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Graffiti threatening a Pennsylvania high school to hire “more Black teachers” or “5 white ones will die” was found in a bathroom, alarming local parents who claim they were not told of the vandalism.
“Y’all better start hiring some more Black teachers or 5 white ones will die,” the message scrawled on the wall of a girls’ bathroom at Upper Darby High School, CITC reported.
Police in Upper Darby, a town about 8 miles outside of Philadelphia, were reportedly alerted to the graffiti back on Feb. 28. Upper Darby Police Superintendent Timothy Bernhardt told the Daily Times that a parent alerted police to the message, and law enforcement asked the school to confirm its legitimacy.
Bernhardt said police were told that the message was in fact real and determined it was likely written by a developmentally challenged 19-year-old student, the Daily Times reported.
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Upper Darby High School in Pennsylvania. (Google Maps)
Parents are claiming they were not alerted to the threatening message until days after police were notified, sparking outrage.
“I know a post on social media isn’t going to help the situation….but we received an email earlier with no mention of this fancy art work,” one parent posted on Facebook accompanied by a photo of the graffiti, according to CITC. The parent argued that school officials considered the graffiti a “joke” when it was first discovered.
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but the kids in our school district are out of control, all the way down to the elementary schools,” another parent sounded off, according to the outlet. “Something has to happen. This is unexceptional on so many levels. I feel sorry for their futures with this mentality.”
Upper Darby School District Superintendent Dan McGarry told the Daily Times that “we don’t go and chase and publicly communicate every single social media or graffiti incident,” but such incidents are investigated.
Side-by-side of Upper Darby Township Police Superintendent Timothy Bernhardt, left, and Upper Darby School District superintendent Dan McGarry. (Upper Darby Police Dept/Upper Darby School District)
“We investigate them, but we don’t put out a communication every single time, unless we know for sure what we have in front of us, and not enough information to vet it,” McGarry said.
“In this particular situation, there has been some writing on a bathroom wall. … We couldn’t identify anybody at the time,” he added. “We did communicate and work with police, and we’ve investigated that matter and investigated with police and done our part internally. Given the circumstances, it really could not go out with a public review of all that information.”
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McGarry argued that the message did not appear to be a legitimate threat upon its discovery, but if school officials felt it was a direct threat, they would have published a public statement.
The girl who allegedly graffitied the message cannot be charged due to her mental capacity and because the message had already been cleaned up by the time police responded to the school, officials said.
Entrance to Upper Darby High School in Pennsylvania. (Google Maps)
“Nobody is able to really place the girl in that bathroom at the time other than the process of elimination from a teacher who knows that those special needs students were in that bathroom at that period of time,” Bernhardt said, according to the Daily Times.
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The school district did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
