Kehoe-France fires teacher after racist messages painted on fence outside home

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Racist messages spray-painted on a fence outside a Metairie teacher’s home kicked up a controversy on social media and led the teacher’s school to fire her on Tuesday.

The Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office is treating the most offensive message — which read “#F**k All N*****s” in red paint — as the work of an unknown vandal. Someone had apparently pressure washed it off the fence early Tuesday evening, hours after pictures of it surfaced on social media.

Other messages reading “Blue-n-white lives matter, too,” and “We all matter,” remained on the fence at the relatively busy corner of Green Acres Road and Camphor Street as of Tuesday evening. Those messages are not being treated as vandalism because the teacher's husband admitted to writing them, the Sheriff's Office said.

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The school where the teacher worked, Kehoe-France, announced Tuesday it had fired her, but officials did not identify her. However, Jefferson Parish property records listed the owner of the home as Carol Dritschel, who described herself on her Facebook page as a Kehoe-France teacher beginning last year.

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Photos of the spray-painted messages kicked up a furor on social media, and at least one resident of the teacher’s neighborhood contacted Kehoe-France, said the school’s top official, Tanya Price. Price said the school immediately opened a disciplinary investigation, which culminated in the teacher’s dismissal.

"We conducted a swift internal investigation of the allegations against a Kehoe-France employee implicated in a public display that involved deeply disturbing and inexcusable racist speech," the school's statement said in part.

While they don’t contain profanities or racist slurs, supporters of the Black Lives Matter movement protesting racism and police brutality take offense to the messages like those that had still been left on the fence of Dritschel’s home.

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