Rockdale teacher fired after threat to student

Video appears to document incident involving student.

A video appears to show the science teacher making threat.

A science teacher in Rockdale County has been fired after a video appeared to show him threatening a high school student and betting that he would be shot in the head, officials confirmed Thursday.

In the video, Paul Hagan, a physics teacher at the Rockdale Career Academy in Conyers, can be heard addressing a student who is just out of frame. “Don’t smile at me, man, OK?” the teacher can be heard saying in the 26-second clip. “That’s how people like you get shot.”

“I got a bet,” he continued. “I bet by the time you’re 21, someone’s going to put a bullet right through your head, OK? And it might be me, the one that does it.”

The student’s mother, April Carr, said those words from Hagan, who is white, were especially hurtful because her son is black. “I was definitely surprised to see the video,” she said. “I definitely had to get my emotions together.”

“The one thing that I never wanted for him was to feel any type of racism where he felt like he was being targeted simply because he’s an African-American male,” Carr said.

It is unclear who took the video, which appears to have been recorded with a phone, and when. Carr said her daughter brought it to her attention on Nov. 2.

Ms. Carr asked that her son’s name not be published because he is a minor and “not the type of kid that really likes a lot of attention.” She said he told her that he had been laughing with some friends during a physics lesson, and that the teacher had gotten frustrated.

“I believe that he did like his teacher, and he believed that his teacher liked him,” she said, adding that Hagan apologized to her son.

Hagan did not respond to phone calls or an email seeking comment.

Carr said she contacted the Rockdale County Sheriff’s Department. A spokesman for the department said that a report had been filed, but he would not say whether the department was conducting an investigation, referring the question to the school board.

Before the teacher was fired, Cindy Ball, a Rockdale County school district spokeswoman, said in an email statement, “Rockdale County Public Schools expects all employees to conduct themselves professionally and ethically to provide a positive teaching and learning environment for students and staff.” She confirmed that Hagan had been on paid administrative leave after the incident.

Carr had been calling for Hagan to be fired.

“I hate that my son had to be the example,” she said. “But this is about awareness and fairness. We don’t send our kids to school to be threatened. We send them to be educated and protected.”