The Cherry Hill School Board has voted to fire the district administrator who called department of public works employees gorillas, polar bears and trained seals, in an e-mail about a January snowstorm.
Kevin Larson, the district’s director of operations and facility management, allegedly sent out the offensive e-mail in response to Woodcrest Elementary School Principal Beth Ann Kob’s request for workers to plow snow after a Jan. 28 snowstorm.
“All of my polar bears, trained seals and two silver back mountain gorillas on loan from the township” were working elsewhere that day, Larson wrote.
Larson further enraged readers of the e-mail by writing, “You should see them with a snow blower that has a banana tied to the front of it, they go through a blizzard like nothing you ever seen.”
According to an NBC Philadelphia source in February, “I know for a fact the [two] men he was referring to as gorillas [are] black.”
One of the two African-American Cherry Hill Township employees called for Larson to be fired when the e-mail went public in February.
“I think Larson should be terminated," George Mayhue said.
Many of Mahue’s co-workers were also insulted to be called animals.
"It's very hard -- many hours and this is what we get called?" said Robert Jessen.
