Real-Life Grinch? Texas Teacher Tells Kindergarteners Santa Is Fake

AP

An Austin, Texas afterschool teacher has one kindergartener's parents furious after she told students Santa Claus was fake, the Houston Press reported.

Susan Tietz Gammage said her 5-year-old daughter, Aven, came home from Pease Elementary School last week and asked if what Mrs. Fuller said was true.

"She said 'None of you believe in Santa do you?' and said that you and mommy buy all our presents and put them under the tree. She said that you should tell us the truth," Gammage said her daughter told them.

Gammage said coming clean about Claus is definitely not the school's place: "Another adult has no right to submit their own beliefs on a group of 5-year-olds and their families -- about Santa, God, politics or whatever -- especially phrased 'your belief is not right,'" she wrote on her Facebook page.

"To break that harsh reality to them in such a brutal way is just wrong," she told the Houston Press. "Especially since these kids are 5. She is just really getting into Santa."

It's apparently not just the one teacher who refused to get into the Christmas spirit -- Gammage said another parent told her about another teacher who informed a student that their drawing of Santa Claus needed to be labeled imaginary.

Gammage said she contacted the principal, who was "horrified" by what the instructors had done and gave her daughter's teacher "tools to deal with this situation" in the future.

A woman who answered the phone at Pease Elementary confirmed they had an afterschool teacher named Sonia Fuller on staff, but said she hadn't heard about the controversy.

Another representative from the school did not immediately return an emailed request for comment from TheBlaze.