Update 5:33 PM Oct. 28, 2015 Finally someone agrees with me! See last story below. If the Spring Valley High School teacher and assistant principal had had more training, wisdom, finesse and good will, they wouldn't have created an out-of-control confrontation with a girl who quietly glanced at her cellphone and apologized for it. When I was a student teacher I was told, "Never start a confrontation you can't win. It undermines your authority." The teacher and assistant principal overreacted to the girl's refusal to turn over her phone. It could have been dealt with after class when it wouldn't have completely disrupted the class. But the teacher and administratorunder-reactedto the brutality by the officer toward a child in their care. Were they so angry at the girl that they wanted her to be physically assaulted? Did they want "Officer Slam" to slam the girl? Do they not recognize a crime when it's being committed before their eyes against a child they are being paid to protect? Here's an interview with Niya Kenny, a fellow student who was arrested with the girl slammed by the officer.
...Not many news agencies have reported, or even wondered why she
was asked to leave in the first place. As it turns out she had
momentarily looked at her phone during class, and apologized for it at
the time.
...[Niya] Kenny: Yes, sir he's known as Officer Slam around our school. I've heard, in the past, he's slammed pregnant women, teenage girls, he's known for Slamming.
Hayes: Um.. one of the things that's so striking in this video is the
other students in the room seem so quiet and scared and contained. No
one seems to be intervening. Why do you think that was?
Kenny: They were scared, I was scared myself. I felt the two grown
men in the class were also scared themselves because who's seen anything
like that? That's not normal for anyone to be handled like that, let
alone a 16-year-old girl by a 300 lbs man.
Hayes: You at one point did get up to say, what were you saying, what happened?
Kenny: I was screaming, crying, like "Are you guys seriously letting
this happen? This is not right, you guys know this isn't right. You guys
are really letting this happen right now?" I guess they were in shock
but still I felt like somebody in the class should have helped her.
Hayes: Did the teacher or the administrator say anything to the
officer like "hey, this is excessive" or try to intercede in any way?
Kenny: Not at all, they were both quiet just like the kids.
Hayes: So everyone is sitting there in stunned silence, you start saying something, what happens next?
Kenny: And then the administrator, Coran Webb who was also in the
class, starts telling me "Sit down Niya, be quiet Niya, put your phone
away Niya." And I'm like "No, no, this is not right. I can't believe
ya'll are doing this to her."
Hayes: And then you then, are eventually arrested?
Kenny: Yes, sir.
Original post:
Why isn't anyone questioning the actions of the teacher and assistant principal at Spring Valley High School?
by Maura Larkins
It seems that the South Carolina SRO (school resource officer) did pretty much what the teacher and assistant principal expected him to do when he dragged a girl out of her high school classroom.
The assistant principal made the decision to call the officer into the classroom. It appears that he wanted the officer to use force. Or perhaps he just thought the officer would be able to intimidate the girl and she would get up and leave voluntarily. He clearly did not tell the officer NOT to use force. I can certainly understand if the officer believed that he was expected to use force.
The LA Times notes, "[Sheriff] Lott, who rushed home from an out-of-town conference when the news
broke, said that ateacher and vice principal in the classroom at the
time felt the officer acted appropriately."
What was the girl's offense? Texting in class.
Compare this case to a situation in Sacramento that did indeed require the school to use force: a principal was body-slammed!
COLUMBIA, S.C. — Videos of a white sheriff’s deputy throwing a black high school girl
to the floor of a classroom thrust this community into an unsettling
national discussion Tuesday about whether black students are
disproportionately punished.
The incident, which the Justice Department said Tuesday that it would investigate, follows national studies showing that black students were far more likely than whites to be disciplined in public schools, even for comparable offenses.
That
issue was receiving intense scrutiny here long before the videos of
Monday’s incident were released, prompting the district to form a task
force last year to examine its practices.
Last year, the racial divide in the Richland School District Two,
encompassing parts of this city and its suburbs, led to the formation of
the Black Parents Association, and contributed to a bitter campaign for
control of the district’s board.
Yet
this community fits no neat stereotype of racial tension. It has at
times been seen as a model of amicable integration, where students of
divergent backgrounds socialize together. And while some students have
called the deputy overly rough or racist, others, of all races, defend
his record in the school — if not his behavior on the videos.
The videos showed a sheriff’s deputy
assigned to Spring Valley High School struggling with a 16-year-old
girl who had refused to stand and leave her math class, after the
teacher reportedly caught her using her phone. The deputy, Ben Fields,
tipped the girl’s chair and desk backward, lifting her out of her seat
and slamming her to the floor, and then dragged her to the front of the
classroom, where he cuffed her hands behind her back.
Sheriff
Leon Lott of Richland County said at a news conference Tuesday that in
one video, when the deputy grabbed the girl, she could be seen punching
him, but he said his focus was on whether the deputy followed
departmental rules. “That’s what the internal affairs investigation is
doing, and the results of that will determine his further employment
here,” he said.
“Even
though she was wrong for disturbing the class, even though she refused
to abide by the directions of the teacher, the school administrator and
also the verbal commands of our deputy, I’m looking at what our deputy
did,” Sheriff Lott said.
He deflected a question about the role of race, saying Deputy Fields has a black girlfriend.
[Maura Larkins' note: I wonder if the black girlfriend also gets dragged around.]
On
Monday, the sheriff placed Deputy Fields on unpaid leave, and asked for
a federal investigation. The Justice Department’s Civil Rights
Division, along with the F.B.I. and the United States attorney for South
Carolina, said Tuesday that it would look into the incident.
James Manning, the chairman of the district’s board, said the use of force “appears to me to be excessive and unnecessary.”
Deputy
Fields has been the subject of two federal lawsuits about his conduct
in the past. A jury found in his favor in one, and the other is
pending...
Twice
this week, the nation was moved by the way a white cop confronted a
black teenaged girl and her mobile phone. For very different reasons.
In South Carolina, the teen was texting in math class and wouldn’t put her phone away. Teens and their phones, right?
But
the campus officer who came to the class responded in the worst
possible way, yanking, slamming and dragging the girl across the
classroom. It was a violent 11 seconds of video that made millions of
people gasp and, thankfully, got the cop fired.
Sadly,
in this time of a national awakening to stunning incidents of Bad Cop
brutality — from ruthless arrests caught on camera to fatal shootings —
this has become what we expect to see.
But many of this country’s 780,000 sworn police officers know how to do their jobs the right way.
In
Washington, police showed up in a neighborhood near the Nationals
baseball stadium to break up a fight between two groups of teens. After
it was over, 17-year-old Aaliyah Taylor,
a senior at Ballou High School, walked up to the officer and started
playing “Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae)” on her phone. Instead of clearing out,
as the police officer had demanded that she and the rest of the crowd
do, she started dancing the Nae Nae. You could totally see a teen doing
this, right?
That officer had a choice. Yell at the teen
for being defiant and disrespectful? Go rogue and slam the teen to the
ground, South Carolina-style?
Nope. Instead, the officer
began dancing, too, matching Aaliyah move for move. It was a hilarious,
uplifting and refreshing 56 seconds of video that immediately went
viral.
