JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – A former Jacksonville teacher — who went viral after posting a video showing dead roaches in her classroom — is saying she got fired without a reason.
Javone Kereenyaga used to teach at Lake Shore Middle School. She said she noticed unsanitary conditions from the very first day she walked into her classroom.
“I would literally pull the drawer out like this because I knew it was gonna be a roach in there every day. Every day,” Kereenyaga said. “God bless my babies, ‘Miss K, it’s a roach! Miss K! Oh my God, Somebody kill it.’”
Kereenyaga recorded one of those encounters with roaches. At that time, she had only been working at the middle school for a few weeks.
She said she told her administration about the problem, but nothing changed.
“Y’all, I bombed my classroom over the weekend, and I just want y’all to see how many [expletive] roaches – like they are everywhere, everywhere, everywhere,” said Kereenyaga in the video.
So, she placed a raid bomb in the classroom over Labor Day weekend and came back to dozens of dead roaches inside the classroom.
“It looked like the rapture of the roaches. Like, roaches fell from the ceiling,” Kereenyaga said.
This started out as a video just for Kereenyaga’s close friends list. According to Kereenyaga, she posted the roach video to the public only after she was fired.
The former teacher said parents have reached out to her.
“My kids deserve better. Educators deserve better… Something has to be done,” Kereenyaga said.
Kereenyaga said she doesn’t understand why she was let go.
“You see me talking and doing what I normally do,” Kereenyaga said. “A lot of people are thinking I got let go because of the roach video. Technically, I don’t know why I got let go.”
Kereenyaga wasn’t a contracted employee with Duval County Schools.
However, Kereenyaga said her termination is the least of her worries. She just wants this school and the district to do better.
“I have kids that don’t have that, come school with no backpack, kids that don’t have a home, kids that hate being at home, kids that can’t stay in school, kids that can’t read kids that look like me that come from the same communities that I come from, they deserve so much better,” Kereenyaga said.
News4JAX reached out to DCPS for comment on the following matters: What was the reason behind her termination? What’s the policy on teachers posting to social media, and what actions they’ve taken to clean up this school and control these pests?
This was the school district’s response:
The referenced individual was terminated during their probationary period. As we have been notified of possible legal action by this individual, any additional information will be reserved for potential legal proceedings.
Duval County Public Schools
Since Kereenyaga posted the roach video to the public after she was fired, she hopes that action paired with legal action that the district will fix this problem.