NEW YORK (1010 WINS) — A substitute teacher at a Brooklyn school has been suspended after allegedly telling a group of majority Chinese-American fifth-graders that COVID-19 was developed in a Chinese lab and other incendiary remarks last week.
Peshe Schiller, 70, told the New York Daily News she also said to “Gifted and Talented” 10-year-olds at P.S. 204 in Bensonhurst that their parents left China because it’s “a Communist country and they don’t have freedom... they wanted you to have freedom."
Though her comment led to swift action and an investigation by the Department of Education, the 37-year teaching veteran's comments have also caused a stir for parents.
"Why would someone who is a teacher talk to a bunch of 10-year-olds like that?" one parent told the Daily News. “I feel like this is more than racist, it’s more like bullying."
"It’s outrageous to bring anything political like this forward to a group of 10-year-olds," said another parent.
The Daily News reports Schiller made the comments while substituting for a teacher in the school's gifted and talented class and eventually discussed vaccines and the virus — insisting the virus was developed in a Chinese lab.
"We were talking about how vaccines were developed and why, and this kid out of nowhere said, ‘the virus was produced by animals,’" Schiller added.
The students alleged she also said all Chinese people were communists, the country has no freedom of religion and people who visit wind up dead.
Schiller defended her comments to the outlet even suggesting the students made them up after she chastised them for using a bathroom on the wrong floor.
"Maybe they were upset that I said China is a Communist country, they took offense to that," she said. "But it is."
However, drafts inside a student's notebook — obtained by the Daily News —suggest their allegations are accurate.
“Today we had a racist teacher,” they wrote. “She said Covid-19 was made in a lab by China. She also said China had no freedom of religion. Not true obviously.”
Parents said school officials learned of her comments after overhearing the students discussing her comments over lunch. She was pulled from classes by administrators and sent a guidance counselor to meet with students a day later.
DOE spokesperson Katie O’Hanlon called the allegation against Schiller "deeply disturbing."
"Hateful and racist behavior has absolutely no place in our schools and this substitute was immediately suspended and removed from our classrooms following this deeply disturbing allegation," O’Hanlon said. "Schools must be safe havens and the school offered counseling and support to these students."
Related