It
shouldn’t be news that a police officer used her humanity to defuse a
tense situation instead of escalating it, that a white cop didn’t use
force against a black teen. But for many people in Aaliyah’s community,
it was.
All seven of her siblings have been cuffed or arrested
by police for nonviolent crimes, like breaking curfew, she told The
Washington Post’s Perry Stein. And her brother and six sisters all told
her that the police were rough on them. We saw that video in South
Carolina. We know it happens.
Aaliyah lives in a rapidly changing city that is becoming less and less welcoming to people who look like her.
Her
neighborhood near Ballou High School in Southeast Washington is a world
of jump-outs and street corner pat-downs. Dozens of students at her
school have been killed in the past decade. You’re wearing a hoodie?
Dark pants? You’re going to get stopped. Kids in her neighborhood run
when they see police.
Surveys and studies — Gallup, Pew, USA
Today — show that nationwide, African Americans aren’t confident in the
way police interact with their communities.
“I thought all cops were cruel because that’s how I saw them,” Aaliyah explained later.
The
police officer, rather than taking her down like a drug kingpin caught
in a sting, laughed at Aaliyah’s challenge to her authority, warned her
that she had better moves and started dancing, clunky cop shoes,
turtle-shell body armor and all.
“Instead of us fighting, she
tried to turn it around and make it something fun,” Aaliyah said. “I
never expected cops to be that cool. There are some good cops.”...
Victim of SC school assault “had it coming”
By Brandi Collins
ColorofChange. org
Oct. 28 2015
By now you’ve probably heard about the
horrifying and brutal attack of a peaceful Black female high school
student by school Police Officer Ben Fields - an officer with a history
of racial profiling.1 Just hours after the incident,
some media had already begun its routine character assassination of the
Black student and its blind hero worshiping of the officer. The most
vile of this coverage came from CNN’s Harry Houck.
Just like when he was covering the murder of Sandra Bland, Harry Houck thinks this young Black girl “had it coming.”2 That if she only respected the officer she would not have been viciously attacked.
As an ex-NYPD detective with a national
platform, Harry Houck continues to pedal racist narratives that put
Black lives at risk by suggesting that officers have the right to use
abusive force on Black women who don’t respect them. It's an
embarrassment for the network and it should embarrass corporate sponsors
that their money is reinforcing for millions of viewers the both
conscious and unconscious belief that Black is wrong, the police are
always right, and any lack of respect for an officer by a woman of color
justifies a beating or worse..
The South Carolina high school student flipped and thrown across a
classroom by the disgraced sheriff's deputy who lost his job Wednesday
is living in foster care, her lawyer told the Daily News.
The 16-year-old is now under the protection of a foster mom who said she's suffering in the aftermath of the shocking caught-on-video assault, lawyer Todd Rutherford said Wednesday.
News of the unidentified teen's status surfaced as Richland County Sheriff's Deputy Ben Fields was stripped of his badge for his violent reaction to her allegedly unruly behavior.
The Monday incident inside an algebra class at Spring Valley High
School was captured in disturbing cellphone footage that quickly went
viral and raised renewed concerns about racist policing and excessive
force. Fields is white, and the student is black.
"Deputy Ben Fields did wrong this past Monday, so we're taking
responsibility for that," Sheriff Leon Lott of Richland County said at a
news conference in Columbia announcing the dismissal.
"The maneuver that he used was not based on the training or
acceptable," Lott said, adding that the termination "wasn't a hard
decision."
Lott praised the classmates who filmed the officer's overreaction and
even encouraged citizens to keep filming cops to help "police the
police."
The Justice Department also is investigating the case, and Fields may face criminal charges from that probe.
Fields earned nationwide scorn for the video showing him slamming the
girl to the ground while she was still caught in her desk, and then
dragging her across the classroom floor after she allegedly refused to
stop using her cellphone.
Fields' lawyer issued a defiant statement late Wednesday, thanking people for their "heartfelt support."
"We believe that Mr. Fields' actions were justified and lawful
throughout the circumstances of which he was confronted during this
incident," lawyer Scott Hayes said.
"To that extent, we believe that Mr. Fields' actions were carried out
professionally and that he was performing his job duties within the
legal threshold," he said.
Hayes said his client "welcomes the opportunity to address the particulars at the appropriate time."
While confirming Fields' dismissal, Sheriff Lott criticized the teen
for allegedly starting the confrontation and said that she still could
face prosecution.
Richland County Sheriff's Department--Ben Fields has a history of alleged misconduct and is being sued by an expelled Spring Valley student for racial bias.
The girl and a fellow female student who objected to Fields' actions
were charged with disturbing the school. Both were released to their
guardians.
"She was not allowing the teacher to teach, she was not allowing the
students to learn," he said. "She was very disruptive, very
disrespectful."
Her teacher tried to discipline her and called a school administrator for help before bringing in Fields, he said.
Fields was allowed to put his hands on the girl and tell her she was under arrest, Lott said, but he went too far.
"I can tell you what he should not have done: He should not have thrown that student," Lott said.
Rutherford said the girl suffered injuries to her arm, neck and face.
Lott claimed the girl suffered only "rug burn."...
Black girls are suspended at six times the rate of white girls
Maura Larkins' comment: I estimate that thousands of white girls send texts during high school math classes everyday, but we would be truly shocked if one of them were dragged out of class by a police officer and arrested.
Press release by Color of Change Oct. 28, 2015:
...While Fields' firing was absolutely necessary, he [should not be] alone in shouldering the blame for this incident.
From start to finish, there was a total breakdown in common sense and
compassion for the student who he brutalized. Even Sheriff Lott has
questioned whether the officer should have ever been called into the
classroom.2
The educators who involved a police officer in
this minor disciplinary issue and the policy makers who have failed to
limit the role of police in schools must also be held accountable.
Join
us in urging Richland School District 2 authorities to investigate the
school officials who called Officer Fields and to strictly limit the
role of police in their schools. During today's press conference, it was revealed that school
officials issued statements in support of Officer Fields after videos of
his violent attack went viral.3 It's shameful. Any
school official who found Officer Fields' behavior acceptable shouldn't
be educating our children. This type of discriminatory police violence
has no place in Richland County schools and local leadership must do
everything in their power to stop it. As long as policies allow
educators to bring in police for any minor school issue we can expect to
see more and more tragic cases like this one. Richland School District 2
Superintendent Debbie Ham has said she will work to strengthen police
"training efforts in the school," but we need more than that.4 ColorOfChange members know all too well that the police
violence caught on camera at Spring Valley High is part of a much larger
crisis of criminalization targeting Black students. In the
past few years, the number of police in schools has skyrocketed and the
result has been devastating. Known as the "school to prison pipeline,"
kids are now much more likely to be suspended, expelled and arrested for
the type of issues that years ago would have landed a student in the
principal's office.5 Black girls — who face dehumanizing
racial and gender stereotypes — are 6 times more likely than white girls
to be suspended, most commonly for subjective issues such as "having a
bad attitude."6 Police should play no role in the everyday education and disciplining of students.
