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Thread ID: 17216 | Posts: 1 | Started: 2005-03-10
2005-03-10 03:45 | User Profile
[url]http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/jersey/index.ssf?/base/news-8/1110347517251300.xml[/url]
Teacher fired after school board finds he wrote hate mail Wednesday, March 09, 2005
BY JENNIFER GOLSON Star-Ledger Staff
Back in November, three African-American teachers at an Elizabeth grammar school found Thanksgiving greeting cards in their school mailboxes that contained scrawled threats and racist hate messages.
Now Elizabeth school officials believe one of recipients was the author.
Rondell Taylor, 29, a special education teacher, was fired March 1 after school administrators determined he wrote the cards and left them for himself and two female colleagues at Peterstown School No. 3.
The school board's decision was cinched by the findings of a handwriting expert, said Charles Smith, the school district's affirmative action officer, who conducted the in- house investigation.
School officials think Taylor may have sent the cards because he wanted a transfer out of the school. After he reported receiving the card and said he felt threatened, he requested and was granted a transfer, officials said.
Taylor has not been criminally charged, and police are continuing their investigation.
Calls to Taylor were not returned, and his attorney said he believes Taylor was fired for reporting the hate-mail incident to police.
The cards were found in the mailboxes Nov. 18. School officials submitted them and writing samples from several staff members, including Taylor, to Paul A. Osborn & Son of Union Township, forensic document examiners.
Osborn said he looked at general characteristics, such as the spacing and slant of characters, as well as individual characteristics -- those features in a person's writing that differ from the pattern originally learned.
"In many cases, where there is just a few words, no identification can be made," Osborn said. In this case, "there was a lot of writing in the cards."
Osborn's report sealed the board's decision -- "He said he is very comfortable saying that it's Taylor's printing," Smith said -- but Smith added that the handwriting analysis was just part of the investigation.
"We knew, for instance, that whoever did it more than likely was a staff person. It just made sense," Smith said.
Smith and his staff tracked the comings and goings of people who used the mailboxes and it became "more apparent it was not a parent or a visitor" who left the cards, Smith said. Sign-in sheets were checked and interviews conducted with staffers to determine who went to the boxes where the cards were found, he added.
Elizabeth school board officials said they are confident in the school's investigation.
"We don't take this lightly. ...If he wants to go to court, we are ready to go to court," said board member Rafael Fajardo.
According to Taylor's attorney, Timothy Smith, Taylor told administrators he had received a card and intended to go to the police but was told to keep the matter in- house. Taylor eventually did call police because he was "distraught and frightened," his attorney said.
Smith, who is not related to the school affirmative action official, said of Taylor: "He has neither been charged with a crime nor has he been notified that he is the target of an investigation. He is one of three African-American teachers who are the recipients of threatening, racially charged hate mail. The only reasonable conclusion that you could read into this is that they terminated him in retaliation for reporting it."
Charles Smith said Taylor had the right to call police but was unwilling to wait for the principal to find out the protocol for such an incident.
Fajardo said the incident should have been labeled a hate crime by police. "Because it's a minority writing to another minority, it's not considered a bias crime," Fajardo said. "That, to me, is a flaw in the law."
On the outside, the cards looked like traditional Thanksgiving greetings. But inside, the printed, hand-written messages hinted at bodily harm and included racial invectives, Charles Smith said. It appeared that whoever wrote the cards knew the individuals. Each card had the teacher's first name and referenced distinctive characteristics.
Charles Smith added that Taylor was the only one who requested a transfer after receiving the card.
But Taylor had asked for a transfer to Elizabeth High School long before the incident, his lawyer said. "It's considered a step up," Timothy Smith said. "He had wanted to teach at the high school level."
The attorney said he has advised Taylor not to speak publicly about the incident.