School's Robocall Keeps Mispronouncing Daughter's Name As A Racial Slur

Nicomi Stewart, a mother in Rochester, New York, is "disgusted" after an automated call sent to her phone from the city's school district mispronounced her daughter's name as a racial slur.

Stewart's daughter is named Nicarri. Stewart told WHAM TV the message clearly began, "This is Edison Career and Technology High School. Your daughter, N****r, has missed period one on."

The call came after Nicarri missed a day of class at Edison Career and Technology High School.

The racially insensitive robocall came more than once so Stewart was able to record the message.

"I was like, wow, am I really hearing you correctly, did the machine just say this?" Stewart told WHAM TV. "It was unbelievable. I was shocked. I was disgusted. I was upset."

Even stranger: Stewart said the robocalls correctly pronounced Nicarri's name last year.

Although a school administrator told Stewart her daughter's name would be removed from the automated calling system, she says she's received at least two other calls that mispronounced her daughter's name the same way.

"It's disrespectful and it's degrading. I don't even use that word in my house, so why is my child being called this?" Stewart told WHAM TV.



Lawrence Bo Wright, the deputy superintendent of administration for the Rochester City School District, publicly apologized to Stewart.

"Representatives from the district have talked with the family and apologized profusely, as we should," he told WHAM TV. "We can't say enough how sorry we are."

He blamed the issue on a software error with Blackboard Connect, a vendor it contracts with to send out mass notifications.

"It's very similar to technologies that you use that are centered around GPS, where sometimes the system will have mispronounced a name," Wright told the station. "And that's how that occurred."


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