A Mabel Rush Elementary School staff member who came to work last week in blackface, saying she was Rosa Parks and that she was protesting mandatory vaccines, has been fired, according to Newberg Graphic reporter Ryan Clarke.
“It is our policy not to confirm whether someone works with us or not, and not to confirm the outcome of disciplinary processes,” Gregg Koskela, a spokesperson for the Newberg School District, said in a statement Friday. “In all these situations we follow our contracts with employees in which the first step is to place on administrative leave while we investigate and pursue any disciplinary action. That action can include termination.”
The staff member, identified as Lauren Pefferle, a special education assistant, admitted to conservative radio host Lars Larson on Thursday that she did come to school with darkened skin, after she was asked to keep socially distant from a student the previous day.
“I was kind of there, six feet apart and didn’t really have a whole lot to do,” Pefferle said on Larson’s show. “I went home and I thought, ‘I feel segregated. I feel segregated because I am unvaccinated. Something is wrong here.’”
Pefferle said the next day she “put on some darker color on her skin part” and went to work. When people asked her about it, she said told them she was “representing Rosa Parks today, regarding segregation.”
After discussions with the school counselor, principal and human resources, she was put on administrative leave.
Pefferle said she saw nothing wrong with what she did, and told Larson she thought she would be fired.
While the district didn’t confirm the identity of the staff member or the outcome of the process, they did acknowledge the incident took place and said no students witnessed it.
“I am horrified, angry and ashamed that this happened, as is nearly every other staff member,” said Newberg superintendent Joe Morelock in a statement earlier this week. “The students of color in Newberg deserve so much more. This goes against everything I and the vast majority of NSD staff believe, and is unfathomably offensive.”
The racist incident at Mabel Rush was exposed as a conservative majority on the Newberg school board prepares a town hall meeting on a policy that would effectively ban Pride and Black Lives Matter symbols in classrooms.
Those in favor of the ban have pushed back against charges of systemic racism in Yamhill County and dismissed racist incidents in the community as one-offs.
Earlier this month, the Newberg Graphic discovered that at least one student at Newberg High School was involved in a Snapchat group called “Slave Trade,” where teenagers from across the country share racist, homophobic and violent messages, sometimes specifically targeting Black students.
