Concerned parents approached the Selma City School Board Thursday about their child receiving unfair treatment from a Selma High School staff member.

Selma residents Mary and Alvin Shaw openly addressed the Selma City School Board about their child being ridiculed by a Selma High School teacher during the local board’s monthly board meeting. The parents said the instructor has been targeting their child since September.

“There is an instructor at Selma High School that picks on students,” Mary said after her presentation to the board. “She will find one out of each classroom that she has and will pick on them the entire year.”

Mary said she was informed about numerous occasions when the child was bullied.

“She told her 7th period class to trash the classroom with paper here and there and everywhere, so that the 8th period class would have to clean it up,” Mary said. “When the 8th period class got in there she told them that you all will clean up or you will not get a grade and you will not be allowed to come to tutoring.”

She also recalled another incident that her daughter informed her about.

“A young lady was talking loud in the classroom,” Mary said. “She didn’t ask the student to be quiet. She stopped and told the whole class ‘if you all do not be quiet, you will not get a grade for the day.’”

When Shaw’s daughter told the child talking to be quiet, so the whole class wouldn’t suffer she was quickly hushed and told that she had the same “I-don’t-care attitude” the other student was displaying.

Mary said the teacher told her the problem should be clear  and would not give her a detailed description of the core issue.

“If she is doing wrong, you let me know,” Mary said. “I will handle my daughter accordingly. But if the teacher is doing wrong, she should be dealt with as well.”

Mary said that she has met with people within the Selma High School principal Major Burrell, assistant principal Woodie Jackson and superintendent Gerald Shirley and the issue has yet to be resolved.

“One of the problems is that the children shouldn’t have to come to school in fear of the teachers,” Alvin said. “It should be like they are leaving their parent’s house and teachers should be parents away from home.”

Burrell declined to comment Monday, and attempts to reach Shirley and Jackson for comment were unsuccessful.