Over 6,000 people have signed an online petition demanding the reinstatement of Fountain Hills teacher Pam Aister. Aister, a teacher of 24 years, was fired after being accused of telling a group of students to shut up after they taunted another student with racist slurs.
Aister was fired at a Special Meeting of the Fountain Hills Board on September 29.
Andie Mistler, the creator of the petition, has been encouraging former Fountain Hills students on Facebook “to make a fuss over this. Standing up against racism and bullying should not get anyone fired, let alone a teacher who has worked at FH for 24 years and is an amazing woman,” she wrote.
The petition continues, although the Board said that they could not substantiate claims of racially motivated bullying they decided to fire Aister based on the unsubstantiated claims of 4th grade students.
Mistler says that the firing was a “wildly inappropriate disciplinary action.” Instead Mistler believes that if “any action should have been taken in this case it would have been a special assembly in school educating students about bullying and racism.”