Screen grab via Google Maps.
Lawson Elementary School in Florissant.
A teacher at Lawson Elementary School in the Hazelwood School District has been place on administrative leave after being reported for spitting sunflower seeds in a student's face.
The student, 11-year-old Kaylee Bell, was standing near several students last Thursday when the teacher spit a mouthful of sunflower seeds at her, KSDK reports.
Bell's mother, Erica Sanders, says she's had problems with this teacher before — and now she wants him fired.
“I can't go to school with her every day and sit there and guard her from someone she is supposed to trust," Sanders told the TV station in a tearful interview Monday. She said she had to take her daughter out of the same teacher's class last school year, when he kept looking for ways to get her in trouble.
After being spat upon, Bell says, she was in tears.
“It made me feel disgusted. It made me feel like a piece of trash, like he treated me like nothing. Like I was a garbage can he was spitting sunflower seeds in," Bell told KSDK.
Sanders complained to the school's principal the day after the incident, and she met with the principal and a police officer on Monday, according to KSDK. Sanders also told the news station that the teacher called her to apologize and said he acted in poor judgment, but that it didn't make Sanders feel any better.
A Hazelwood School District spokesperson told KSDK that the teacher is on administrative leave while the district investigates. How long the investigation will take, however, is unknown.
No other allegations have been made against the teacher.
