SAN BERNARDINO >> A Cajon High teacher accused of using a racial slur in class denies she used it in reference to any student.

“I don’t tolerate racism, bad words, disruptive behaviors, putting somebody down and anything that will hinder my students from learning,” Cajon High math teacher Bernadette Yuson wrote in a statement emailed to The Sun Friday morning.

A senior in her seventh-period math class said that she used a racial slur in class on Sept. 3, after he asked why she was rearranging the seating of the black students, who make up a minority of the class.

“Because I want to move all the n—–,” senior LaRue Bell alleged Yuson said.

In her written statement, Yuson, who has taught at the school for more than 12 years, characterizes it differently:

“Before the bell rang, a male student of mine dragged my chair away from my table and sat on it,” Yuson wrote in her statement. “When the bell rang at 1:45 p.m., I requested him to return my chair, but he argued disrespectfully before finally returning it. When I took attendance of the class, he kept on mumbling on his seat, words I couldn’t hear nor understand from where I was standing. As I was taking the roll and explaining their task for the day, the student stood up and shouted to his classmate across the room the word ‘n***a.’

“I was distracted and disturbed of what he said, so, I questioned him and asked, ‘Wow! N***a? Is that a good word?’”

Yuson wrote that she wasn’t using it to refer to Bell, but to “let him know indirectly that this was an impolite remark” he had made.

“I said ‘No! I did not refer it to you or anybody else, but I am asking you if the word you shouted to your classmate was a good word. I was just repeating the word you said to clarify if it was a good word?’”

Bell and Yuson both agree that he then left the room, when he reportedly went to the front office to tell administrators about the incident.

District officials “launched a fair and deliberate investigation regarding the matter and we took quick and decisive disciplinary action once all of the facts were in,” according to district spokeswoman Linda Bardere, who apologized for “the teacher’s unacceptable choice of words.”

On Monday, district officials told CBS 2 that Yuson had been placed on administrative leave.

In a news conference on Tuesday evening prior to the San Bernardino City Unified School Board meeting and Thursday at a town hall meeting of the San Bernardino chapter of the NAACP, local leaders called for “accountability” following the incident, with some, including Bell’s mother, demanding that Yuson be banned from the classroom.

Yuson wrote Friday that she was rearranging the classroom to minimize talking between all the students, not any specific ethnic group.

“I have always loved my teaching job. I have always tried to do my job efficiently and effectively. I do discipline my students, but I always see to it that it is within the bounds of what should and should not be done inside the classroom and school premises. I don’t tolerate racism, bad words, disruptive behaviors, putting somebody down and anything that will hinder my students from learning.”

She thanked her “family, relatives, friends, students and colleagues” for their “wholehearted support, prayers and faith in me.” Since the story first broke, there’s been a storm of comments online, with many people springing to her defense, including former students:

“I am African American and I had this teacher multiple times in which I NEVER heard her (make) any racist comments,” Bryce Green posted on Twitter on Sept. 12.

Yuson ends her statement on a hopeful note:

“I believe that all things work together for good to them that love God and that JUSTICE WILL PREVAIL.”