School District Officials Investigated For Allegedly Exchanging Lewd, Sexist, And Racist Texts

The Inquirer: The recently resigned superintendent and an athletic director in the Coatesville Area School District exchanged numerous racist text messages about staff and students in June on school-issued cellphones, according to a published report. Chester County District Attorney Thomas Hogan on Sunday confirmed his office was investigating the district and had received texts from school personnel. He would not identify the subjects or the nature of the texts. The texts – lewd, sexist, and rife with the “n-word” – were discovered by a district employee transferring data from an old phone to a new device, said the report in the Daily Local News in West Chester. One local official said he was shocked, and another said the texts did not reflect Chester County Epithets litter text messages of Coatesville school officialsSchool district officials declined to comment because of the investigation. The school board is expected to formally vote Tuesday on the resignations of Richard Como, the superintendent, and Jim Donato, high school director of athletics and activities. Neither Como nor Donato could be reached Sunday. The president of the Coatesville Area NAACP, Tonya Thames Taylor, is a school board member. She said Sunday the board’s position “is not silence; it’s called responsibility.” The Coatesville Area School District is one of the most racially diverse in the Philadelphia suburbs and the most racially diverse in Chester County, with about 42 percent African American students, a school official said. Parents had told The Inquirer if an investigation uncovered wrongdoing, the employees should be fired. News of the existence of the texts broke on the same day the local NAACP chapter held its 75th anniversary celebration at historic Bethel A.M.E. Church on South First Avenue in South Coatesville to mark its involvement in civil rights.