Following pressure online and within the community, Mason, Ohio’s school district has decided to suspend a white middle school teacher who told one of her black students that “if he didn’t get back on task, his friends were going to form an angry mob and lynch him,” Cleveland.com reports.

The boy’s mother, Tanisha Agee-Bell, was initially upset with how the district was handling the matter. 

The district conducted an investigation and found that the teacher did in fact tell the boy that his friends would lynch him, but initially simply had the teacher apologize. The boy was also moved to another section of his grade.

Agee-Bell felt that this punished her son more than it punished Renee Thole, the teacher in question, given that it separated the boy from his friends.

A few weeks ago, Agee-Bell told WLWT Cincinnati 5, "For her not to understand that the words that she said were a direct pull from what has been, what was a practice in the United States, is unacceptable. She shouldn't be in the classroom. She shouldn't be in the classroom at all. And I'm not saying she should never go back in the classroom, but until she can demonstrate that she understands what the impact of the language that she used and what she did can have, has had on my son, has on his peers and is having on our community, then she doesn't need to be in the classroom." 

She also said when the story first broke that she wanted “the district to take ownership of this and to work to make the environment better for all students.”

At that time, Mason School District told Cincinnati.com, "Sometimes we mess up. Clearly, that was the case here. And, even though this teacher did not set out to hurt a child — clearly that happened, too."

Now, however, it has decided to punish Thole and to mandate that all of its other teachers take racial sensitivity training, WXIX Channel 19 reports.

“There’s no explanation or defense that would make such a comment appropriate in any setting,” school superintendent Gail Kist-Kline said in a statement on Facebook. “It was wrong. Racism is real in America, and we all have an obligation to fight it.”

Kist-Kline did not say exactly how long Thole would be suspended, and did not address an online petition that calls for Thole to be fired. She also did not go into detail about how the new training would work beyond stating that the district will give “training on how to combat bigotry and bias.”

The superintendent did, however, focus on praising Agee-Bell’s son.

"The student bravely stood up and called his teacher to account," Kist-Kline said. "The student could have reacted poorly and could have rightfully berated the teacher for her thoughtlessness. Yet he extended grace to the teacher. The student is the hero in this story."