{"id":2988,"date":"2025-10-14T03:37:19","date_gmt":"2025-10-14T03:37:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/2988\/"},"modified":"2025-10-14T03:37:19","modified_gmt":"2025-10-14T03:37:19","slug":"nearly-250-sacramento-students-stay-home-to-protest-phoebe-hearst-teachers-removal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/2988\/","title":{"rendered":"Nearly 250 Sacramento students stay home to protest Phoebe Hearst teachers\u2019 removal"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nearly 250 Phoebe Hearst Elementary School students stayed home from class Monday to protest the removal of two beloved sixth-grade teachers. Many of the students who skipped class marched alongside their parents outside campus Monday in an effort to gain the attention of the school district.<\/p>\n

The walkout is the latest organized attempt<\/a> to pressure Sacramento City Unified School District to reinstate longtime Phoebe Hearst teachers Jeanine Rupert and Mark Henrikson after they were both reprimanded by district administrators.<\/p>\n

District spokesperson Al Goldberg confirmed that 244 of the school\u2019s 634 students were absent today, but noted that this number was not broken down to include how many absences were excused or unexcused. Goldberg said that the district had no comment to make on the protest.<\/p>\n

Rupert was reassigned to another school after she removed a piece of carpet following a flea infestation in her classroom on the last day of the 2024-25 school year.<\/p>\n

After Rupert\u2019s reprimand, Henrikson, her fellow sixth grade Gifted and Talented Education teacher, rallied at school board meetings and public demonstrations to have her brought back to Phoebe Hearst. He was placed on administrative leave<\/a> earlier this month, leaving his classroom with a substitute teacher.<\/p>\n

The 150 parents and students of all elementary grade levels who attended the march around the school chanted and carried signs in support of the two educators \u2014 one was a play on the district\u2019s motto, reading \u201cSCUSD, putting retribution first\u201d instead of \u201cputting children first.\u201d Another read \u201cour teachers are more valuable than old carpet.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s chaos \u2014 it\u2019s not even fun to come to Phoebe anymore every day, because very few times do we actually know who\u2019s going to be in front of our class teaching,\u201d said Mateo Friedman-Pitti, a sixth-grader in Rupert\u2019s former classroom. \u201cWe\u2019ve had 10 people teaching us this year.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Students<\/p>\n

Students from Phoebe Hearst Elementary hold handmade signs during a walkout at East Portal Park in Sacramento on Monday, protesting the removal of sixth-grade teachers Jeanine Rupert and Mark Henrikson. At center, 7-year-old Emilia Lambruschini holds a sign reading, \u201cOur teachers are more valuable than old carpet,\u201d a reference to Rupert\u2019s reassignment.<\/p>\n

Friedman-Pitti noted that the only academic progress he made this year was in Henrikson\u2019s advanced math class, and with the teacher\u2019s removal last week, he hadn\u2019t learned anything since.<\/p>\n

Parents began organizing the protest after SCUSD Superintendent Lisa Allen rejected their request to have a town hall meeting to discuss what was happening at Phoebe Hearst, saying that the personnel matter involving Rupert had already been concluded with due process. Spokesperson Al Goldberg told The Sacramento Bee the same day that they had said all they were going to say about the situation.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s really frustrating because we don\u2019t have any answers for the district,\u201d said mother Janelle Reali. \u201cWe don\u2019t know why these teachers are gone, and they\u2019re not responding to us, and they just won\u2019t listen to us.\u201d<\/p>\n

In their continued public efforts to get Rupert and Henrikson back, students and parents consistently use the phrase \u201cabove and beyond\u201d to describe how the two teachers approached their jobs.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey really are the cornerstone of our Phoebe Hearst community,\u201d said Kim Mulligan, one of the key parent organizers in the effort to bring Rupert and Henrikson back.<\/p>\n

Rupert has made it clear to the district that she is seeking her job back<\/a>. Her lawyer submitted a letter to the district last week threatening legal action if she was not reinstated at Phoebe Hearst. She and her lawyer are alleging the district retaliated against her for reporting unsafe classroom conditions and publicly opposing school site administrators\u2019 plans to eliminate full-day kindergarten at Phoebe Hearst. They are also alleging sex-based discrimination, claiming that male teachers and administrators have done more substantial renovation than remove carpeting without similar discipline.<\/p>\n

\"Kimberly<\/p>\n

Kimberly Mulligan, whose son was a student in Jeanine Rupert\u2019s class at Phoebe Hearst Elementary School last year, holds a sign made by her daughter Ellie \u2014 also a student there now \u2014 during a student walkout at East Portal Park in Sacramento on Monday. The protest was in response to the removal of sixth-grade teachers Rupert and Mark Henrikson.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nearly 250 Phoebe Hearst Elementary School students stayed home from class Monday to protest the removal of two…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2989,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[3825,3827,3826,3828,3824,3823,3822,121,918,123,122],"class_list":["post-2988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sacramento","tag-al-goldberg","tag-district-administrators","tag-elementary-school-students","tag-henrikson","tag-jeanine-rupert","tag-mark-henrikson","tag-phoebe-hearst","tag-sacramento","tag-sacramento-city-unified-school-district","tag-sacramento-headlines","tag-sacramento-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2988","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2988"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2988\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2989"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}