UPDATE 6:50 p.m.
Bellevue Public Schools (BPS) sent a message to families on Monday morning alerting the community to what the district described as "a group of students peacefully gathered" following the use of a racial slur in a classroom last week.
BPS called the classroom remark at the heart of this protest "an offensive and inappropriate racial slur." Students and a parent told 3 News Now that it was a teacher who uttered the slur.
One Bellevue West student says he saw a teacher getting angry at a student for being on the phone.
"She called the dean, she got super mad at him, and another student went on his phone and they were arguing back and forth. She told him to shut up and then that's what led to him getting mad. She goes out in the hallway, she screams to the dean. Apparently, 'I'm not a big n-word,' and she says it with a hard R," he said.
After that, students say they didn't see the teacher for three days but then, the instructor came back.
"They don't want to fire her. I don't understand because nobody wants to be in her class and it's just so, we don't feel safe, people of color don't feel safe because she said it," another Bellevue West student said.
Monday morning students started protesting inside the school.
"We were just sitting down, talking calmly. We tried telling them what we wanted and they were not listening to us. We asked to have the teacher apologize to everybody and for her to be fired. They went upstairs and never brought her back, so we went to her classroom, to knock on her door to come out because we want an apology," a student said.
The district says the incident led to students becoming disruptive and the school was briefly placed in "Hold," according to the email, in order to "mitigate" the situation.
"There were so many officers pushing people, like, they pushed me. They were like, 'Move' and we had to go into the other hallway until it was so crazy. There were over 10 cops and they all had guns," students said.
To Bellevue West families the District sent an email saying in part: "...We are taking all student concerns very seriously. We value providing an open and inclusive environment, and are working to better learn from this situation..."
Patricia Anderson, whose son graduated in May, finds this hard to understand.
"I know they have the students' best interests at heart. I think that's what bothers me the most. It's kind of upsetting what happened," Anderson said.
The district cannot share the identity of the students or teachers involved in the incident but BPS says it does "not condone the use of racial slurs in any manner or environment from students or staff."
A message sent to families from the school district is below:
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