— Arisha, Rashad, Scott, Lyla and the rest of the ColorOfChange team.
Ohio teacher Nicole Lemire was furious with a fifth-grade boy who took too long to go to the bathroom.
And so she stood him up at the front of the room and asked the other students to try to remember everything bad he had ever done. Everytime he objected, she recorded a check mark for a recess that would be taken away from him.
How bad was this boy? Not bad enough that Ms. Lemire had ever reported a problem to his parents.
Here's the truth that most of us have known for years: some teachers are vicious bullies.
Here's a truth that most people don't know: teacher culture promotes anger and retaliation far more than it promotes truth-finding and reasoned responses to problems. A lot of teachers eat lunch in their rooms because the teachers' lounge is so full of vitriol. In my experience, students are the favorite targets of lounge gossip, followed by parents, administrators and other teachers.
Now Ms. Lemire, who has been reprimanded and suspended multiple times, has been fired.
And what does she want now? She wants the chance to defend herself--the very opportunity that she denied to the boy in her care. I think a court case would be a good thing, in part to teach the students in Lemire's class how accusations are supposed to be handled in a free society.
The district noted the following in its decision to fire Ms. Lemire (see pages 93 and 94 in this document):
Ms. LeMire has displayed a repeated and persistent pattern of
exercising poor professional judgment. Ms. LeMire engaged in the conduct
stated in paragraphs #1, 2, 3 and/or 4, and incorporated herein, even
though she received an Unpaid Suspension for ten (10) days dated
December 23, 2014, and an Unpaid Suspension for two (2) days dated June
10, 2014, which both were due to missed deadlines and a lack of and/or
poor communication. Ms. LeMire also received a Written Reprimand dated
April 11, 2014 for poor communication and a Written Reprimand dated
November 11, 2013 for leaving her class unattended. These incidents
reflect poor judgment and Ms. LeMire’s December 23, 2014 suspension
notice specifically stated if she “engage[d] in any further
unprofessional or unethical behavior, violate Olentangy Board policy or
do not follow an administrative directive, you will face disciplinary
action up to and/or including termination.”
Ms. Lemire, ironically, doesn't seem to want to listen when others have complaints about her:
In December, she was suspended for 10 days after she did not respond to
emails about her teacher’s evaluation from her principal at Glen Oak
Elementary. She missed the deadline to submit a growth plan and failed
to reply to repeated e-mails from her administrator. In response,
LeMire-Hecker said she misunderstood and initially didn’t think she was
required to submit a plan, according to district records. She also
admitted that she had other priorities and did not read an e-mail the
principal sent.
If there was really anything to this case then charges would have been filed and the teacher would have been name by now. Especially since this has been supposedly going on for 5 years.
Aaron Burgin [reporter]· Vista, California
Not necessarily, Ken. One of the points of the article is that the administrators haven't filed charges in cases of emotional abuse. So, no, charges might not have been filed even if there was anything to the case.
Maura Larkins
Here we have yet another reason why schools should conduct meaningful evaluations of teachers. The current system is a joke. Evaluations by principals are virtually useless because they are compromised by school politics. Many abusive teachers are protected by administrators and the teachers union. Outsiders should be coming in to schools and observing teachers, and the observations should be stepped up when the question of abuse arises, to protect both students and teachers.
SAN DIEGO — For five years, a group of parents complained that one Hardy Elementary teacher’s behavior toward students went beyond discipline — they said it was abuse.
According to their children, the teacher would hurl books across the class or publicly humiliate kids who had body odor by spraying them with aerosol. The teacher would instruct classmates to “think bad thoughts” about students who misbehaved, forgot homework or did poorly on an assignment.
The parents complained to the College Area school principal and followed up with a written complaint to the district. Eventually they were told their complaints lacked merit.
Now, the parents are pressing for the San Diego Unified School District to take a stronger stance against emotional abuse — with steps including reporting accused teachers to law enforcement for investigation.
Although that might sound excessive for a teacher who never laid a hand on a student — and in fact, nonphysical abuse is a crime that’s rarely, if ever, prosecuted — state law and district policy call for just that response.
“The district administrators have turned their backs on our kids,” said Susan Hopps-Tatum, who has emerged as parent advocate for the district to better address cases of reported abuse by its employees. “Emotional abuse has as much of an effect on our children as physical abuse, and the district fails to recognize this.”
The state penal code includes emotional abuse in its definition of child abuse and requires teachers and administrators to report even suspected abuse to child welfare or the police.
According to the school district’s administrative code, “Examples of emotional abuse include such things as belittling, screaming, threats, blaming and sarcasm.”
School district and law enforcement officials would not comment on the specific complaints by the Hardy parents.
They did say the requirement for reporting emotional child abuse is not nearly as clear cut as the parents are reading it.
Area Superintendent David Lorden, who reviewed the Hardy complaints, told The Watchdog he believes the district has the right to conduct its own inquiry to determine if a case “rises to the level of abuse.”
“Until we prove otherwise, they are just allegations,” Lorden said. “It can’t be like, ‘I don’t like the way my teacher talked to my child.’”
That process — letting district officials conduct their own review and decide whether to involve other authorities— seems to be the prevailing practice.
Officials with the San Diego City Attorney’s Office, which would prosecute local emotional abuse cases, said it has never handled a straight emotional abuse case.
“When we do handle those cases, they are usually the underlying count of a sexual, spousal or physical abuse case,” said Gina Coburn, spokeswoman for Jan Goldsmith’s office. “There hasn’t been one tried by itself.”
Judith Neufeld-Hernandez, a substitute teacher who pulled her son out of San Diego schools in response to his complaints about the Hardy teacher, said her son would beg his parents on Sunday nights not to make him go to school on Mondays.
“He told me that being in her class was like being a gladiator: You don’t know whether you are going to the lion’s den or if it will be your classmate,” Neufeld-Hernandez said.
Hardy Principal Kathy Wolfe declined to comment. A reporter was not allowed to speak to the teacher involved in the complaint. The U-T is withholding the teacher’s name because the district deemed the complaint unsubstantiated.
School district officials said they do not track complaints against teachers. They said the language of the law gives the district latitude in responding.
“To some parents, if their kid gets screamed at by their teacher, they consider that abuse,” district spokeswoman Linda Zintz said. “If we were to report each of these complaints, law enforcement would be inundated.”v
Rod Pacheco, the state assemblyman who sponsored the bill updating the state’s child abuse and mandated reporter laws, said school officials have a duty to report teacher behavior such as what was alleged at Hardy to authorities.
“You’re not entitled to do things like that; it’s not 1910 anymore,” Pacheco said. “It’s 2012. You just don’t get to treat kids that way.”
Pacheco, who handled several high-profile sexual abuse cases during his tenure as Riverside County’s district attorney, disagreed with school officials’ interpretation of the law.
“Clearly, they are not supposed to be evaluating the complaint,” Pacheco said. “If some child says, ‘Teacher X has abused me,’ it is not incumbent on them to decide if that is true. That is not the foundation of whether they report it.
