SAN BERNARDINO >> Local community leaders including the NAACP have asked that the high school teacher accused of using a racial slur during a Sept. 3 class at Cajon High School be permanently removed from the classroom and banned from any teaching assignments.

The request was made Thursday night at a town hall meeting at New Hope Family Life Center, where district officials and black community leaders attempted to work together to ensure that the teacher is properly disciplined and such incidents are handled more thoroughly and immediately by district administrators.

“We should have treated this incident with a greater sense of urgency. And we should have been more thorough in our investigation,” said Dale Marsden, superintendent of the San Bernardino City Unified School District.

Marsden was referring to an incident that sparked public outrage involving Cajon High math teacher Bernadette Yuson, who is accused of using a derogatory word for blacks. She has been placed on paid administrative leave while district officials continue their investigation.

Marsden and about a dozen district officials, board members and Cajon High administrators met at a town hall meeting with the San Bernardino Chapter of the NAACP and the African American Education Collaborative, a coalition of 10 Inland Empire groups, to try and work together to ensure similar incidents are handled better.

The community leaders asked for Yuson to be removed from the classroom and any teaching assignments, for the district to handle similar situations more expeditiously and effectively and for district policies and practices to be improved.

“If you can refer to our kids as being n——, then you don’t need to teach them,” said A. Majadi, vice president of the NAACP branch. “The way that matter was handled was reckless. You don’t send the child back to the room and say don’t worry about it.”

Cajon High senior LaRue Bell claims Yuson started rearranging student seating during her seventh-period class. When he demanded to know why she was moving only black students, she reportedly replied, “Because I want to move all the n——.”

School district spokeswoman Linda Bardere said the district launched an investigation into Bell’s allegation and then placed Yuson on leave for violating school board policy 4200b, which states that “all certificated employees (licensed to teach) shall not use abusive or obscene language in the presence of students and/or parents. This shall include derogatory, racial or ethnic remarks.”

The incident unleashed a hailstorm of comments from the community and prompted black community leaders to ask for accountability from the district. The student’s mother, Vanessa Murray, called for the teacher to be fired.

Cajon High’s black student population was 16 percent in 2013-14, according to the California Department of Education.

Bell said administrators originally failed to take his complaint seriously, something the district denied.

Marsden apologized for the inadequate handling of the incident, saying repeatedly that it should have been treated with greater urgency. He said he has been investigating it personally, talking to students, staff and others involved, and is still collecting facts. He said he anticipates finishing the investigation by early October.

“We will fully accept the burden of accountability placed on us,” Marsden said. “My hope is that we will deeply learn from this experience.”

Failures are something the district should learn and grow from, and it’s committed to working with local black community groups to improve the district, he said.

Those remarks pleased some in the audience who said they received a verbal commitment from the superintendent and believed he would follow through by working with the community, while others said the district was doing damage control.

Cajon parent Laurren Kennedy said he believes the meeting was simply lip service, and that his son was verbally abused by a volunteer at Cajon, a complaint that he said was not handled appropriately.

“We’re being sold one thing and served another thing,” Kennedy said.

Parent Angelia Watts said she was angry, was worried about sending her child into a racially charged environment and wanted advice from Marsden on how to handle the situation when it comes to talking to her child about it.

Watt’s son, Brandon, a senior at Cajon, said he had no concerns about the school.

“I had this teacher…. I would see kids constantly mess with her,” Watts said, adding that he did not approve of her actions if the allegation is found to be true.

He said students should also be held accountable for their misbehavior.

Other parents asked about the policies in place for racially charged incidents, if staff was trained on them, the process for communicating with parents and discipline for an offending staff member.

Marsden said discipline could range from a warning to termination and that incidents are supposed to be handled with the utmost care with all involved parties being notified.