Lyn Orletsky, the Cherokee County high school teacher who stirred a social media uproar when she told two students to turn their “Make America Great Again” T-shirts inside out, has submitted her resignation, a district spokeswoman said.
“Ms. Orletsky this week requested that the school board accept her resignation and release her from her teaching contract effective Nov. 1,” Barbara Jacoby said in an email late Wednesday.
“Her resignation has been added to the school board’s Oct. 19 meeting agenda.”
No explanation was given. We were unable to reach school officials.
Orletsky, a math teacher at River Ridge High School in Woodstock, has been on administrative leave since the Aug. 31 incident.
It happened about two weeks after events in Charlottesville, Va., where a group including white supremacists and neo-Nazis gathered to protest the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee. One person died and several others were injured after a protester allegedly drove his car into a crowd.
“I told the boys, in light of everything that has happened, I don’t think this is an appropriate slogan to be wearing at school,” Orletsky told the AJC after the incident in her classroom.
She told the youths the slogan had been commandeered by white supremacists, similar to how the swastika was appropriated by the Nazis in Germany.
Someone captured the exchange on video, and it went viral on the internet. On Sept. 27, state Senator Michael Williams, Republican candidate for governor, held a rally outside River Ridge demanding that the Cherokee school board fire Orletsky.
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