Employee on leave for displaying Confederate flag

An Elk Grove Unified School District employee placed on administrative leave after displaying a Confederate flag in his districtissued van in June is out of a job.

District officials announced the news in a July 30 letter to parents and students obtained by The Bee on Monday.

Sacramento television station CBS13 first reported the story Saturday.

“This behavior was unacceptable and that employee no longer works for Elk Grove Unified,” the letter read, adding that the district also took unspecified “appropriate action with employees who did not stand up to report this intolerable behavior.”

Two district workers were placed on administrative leave in July after a parent saw and later reported the Confederate flag displayed inside their van while it made its rounds.

District officials immediately investigated the report, found the flag inside the van’s cabin, removed it and placed the two employees on leave, officials told The Bee in July.

The July 30 letter to parents and students contained a message to the district’s Black students reassuring pupils and their families that “every school has people they can rely on to create a safe space.”

Elk Grove Unified School District, California’s fifthlargest, has grappled with racism and racist sentiment in its recent past.

In December 2017, a Snapchat video of Pleasant Grove High School students making hate-filled remarks directed at Black people went viral, garnering 4 million views in four days. A girl in the video called Black people “trash” who “need to die.”

Black students at the Elk Grove school that year reported small nooses hanging from trees on the campus. A white student was alleged to have urinated on a Black teenager’s car after calling him the N-word, The Bee reported. Other Black students were threatened.

Black students at Pleasant Grove went to district administrators, parent groups and community leaders. Hundreds of parents, students, teachers and advocates confronted district leaders at a specially called meeting on race in January 2018 that arose from the students’ complaints.

After this latest incident, parent and community groups called on the district to fire the employees involved and to make its campuses more welcoming to Black students.