“When they get a complaint they have a duty to report it, period. If it is false, the authorities will determine it is false.”...
Public schools in Jackson, Mississippi, will no longer handcuff students to poles or other objects and will train staff at its alternative school on better methods of discipline.
Mississippi's second-largest school district agreed Friday to the settlement with the Southern Poverty Law Center, which had sued over the practice of shackling students to a pole at the district's Capital City Alternative School.
Nationwide, a report from the U.S. Department of Education showed tens of thousands of students, 70 percent of them disabled, were strapped down or physically restrained in school in 2009-10. Advocates for disabled students say restraints are often abused, causing injury and sometimes death.
The Mississippi lawsuit was filed in June 2011 by Jeanette Murry on behalf of her then-16-year-old son, who has been diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. It said staffers routinely restrained students for hours for offenses as minor as dress code violations, forcing them to eat lunch while chained to a stair railing and to shout for help when they needed to go to the bathroom.
The settlement, approved by U.S. District Judge Tom Lee, says all district employees will stop handcuffing students younger than 13, and can only handcuff older students for crimes. In no case will employees shackle a student to a fixed object such as a railing, a pole, a desk or a chair.
"It's apparent there were severe problems that we hope now are being addressed and will be alleviated," Lee told lawyers in court Friday, just before signing the settlement order.
Troubles at the alternative school helped spark the proceedings that have jeopardized the accreditation of the entire 30,000-student district.
The suit also reinforces criticism of alternative schools statewide. A 2009 report by the American Civil Liberties Union found that such schools "overemphasized punishment at the expense of remediation."...
"There’s very good evidence that teacher quality matters a lot in terms of student performance in school and success later on in life. The economist Raj Chetty of Harvard, for example, has found that students randomly placed with more experienced kindergarten teachers not only perform better on tests but earn more and save more for retirement as adults, are likelier to go to college, and go to better colleges than their peers with less experienced teachers. Eric Hanushek of Stanford estimates that a good teacher – defined as at the 84th percentile, or one standard deviation above the mean for you stats nerds – provides students with test scores associated with an increase of between $22,000 and $46,000 in lifetime earnings."--Washington Post
Lots of kids get stuck for years with various incompetent teachers, but it doesn't have to be that way. We can fix the problem. And not spend any extra money!
Am I crazy to think this?
HERE'S THE MATH:
Here's the comparison for four classrooms and one extra salary (in thousands):
Currently: $60 + $60 + $60 + $60 + $60 = $300
New plan: $100 + $50 + $50 + $50 + $50 = $300
HERE'S THE PLAN:
An excellent teacher could come into each classroom for just a few hours a week and make a huge difference--if that teacher had responsibility for student success and authority to make decisions.
Parents should not need political clout to get a good teacher for their child. Every student should--and could--have a great teacher, without wasting time and energy on the losing battle to fire incompetent teachers.
The truth is that the critical moments in learning don't happen continuously five hours a day. They add up to at most a couple of hours each day, and probably much less. The rest of the time an ordinary, mediocre teacher can handle the skill practice and lesson reinforcement, computer activities, art projects, silent reading (how much skill is needed to be in charge of that?) and so on.
GIVING SUPPORT TEACHERS A REAL JOB
At my old school we were paying a top salary--well over $60,000, for a computer teacher who was very nice, but her job was merely to familiarize kids with computer programs. An aide could have done the job. When the principal (Ollie Matos) tried to switch that computer teacher to giving basic reading and math lessons, the teachers went ballistic. Thestory became a sensation in the San Diego Press, and a group of angry teachers were named the "Castle Park Five" by San Diego Union-Tribune editor Don Sevrens. Basically, what the teachers wanted was 45 minutes a week in which they could send their students to another teacher. But in my plan, classroom teachers would have this kind of help and relief for more than an entire day each week! The nice computer teacher could become a master teacher!
Resource teachers like computer teachers and language and math support teachers could become master teachers. And let's face it: how much good are those resource teachers able to do? They go around and offer suggestions, but they are really doing the equivalent of passing out band-aids. I would never want such a job. It might be relaxing not to have direct responsibility for student learning, but isn't that the point of being a teacher?
NO MORE ABUSIVE TEACHERS
Academics would not be the only thing that master teachers would be responsible for. Abusive, immature teachers with a habit of undermining students could be overruled and guided by the master teacher.
WE COULD SAVE MONEY!
Why do we pay bad teachers the same amount of money as good teachers? It makes no sense!
Excellent teachers should be paid much more than average teachers, and could be responsible for all students in several classrooms.
Each classroom could have a full-time regular teacher who be paid a lower salary, but would be eligible to become a master teacher. The master teacher would also be responsible for helping and guiding the regular teacher.
In California the average teacher salary is roughly $60,000 (with a starting salary of $35,000.)
We could allow regular teachers to rise in salary to an average of $45 thousand, and allow master teachers to rise to an average of $90 thousand--for overseeing four classrooms.
Money for support teachers and teacher aides would be switched to master teacher positions in the classrooms. (Of course, special education would still require teacher aides.) Some people who are currently teacher aides could become regular teachers.)
Here's the comparison for four classrooms and one extra salary (in thousands):
Currently: $60 + $60 + $60 + $60 + $60 = $300
New plan: $92 + $47 + $47 + $47 + $47 = $300
MEANINGFUL EVALUATIONS OF TEACHERS WOULD BE REQUIRED
Of course, meaningful evaluations of teachers would have to be instituted to make this plan work. Current evaluation systems are worse than useless. My plan would call for frequent observations by both master and regular teachers, but they would observe classrooms in other districts to keep school politics out of the process as much as possible. The observations would have a beneficial side effect: they would allow teachers to get pick up new ideas.
I believe it would be good to use student test scores when choosing who is to be a master teacher, but I don't think it's absolutely necessary. The good thing about it is that it would take some of the politics out of teacher evaluation. It should be noted that although student test scores vary widely from year to year for most teachers, some teachers do get consistently high scores from their students year after year.
There’s very good evidence that teacher quality matters a lot in terms of student performance in school and success later on in life. The economist Raj Chetty of Harvard, for example, has found that students randomly placed with more experienced kindergarten teachers not only perform better on tests but earn more and save more for retirement as adults, are likelier to go to college, and go to better colleges than their peers with less experienced teachers. Eric Hanushek of Stanford estimates that a good teacher – defined as at the 84th percentile, or one standard deviation above the mean for you stats nerds – provides students with test scores associated with an increase of between $22,000 and $46,000 in lifetime earnings.--Washington Post
Lots of kids get stuck for years with various incompetent teachers, but it doesn't have to be that way. We can fix the problem. And save money!
Am I crazy to think this?
HERE'S THE MATH:
Here's the comparison for four classrooms and one extra salary (in thousands):
Currently: $60 + $60 + $60 + $60 + $60 = $300
New plan: $100 + $50 + $50 + $50 + $50 = $300
HERE'S THE PLAN:
An excellent teacher could come into each classroom for just a few hours a week and make a huge difference--if that teacher had responsibility for student success and authority to make decisions.
