A school administrator in Georgia has been fired after a video showing kindergartners fighting in the cafeteria was shared on social media.
The now-viral video from Friday morning shows a number of children involved in the fight at Atlanta’s Kidzei School, with one child throwing another to the floor before being pulled away by a teacher. The same child is also seen shaking another student before kneeing several in the stomach and pushing them to the floor.
The video is overlaid with the walk-on music for former WWE star John Cena.
It has prompted outrage from parents who said they were not consulted about the video allegedly being posted online by the unnamed administrator, as well as the children’s’ identities not being protected.
“My first question to the principal… was, ‘How did the video get leaked? And why did it get leaked?’” one mother told Atlanta First News, who first reported on the video. “I am taking this very seriously.”
“I’m just trying to wrap my head around it; it’s on so many [internet] pages, it’s everywhere,” Swan Boykins, a mother of one of the children in the video, told WRDW.
“I feel like kids, they’re going to be kids, the bigger issue to me is the staff member,” she said. “They have a standard that should be held. He [the staff member] shouldn’t have posted it.”
Neither Boykins nor the other mother were made aware of the video until over the weekend – and it was not the school who informed them.
Boykins said she had first seen the video after a fifth-grader at the school sent a link to her other son – who showed her.
Parents said that the school only acknowledged the video in an email at 7 p.m. Sunday. Boykins said it was believed the staff member had been told to take the video down Friday but had not.
“They were going to probably try and sweep it under the rug,” Boykins said.
The Independent has contacted Kindezi Schools for comment and further information on the incident.
In a statement shared with local outlets, the school’s executive director, Dr Kelly Gunn, said the administrator “is no longer employed with The Kindezi Schools.”
“Once we learned the video had been posted, we launched an immediate and thorough investigation into the events depicted in the video and the subsequent actions taken by staff,” Gunn said in a statement.
“Our findings confirmed that Kindezi protocols for student supervision and family notification were not followed.”
Gunn added that other members of staff have also been disciplined for not intervening in the fighting and the school is conducting retraining.
