Video Shows Florida School Employee Directing Racial Slur at Mother’s Kids

Florida’s Collier County School District placed a school employee on administrative leave in response to a video which shows her going on a profanity-laden, racist rant from her car against a mom and her children, NBC2 News reports. 

Patricia Schmidt, an Exceptional Student Education (ESE) Specialist at Lely Elementary School, was captured on video Saturday using a derogatory term for someone with an intellectual disability in reference to the mother’s son. Schmidt also commented on her children’s ethnicity, calling them “half breeds” based on her suspicion of their multiracial background. 

The unidentified mother said the incident started because Schmidt believed she and her kids were trespassing while approaching a walking path reserved for residents in the private community of Kings Lake. “She blares on her horn for like ten seconds, rolls her window down and starts yelling out the window that we can’t walk down that pathway,” she recalls. 

“You can’t afford to live in Kings Lake. You are white trash,” Schmidt can be heard telling the woman before asking, “Are those your mulatto kids? You had sex with a black guy? Your kids are half breeds. Look at them.” 

The Collier County School District has launched an investigation into Schmidt’s behavior. The incident has left the woman wondering, “Who knows how she’s treating them in the classroom when their parents aren’t there to defend them?”