Parents should not need political clout to get a good teacher for their child. Every student should--and could--have a great teacher, without wasting time and energy on the losing battle to fire incompetent teachers.
The truth is that the critical moments in learning don't happen continuously five hours a day. They add up to at most a couple of hours each day, and probably much less. The rest of the time an ordinary, mediocre teacher can handle the skill practice and lesson reinforcement, computer activities, art projects, silent reading (how much skill is needed to be in charge of that?) and so on.
GIVING SUPPORT TEACHERS A REAL JOB
At my old school we were paying a top salary--well over $60,000, for a computer teacher who was very nice, but her job was merely to familiarize kids with computer programs. An aide could have done the job. When the principal (Ollie Matos) tried to switch that computer teacher to giving basic reading and math lessons, the teachers went ballistic. Thestory became a sensation in the San Diego Press, and a group of angry teachers were named the "Castle Park Five" by San Diego Union-Tribune editor Don Sevrens. Basically, what the teachers wanted was 45 minutes a week in which they could send their students to another teacher. But in my plan, classroom teachers would have this kind of help and relief for more than an entire day each week! The nice computer teacher could become a master teacher!
Resource teachers like computer teachers and language and math support teachers could become master teachers. And let's face it: how much good are those resource teachers able to do? They go around and offer suggestions, but they are really doing the equivalent of passing out band-aids. I would never want such a job. It might be relaxing not to have direct responsibility for student learning, but isn't that the point of being a teacher?
NO MORE ABUSIVE TEACHERS
Academics would not be the only thing that master teachers would be responsible for. Abusive, immature teachers with a habit of undermining students could be overruled and guided by the master teacher.
WE COULD SAVE MONEY!
Why do we pay bad teachers the same amount of money as good teachers? It makes no sense!
Excellent teachers should be paid much more than average teachers, and could be responsible for all students in several classrooms.
Each classroom could have a full-time regular teacher who be paid a lower salary, but would be eligible to become a master teacher. The master teacher would also be responsible for helping and guiding the regular teacher.
In California the average teacher salary is roughly $60,000 (with a starting salary of $35,000.)
We could allow regular teachers to rise in salary to an average of $45 thousand, and allow master teachers to rise to an average of $90 thousand--for overseeing four classrooms.
Money for support teachers and teacher aides would be switched to master teacher positions in the classrooms. (Of course, special education would still require teacher aides.) Some people who are currently teacher aides could become regular teachers.)
Here's the comparison for four classrooms and one extra salary (in thousands):
Currently: $60 + $60 + $60 + $60 + $60 = $300
New plan: $92 + $47 + $47 + $47 + $47 = $300
MEANINGFUL EVALUATIONS OF TEACHERS WOULD BE REQUIRED
Of course, meaningful evaluations of teachers would have to be instituted to make this plan work. Current evaluation systems are worse than useless. My plan would call for frequent observations by both master and regular teachers, but they would observe classrooms in other districts to keep school politics out of the process as much as possible. The observations would have a beneficial side effect: they would allow teachers to get pick up new ideas.
I believe it would be good to use student test scores when choosing who is to be a master teacher, but I don't think it's absolutely necessary. The good thing about it is that it would take some of the politics out of teacher evaluation. It should be noted that although student test scores vary widely from year to year for most teachers, some teachers do get consistently high scores from their students year after year.
By this point, it comes as no surprise that an exhaustive inquiry into the sexual abuse scandal involving Penn State University and former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky found that it wasn't just a matter of people high and low in the hierarchy who didn't do the right thing. The failure to end the long-term molestations resulted from a university culture in which athletics reigned supreme, football coaches were revered and even feared, and the foremost concern among top officials wasn't to protect children or do the just thing but to protect the university.
I don't doubt any of this, but I can't help wondering whether Penn State was some kind of anomaly in the world of universities with major team-athletics programs. If we looked with equal intensity at the top 50 or so universities in this group, would we find similar disproportionate power among key coaches, similar fear among the people who work for them and a similar culture of protecting the institution above all else?
This isn't to let Penn State off the hook in any way, or to imply that sexual abuse of children is a problem in the world of higher education; the question is whether universities have overlooked longstanding cultures that have the potential to hide a wide range of problems. Have we bowed too much to the mighty athletic program?
The suit also seeks reforms to the Los Angeles Unified School District, which "has a practice and custom of maintaining a 'Culture of Silence' to hide teacher misconduct, and to ignore teacher misconduct," the suit said.
Fourteen mothers, whose children prosecutors say were sexually abused by a Los Angeles teacher facing 23 felony charges, sued the school district on Tuesday seeking damages for "generalized shock and trauma."
The lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court, also seeks unspecified "compensatory economic and special damages for medical expenses," which include psychological therapy, according to court papers and attorneys for the plaintiffs.
The suit also seeks reforms to the Los Angeles Unified School District, which "has a practice and custom of maintaining a 'Culture of Silence' to hide teacher misconduct, and to ignore teacher misconduct," the suit said.
The legal action stems from a criminal case against former teacher Mark Berndt of Miramonte Elementary, who is being held on $23 million bond and faces 23 felony counts of lewd acts on children.
Berndt, 61, pleaded not guilty in February to allegations he bound young students, then photographed them with semen-filled spoons held at their mouths and three-inch cockroaches crawling across their faces, among other graphic depictions.
L.A. schools review past 40 years of teacher discipline cases in misconduct crisis
The 23 victims were between 7 and 10 years old, and all but two of them were girls, the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office said.
The 14 mothers' lawsuit says Berndt took photographs of their children "with cookies in the mouths of plaintiff's children, and/or blindfolded the children, and/or placed cockroaches on the bodies of plaintiff's children, for the intent of arousing and gratifying the lust, passions and sexual desires of Mark Berndt."
One of two mothers who spoke at a press conference on Tuesday said her now 10-year-old daughter was victimized by Berndt while a student at Miramonte from 2009 to 2010. CNN, which has interviewed the mother in recent months, isn't identifying the mother or other parents in order to protect the identities of the children.
"I am asking for justice and I want justice to be done to this man," the mother, 43, said. She wants the district to be held accountable for its "negligence," she said.
In a recent CNN interview, the mother said her daughter went to Berndt's classroom, where "he would give her some cookies. My daughter told me that the teacher would say the cookies had sugar and some white stuff that was on it," the mother said.
In that CNN interview, the mother was joined by her daughter, who told CNN: "We would help him clean his class and he would give us cookies.
"They were white and they had a white stuff on top, and he would put some sort of powder" on the cookie, the girl said. The parents told CNN they didn't tell their daughter what could have been on the cookie.
The girl's father, 46, who joined his wife at Tuesday's press conference, told CNN the couple doesn't want money but rather justice, so other families won't "suffer what's happening to us," the dad said. Their daughter is now enrolled at another school. The daughter and mother are both in counseling, he said.
"We don't want money, because our children's health physically and mentally is not going to be the same," the father said.
The other mother at Tuesday's press conference told reporters that her daughter is now rebellious and is also in counseling.
Five of the children in the civil lawsuit are among the 23 alleged victims in the criminal case, said Luis A. Carrillo, the attorney for the 14 mothers.
