed that he received a 10-day suspension and that officials would then determine whether he could return to school.
“It’s racist,” Mosis said. “Second of all, he kept on trying to justify that he said it. He kept trying to say he didn’t do nothing wrong. So him going back and forth with me, I could not tolerate that. It was in school. I had to make sure he doesn’t say it again.”
Parents and students have criticized Sullinger’s behavior in the video, for both repeating the slur and for antagonizing the student rather than deescalating the situation.
Sullinger did not answer The Star’s multiple requests for comment.
Kirby said that on Feb. 16 the district notified Sullinger “that we were starting the process required by law to terminate his employment.” He then submitted his retirement.
Roughly 80 students held a sit-in in the school gym, calling for Sullinger to be fired. A Change.org petition for their cause has garnered more than 1,700 signatures.
“We really want to see Sullinger fired,” Park Hill junior Vanessa Grigsby said. “A lot of us said at the protest that we felt our safety was at risk. We also want to see a lot more training. It’s 2022 and we still have students being discriminated against. All of that discrimination and prejudice should have been left hundreds of years ago. We want an apology from the school for having to put up with Sullinger, after the complaints we made about him in the past.”
Principal Brad Kincheloe previously said in an email to families that, “the law requires us to provide due process when we learn that someone might have violated our policies, and this can take some time.”
“This means that if an employee violates our policies, we must thoroughly investigate and provide opportunities for the employee to be heard. Sometimes, this can even take several weeks. This also means that if a student violates our policies, we must thoroughly investigate and provide opportunities for the student to be heard.”
This story was originally published February 23, 2022 at 6:03 PM.
