William Bennett, 58, has a history of misconduct in at least four other districts
A white high school teacher who was filmed fighting a black student has a long history of misconduct in neighboring districts, once allegedly telling his class they were acting like ‘monkeys’ and pushing a student off his desk.
William Bennet, a science teacher at Moore High School, Louisville, Kentucky, has been reassigned pending an investigation after he was filmed pinning a student to the ground and grabbing a fistful of his hair on August 24, two days into the school year.
The minute-long video shows Bennet, 58, locked in a ground fight with the student as other kids circle them and try to break up the altercation. He appears to call for security.
‘F*** you mean get security, n****, get the fuck of him!’ one student yells in the video, which has been widely circulated on social media.
Another students says, ‘That’s a teacher, bro.’
The science teacher was filmed fighting a student at Moore High School in Louisville, Kentucky on August 24, two days after school started
The minute-long video shows Bennet, 58, locked in a ground fight with the student as other kids circle them and try to break up the altercation. He appears to call for security
Other students try to break up the fight as Bennett continues it, calling for ‘security’
The student involved in the altercation told a local news station that he hit Bennett first because the teacher said he ‘would just be another black boy shot.’
In a since-deleted Facebook post after the event, Bennet claimed he was misrepresented in the shocking footage.
‘That being said, the truth has yet to be revealed, and this will change the whole narrative, Bennet said. ‘We have the complete school footage and the actual statements made.
Previous records reveal he was reprimanded in Hardin County decades ago, after he admitted to calling a noisy class ‘a bunch of monkeys,’ kicking a trash can and singling out a student who cursed at him after he threatened him with detention.
The school district has since reassigned him out of the classroom with pay as it investigates
The student (pictured) told a local TV station that he hit Bennett first after the teacher told him he was ‘just going to be another black boy shot’
‘I came around to his desk, grabbed the front of the desk and moved it towards the front of the desk, at the same time telling (the unnamed student) to get out,’ Bennett recounted in a letter dated September 15, 1999.
‘(Student) got out and the desk fell over,’ he said.’
‘You must remember that it is essential for you to remain the adult in charge,’ superintendent Lois Gray wrote him in a letter, according to WAVE in Louisville.
‘While I understand that you may have been angry, it is important that you don’t speak until you are over your anger.’
He was directed to watch a series of instructional tapes, but he said he found them ‘intellectually vacuous.’
‘I do not qualify as an individual with emotional control problems,’ Bennett responded in an essay.
In 2001, he was fired from a job at Elizabethtown Independent Schools, about 45 miles south of Louisville, after he was arrested for breaking into an apartment to see if his girlfriend was cheating on him, according to the Louisville Courier-Journal.
Video of Bennett’s August 24 fight has gathered significant interest on social media
The superintendent of that district told him in a termination letter that the news coverage generated by the arrest caused a ‘significant disruption of the educational process.’
Bennett responded that he ‘wouldn’t change what I did’ and that he ‘did the manly thing.’
The case was eventually sent up to the state standards board, which formally admonished him in September of that year.
His personnel file at Elizabethtown shows he was written up for making sexual jokes and calling students who didn’t laugh ‘Nazi humorists.’
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Bennett (pictured) was accused of making sexual jokes in the classroom and of complaining that ‘feminists are modern-day Nazis’ at the Bullitt County school district
That didn’t stop him from running for Elizabethtown City Council in 2018, according to the News-Enterprise, which covers Hardin County.
‘My parents and grandparents instilled in me at an early age the importance of Christian charity, service to others, a good education, and that public service is a calling not a career,’ he told the newspaper.
At Bullitt County, 20 miles south of Louisville, he was suspended without pay for five days after a series of inappropriate comments, including: ‘I could just slap you,’ ‘I love guns; I love the Second Amendment; take it away, I shoot you,’ and, ‘feminists are modern-day Nazis.’
He was again reported to the standards board, which handles teacher certifications, in April 2019.
Bennet failed to disclose that disciplinary actions and others when he applied to Jefferson County Public Schools, where the latest incident happened, that same year.
The standards board dismissed the Bullitt case in December of last year after Bennett completed training.
According to the Jefferson County district, it’s up to teachers to disclose such incidents.
A district spokesman told DailyMail.com on Friday that Bennett has been reassigned to a non-teaching job with pay while the investigation into the August 24 incident continues.