Los Angeles County sheriff's detectives are investigating the accusations of the nine other children identified as victims in the civil suit, Carrillo said.
Sheriff's Lt. Carlos Marquez, the lead investigator in the case, said Tuesday that detectives interviewed more than 100 Miramonte students and have presented all those cases to the Los Angeles County District Attorney's office for review.
It's up to the district attorney whether to bring charges on behalf of additional victims, beyond the current 23, Marquez said.
Sandi Gibbons, a spokeswoman for the district attorney's office, declined to comment Tuesday on whether additional charges would be filed.
Berndt's attorney, public defender Victor Acevedo, declined to comment Tuesday because he hadn't seen the lawsuit.
David Holmquist, general counsel for the Los Angeles school district, said student safety was the system's "paramount priority."
"The district is committed to working with the Miramonte community and everyone impacted by these incidents to improve trust and promote healing," Holmquist said in a statement. "While the district has yet to receive the latest complaint, we are continuing our efforts to ensure that we are doing everything possible to provide a safe learning and working environment for our students and staff."
In May, another civil lawsuit was filed against the school district on behalf of 22 children who claimed they were sexually abused by Berndt, said Carrillo, who also is the attorney for the plaintiffs in that case.
The lawsuit, also filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court, alleged that Berndt "engaged in sexual assault, sexual harassment, which includes sex discrimination per LAUSD's policies, and/or sexual exploitation of the plaintiffs that included lewd, obscene and/or lascivious acts" with the 22 children age 6 to 9 years old between 2002 and 2011, court papers said.
The children of the 14 mothers in Tuesday's lawsuit are also part of the May lawsuit, Carrillo said.
In December 2010, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department began investigating Berndt after authorities learned of hundreds of "questionable photographs of children on film that Mr. Berndt had brought (to) a local store to have developed," according to Tuesday's lawsuit.
Berndt was removed from his teaching job in January 2011 after school officials learned of the police investigation, authorities said.
Authorities have said they have discovered roughly 600 images allegedly taken by Berndt in his classroom.
A teacher for 30 years, Berndt initially challenged the school district's decision to dismiss him. But he eventually dropped his appeal and resigned in spring 2011.
His arrest in January led to broader fallout over the adequacy of safeguards for the school's students and the prospect of more victims.
Days after Berndt was taken into custody, another Miramonte Elementary teacher -- Martin Springer, 49 -- was arrested and charged with three felony counts of lewd acts with a girl younger than 14. He has pleaded not guilty.
The Los Angeles Unified School District board subsequently shut Miramonte for two days, during which the board reconstituted the entire staff in the 1,400-student school. Miramonte is in unincorporated Los Angeles County within the Florence-Firestone area, about six miles south of downtown Los Angeles.
Misconduct scandal prompts L.A. schools to send 604 teacher discipline cases to state
Sadly, teachers often model bullying behavior, yet they are put in charge of stopping bullying by kids.
Some teachers bully kids, parents, other teachers, and even administrators. The following would be true if "teachers" were substituted for "girls": "Girls, in particular, tend to engage in rumor spreading, gossip and exclusion to target other[s]..."
We need to teach the teachers how to deal with their competitive feelings before they can genuinely help children.
The following sentence would also be true if we substituted "teacher" for "second grader": "At one local school, a second grader endured bullying daily during lunch when she went to find a seat. She would go to sit at a table and [peers] would tell her to keep going, that there wasn’t a place at the table for her...She was pushed out from the social circle and isolated in a way that was causing suffering for her..."'
But bullying by teachers doesn't just cause hurt feelings--it sets back the entire educational program.
It is one of the reasons that schools are unable to achieve true reform. Political and personal agendas of teacher cliques, particularly those cliques with strong connections to the teachers union or powerful administrators, trump the agenda of improving education.
I suspect that one of the reasons that CTA (the California Teachers Association) doesn't want test scores published is that poor teachers often resort to school politics to protect their positions, and CTA is very responsive to teachers with political influence.
...With the acclaimed documentary “Bully” in theaters and a new anti-bullying state law poised to take effect, the persistent problem of bullying in school remains at center stage these days.
According to the National Center for Education Statistics, more than one in four students in middle and high schools reported being bullied at school in 2009 and 6 percent reported being cyberbullied, the latest statistics available. In a survey of San Diego County students in 2009, 32 percent said they had been made fun of because of their looks or the way they talk while 23 percent of eleventh graders said they had been targeted by cyberbullies.
“It is more people seeing it for what it is,” said Mara Madrigal-Weiss, a project specialist with the county Office of Education who works on bullying prevention and intervention. “There is concern about what can happen.”
...At Allen Elementary in the Chula Vista Elementary School District, students start each day promising to be “bully busters,” reciting a pledge to treat others with kindness and respect and promising to tell an adult if they notice someone being bullied. The pledge ends, “Being a buddy begins with me.”
Principal Toni Faddis said students are reminded about good citizenship and character traits frequently at the K-6 school She uses student surveys to identify problem areas and respond. This year, she said she put additional supervisors on the playground and has staff systematically check on restrooms after seeing survey results.
She said incidents of bullying have decreased in the five years she’s been at the school.
Faddis and others say parents sometimes confuse bullying with other types of inappropriate behavior, such as when a child is pushed down on the playground by a classmate. To fall into the category of bullying, educators say the action needs to be repeated, intentional and involve a social or physical power imbalance between the bully and the victim.
Even young children can be victimized by bullying. Girls, in particular, tend to engage in rumor spreading, gossip and exclusion to target other students, teachers and anti-bullying experts say.
At one local school, a second grader endured bullying daily during lunch when she went to find a seat. She would go to sit at a table and classmates would tell her to keep going, that there wasn’t a place at the table for her, recalled Madrigal-Weiss, who was conducting anti-bullying training at the school.
“She was pushed out from the social circle and isolated in a way that was causing suffering for her,” said Madrigal-Weiss. A teacher ended up talking to the girls in the class about how hurtful their actions were...
Faculty Supervisor Arrested For Alleged Child Molestation
Kettrell Berry, a faculty supervisor from the San Diego Children's Center, was arrested on 25 counts of child molestation
By Monica Garske
NBC San Diego
May 5, 2012
A faculty supervisor from the San Diego Center for Children -- a non-profit organization and school for troubled youths in Kearny Mesa -- has been arrested on 25 counts of child molestation, according to Dave McCaslin, CEO of the Center.
According to the sheriff department's jail booking log, Kettrell Berry, 49, was taken into custody Friday for allegedly having sex with children, among several other child molestation charges.
The log confirms Berry has been booked into San Diego Central Jail, where his bail is set at $1,120,500.
His arraignment is scheduled for Tuesday.
On Saturday, McCaslin released a statement regarding Berry's arrest.
"We are saddened by the breach of trust that has occurred. In the Center’s 125 years of service in San Diego we have been a lifeline for over 10,000 children. We took immediate action by contacting the San Diego Police Department and Child Protective Services and have been partnering with them throughout the investigation," said McCaslin.
