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Sugar Creek Charter School Teacher Loses Job Over Anti-Semitic Tweet

Photo from Jarrin Wooten's now-deleted Instagram account
StopAntisemitism.org
Photo from Jarrin Wooten's now-deleted Instagram account

A kindergarten teacher at Charlotte’s Sugar Creek Charter School lost his job Monday after posting an anti-Semitic tweet over the weekend.

Late Sunday morning, a tweet went out from Jarrin Wooten’s account. It said, "Hitler was trying to keep those demonic … Rothschilds and fractional reserve banks out of Germany and then we let those same 'Jews' come to America and teach us he was a terrorist … all I’ll say is look into it some more.”

A Jewish watchdog group, StopAntisemitism.org, quickly tied him to Sugar Creek, a K-12 charter school in northeast Charlotte.

Superintendent Cheryl Turner says she started investigating Monday morning. She said the teacher initially told her he was hacked, adding that such a tweet would be surprising from “a black male teacher who has experienced racism himself.”

But a few hours later Sugar Creek board chair H. Bryan Ives III issued a statement saying the tweet was real and the teacher “is no longer employed at our school.” The tweet violates the school’s social media and nondiscrimination policies, the statement says, adding that “hateful speech and discrimination against any person of any religion, race or color, will never be tolerated at Sugar Creek Charter.”

The statement did not name the teacher, but a source with knowledge of the investigation confirmed that StopAntisemitism.org had correctly identified him.

In October, Wooten appeared on a Leadership Charlotte education panel that Turner organized, speaking about “schools from the front lines.” His bio from that event says he had taught kindergarten at Sugar Creek for five years.

Wooten’s social media accounts are now deleted and Wooten could not immediately be reached for comment.

Ann Doss Helms has covered education in the Charlotte area for over 20 years, first at The Charlotte Observer and then at WFAE. Reach her at ahelms@wfae.org or 704-926-3859.