"The safety of our children is always our first priority and we are taking action to ensure their continued safety. We are committed to helping and protecting children and the action of one person will not deter us from providing the best possible care and hope for these children," he continued.
Judge Rotenberg Educational Center: Please Stop Painful Electric Shocks on Your Students
Gregory Miller
Berry Creek, CA
At a “special needs school” in Canton, Massachusetts, children and teenagers with autism and other disabilities are being administered electric shocks as a means of controlling their behaviors. As a former Teacher’s Assistant, I regret having participated firsthand at this school - The Judge Rotenberg Center (JRC).
The human rights abuses taking place at the JRC are well documented. The United Nations is aware of the JRC and has called these shocks “torture”, and says that “The prohibition of torture is absolute.” Yet the school continues to use a powerfully painful electric shock device on students to control their behaviors. These devices are reportedly much stronger than police stun guns and were created by the founder of the Judge Rotenberg Center.
The Judge Rotenberg Center must immediately stop its practice of shocking special needs students.
Rather than shocking students for only severe behaviors, student behavior plans at JRC dictated that we shock certain students for even the most minor of behavioral issues like closing their eyes for 15 seconds while sitting at the desk, pulling apart a loose piece of thread, tearing an empty used paper cup, or for standing up and raising a hand to ask to go to the bathroom. In some classrooms, very often students who observe their peers being shocked react in fear by standing up out of their seat, yelling or crying, or throwing down their task -- and are then shocked for these reactions.
A non-verbal nearly blind girl with cerebral palsy was shocked as part of her behavioral plan for making a moaning sound and for attempts to hold a staff’s hand (her attempts to communicate and to be loved).
In 2002, 18 year-old Andre McCollins was strapped down and shocked for hours at the JRC. He begged for the shocks to stop and when they did, he was left in a catatonic state for days which resulted in permanent damage. Video of Andre’s shock treatment was sealed until recently and you can view it here.
The JRC’s founder, Dr. Matthew Israel, resigned after being charged with misleading a grand jury by destroying video footage of other students being shocked.
When 18-year-old Tyell Morton put a blow-up sex doll in a bathroom stall on the last day of school, he didn't expect school officials to call a bomb squad or that he'd be facing up to eight years in prison and a possible felony record.
The senior prank gone awry has raised questions of race, prosecutorial zeal and the post-Columbine mindset in a small Indiana town and around the country, The Indianapolis Star reported in its Tuesday editions.
Legal experts question the appropriateness of the charges against Morton, and law professor Jonathan Turley at George Washington University posed a wider question about Morton's case on his legal blog.
"The question is what type of society we are creating when our children have to fear that a prank (could) lead them to jail for almost a decade. What type of citizens are we creating who fear the arbitrary use of criminal charges by their government?"
A janitor at Rushville Consolidated High School saw Morton run away from the school May 31, and security footage showed a person in a hooded sweatshirt and gloves entering the school with a package and leaving five minutes later without it, according to court documents.
Administrators feared explosives, so they locked down the school and called police. K9 dogs and a bomb squad searched the building before finding the sex doll.
"We have reviewed this situation numerous times," Rush County Schools Superintendent John E. Williams told the newspaper last week. "When you have an unknown intruder in the building, delivering an unknown package, we come up with the same conclusion. ... We cannot be too cautious, in this day and age."
Morton was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct, a misdemeanor, and institutional criminal mischief, a felony that carries the potential of two to eight years in prison.
"I know there has been plenty of pranks done at that school," said Morton's mother, Cammie Morton. "I went to that school. When I heard what they was charging him for, my heart just dropped."
Joel Schumm, a professor at the Indiana University School of Law-Indianapolis, questioned the validity of the charges.
"Their reaction is understandable, but use the school disciplinary process," he said. "Don't try to label the kid a felon for the rest of his life."
The Rush County Prosecutor Philip J. Caviness told The Associated Press that he doesn't intend to seek a prison term for Morton, but said school officials acted appropriately and that the charges are warranted.
"I'm pretty comfortable with the charges that we've filed," he said.
Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts focused on Morton's case recently in his nationally syndicated column, suggesting that Morton's case was another example of unfair treatment for a black youth without a wealthy family.
Morton's father brushed off that suggestion when Pitts asked him about it, and Morton's mother declined to discuss that point with The Star.
Morton's attorney, Robert Turner, also downplayed race, suggesting that the size of the small blue-collar city an hour southeast of Indianapolis played a role.
"I don't think they do this sort of thing very often," Turner said. "Had this happened in Indianapolis ... they would not have had this kind of charge filed."
Morton's mother said Tyell Morton wants to attend college, but is worried about the case...
I actually think it's a good thing that parents and the community are beginning to learn what sort of conversations take place day in and day out in the teachers lounge. I heard this sort of thing frequently during my years as a teacher. The problems with this attitude are that the teacher... 1) isn't taking responsibility for improving kids' behavior; 2) is making a self-fulfilling prophecy; 3) is being unprofessional; 4) is stereotyping and making harmful generalizations about the people whom she is paid to help; 5) should consider a career in law enforcement.
I'm wondering exactly how these teachers' attitudes translate into action in the classroom. Obviously, these teachers are very negative. I'm guessing they are abusive toward the children they are talking about.
Another teacher has garnered national attention as well as a suspension for posting a comment about her students on her Facebook page, according to the New York Times. In this case, the first-grade teacher from Paterson, N.J., wrote that she "felt like a warden overseeing future criminals."
The post spurred negative reactions from parents, students, and the community. "It's horrible," said Irene Sterling, president of the Paterson Education Fund, a nonprofit group that supports the local school community. "And unfortunately, I don't think she's the only teacher in Paterson who thinks that way."
Meanwhile, the teacher's lawyer, Nancy Oxfeld, argued that the teacher, whose name has not been released, wrote the posts on her personal time:
"My feeling is that if you're concerned about children, you're concerned about what goes on in the classroom, not about policing your employee's private comments to others," said Oxfeld, as quoted in the Times.
Just this past February, a high school English teacher in Pennsylvania also was suspended for maligning students on her blog.
Attention all teachers with blogs: Be careful with your words. A high school English teacher in Pennsylvania has been suspended for writing what she really thinks about her students on a personal blog, according to CBSPHILLY.
More than a year ago, Natalie Munroe of the Central Bucks School District in Pennsylvania expressed her frustrations with her students on her blog, using phrases like "seems smarter than she actually is," "I hate your kid," and "am concerned your kid is going to open fire on the school." It's unclear whether Munroe specified which students she was referring to, and the blog has since been shut down, reports CBSPHILLY.
It was a parent who discovered the blog and brought it to the district's attention, and parents—and students—are condemning the teacher's actions.
"Why would you be with children if you are feeling that negative about everything they do?" parent Kelly Woloshyn asked.
Apparently, a lot of teachers do more than just verbally abuse their students.
After an elementary school teacher in Maryland was recently charged with several counts of assault for choking, punching, kicking, and/or scratching eight of her first graders, Washington Post blogger Valerie Strauss recalls the failure of Congress to pass a bill to end corporal punishment in schools.
In June, Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-N.Y.) introduced the Ending Corporal Punishment in Schools Act—which would do just what it says—but the bill never made it out of its assigned committee, reports the Post.
Although almost half of school corporal punishment cases occur in Texas and Mississippi, it's still legal in 20 states and was responsible for 10,000-20,000 children seeking medical treatment in the 2006-2007 school year. Studies show that it most commonly occurs in rural schools and is directed toward male and nonwhite students, according to Strauss.
A four-month Washington Post investigation of former Manassas teacher Kevin Ricks' career as a teacher, tutor, foreign exchange host and camp counselor has revealed a pattern of abuse that goes back to at least 1978 and has left a trail of victims that spans the globe.
Kevin Ricks was a gregarious, well-traveled English teacher at Osbourn High School, a Walt Whitman devotee who was so popular that a photo of him in class was chosen to fill the opening page of the yearbook. A writer and photographer himself, Ricks would walk the halls of the Manassas school with a leather-bound journal of his musings tucked in his bag, next to his laptop computer.
What teachers, parents, students and even his wife didn't know was that his journals contained decades of dark secrets, a running handwritten commentary of Ricks's world of obsession, infatuation, pursuit, sexual abuse and international child exploitation...
But despite the abuse, Ricks moved from one teaching job to the next over nearly 30 years, navigating the nation's public and private school systems undetected, evading traps designed to catch him...
His case underscores the difficulties that educators and parents face when they only suspect abuse but can't prove it, and how reluctant even the most suspicious and well-meaning people can be in coming forward with allegations. It shows how someone can for decades wear a mask of trusted role model while using that powerful position to lure unsuspecting boys...
Michael Lee, a high school baseball coach, sued a parent for, among others, libel, and slander. These causes of action were based upon that parent publishing a letter to the Conejo Valley Unified School District claiming Lee was manipulative to the players, the parents, and the other coaches; verbally abusive to the kids; emotionally abusing the kids with his outbursts of anger and favoritism to certain players; and threw a fit in the dugout and verbally attacked the parent’s son for not respecting his authority.
The slander case of action was based on the allegation that the parent stated to at least eight people Lee was a bad coach, was unethical, and had severe anger and emotional and anger problems. In both causes of action, Lee alleged the parents acted with malice and caused him to lose his job.
In response to the Complaint, the parent brought a special motion to strike (anti-SLAPP motion) pursuant to Section 425.16 of the Code Civil Procedure. Section 425.16, subdivision (b)(1) provides: “A cause of action against a person arising from any act of that person in furtherance of the person’s right of petition or free speech under the United States or California Constitution in connection with a public issue shall be subject to a special motion to strike, unless the court determines that the plaintiff has established that there is a probability that the plaintiff will prevail on the claim.” Subdivision (e)(1) provides that an act in furtherance of a person’s right of petition or free speech includes, “any written or oral statement . . . made before a . . . judicial proceeding, or any other official proceeding authorized by law . . . .”
Section 425.16 requires a two-step analysis: First, determination whether defendants had made a threshold showing that the challenged causes of action arise from a protected activity. If so, then, second, whether the plaintiff has demonstrated a probability of prevailing on the claim, i.e., the complaint is sufficient and is supported by facts sufficient to sustain a judgment in plaintiff’s favor. To that end, the parent filed a declaration stating Lee became angry as her son when the son “shook off” Lee’s baseball signs, to which Lee verbally and physically threatened the son, poking a finger in his chest.
As a result, the parent wrote a letter addressed “To Whom It May Concern,” alleging libelous statements. The libel cause of action arose from the letter the parent sent to the school board.
Privilege
Civil Code section 47, subdivision (b) provides that any publication made in any “judicial proceeding” or “in any other official proceeding authorized by law” is privileged. Thus, communications to an official agency intended to induce the agency to initiate action are part of an “official proceeding,” including complaints to school authorities about a teacher or principal in the performance of his or her official duties.
Lee submitted an affidavit in opposition to the motion. He declared the parent’s son was rude to the coaches and had a bad attitude, and denied that he physically or verbally abused the son.
When Lee read the parent letter submitted to the school district, he could not believe what was alleged. School officials conducted a four-week investigation, and Lee continued as baseball coach for the next season. It was only after the parent then met with the principal of the school that Lee was terminated as head coach. Lee argued the parents never intended to initiate any legally authorized proceedings because the letter was not addressed to a school official, but “To Whom It May Concern.” The Court held that the address on the letter is not determinative and the parent’s uncontradicted declaration that she wrote the letter to deliver to the school district and did not publish the letter to any other person.
Lee then argued that the letter did not request an investigation or hearing and did not ask for any action. But the Court held that it is obvious from the content of the letter the parents were requesting that Lee be removed as coach.
The Court of Appeal held that complaints to school authorities about a teacher or principal in the performance of his or her official duties are privileged, pursuant to Section 47, subd. (d) of the Civil Code, holding that a letter written by a parent to school officials containing allegedly libelous statements about the coach was written to prompt official action and was privileged, even though the letter did not request an investigation or hearing and did not ask for any action.
Further, the Court held that it was not required that the letter expressly request an investigation or hearing or that school officials take any particular action. Notwithstanding, it concluded that it was obvious from the content of the letter that the parent was requesting that the coach be fired.
Under Lee’s slander cause of action, the Court held that the parent’s alleged comments to school officials and other “interested” parents of baseball players discussing her concerns about Lee’s conduct were privileged and Lee cannot avoid the privilege by characterizing the discussion among parents as gossip.
Lee last attempt was to claim that after school officials initially determined to retain him, the matter was no longer under consideration in any official proceeding. However, the Court held that the parent asked the school officials to reconsider, which is part of the official proceedings and is as privileged as an initial complaint.
The parent, as the prevailing party in the anti-SLAPP motion, was entitled to attorneys’ fees.
IS WINNING MORE IMPORTANT THAN HONORING PLAYERS' RIGHTS?
I think the answer to this question might be, more often than not, YES. Coach Lee seems to be doing fine now (see story below).
But sometimes it is the parent who complains who is crushed by the school authorities. Click here for the story of one San Diego parent who spent a week in jail for complaining about a coach.
Coach Lee’s supporters emerge Claremont Currier October 17, 2007 Regarding the topic of Claremont High School’s head varsity baseball coach Mike Lee and his past, the Claremont Unified School District along with the majority of CUSD parents are ready to move on with Coach Lee still intact...
...Newbury Park High School parent Debbie Alia said that she was “appalled” while reading a recent Los Angeles Times article on October 3 that focused on the text message issue...“He taught the kids respect, that baseball is a team sport and also taught them not to argue with the umpire or curse..."
Though Mr. Lee resigned from his position as baseball coach at Westlake High School last year and was terminated from his coaching position at Newbury Park High, former principals at Newbury Park and Westlake wrote favorable recommendations on behalf of Mr. Lee when he applied for the coaching position at CHS...
AP 
Richland County Sheriff's Department--Ben Fields has a history of alleged misconduct and is being sued by an expelled Spring Valley student for racial bias. 
