Student Given a Ticket
On October 1st, special education teacher Lalla Schmidt called police after a 14-year-old student hit her lightly on the arm. Police wrote the child a “ticket for assault by contact.” Shane Gregory is autistic and admitted to doing so according to his mother, Holli Gregory:
The teacher’s refusal to follow a plan for Shane Gregory’s education caused his outburst, and her reaction was unwarranted, his mother said. The ticket was merely a play to remove Shane from the classroom, she said.
“He’s not violent,” the boy’s mother, Holli Gregory, said. “He’s not a real big kid.”
The October 14th Victoria Advocate reports that Schmidt has taught in the school district since 1993 and taken “several classes to train her for working with special education students.” It’s also noted that “the school resource officer can write students tickets if it seems appropriate”; it’s more usual for administrators to tell parents about a child’s behavior problems.
Shane has now been placed in an “ABLE”—”Adaptive Behavioral Learning Environment”—classroom.
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POSTED IN: Education, Legal Issues
4 opinions for Student Given a Ticket
David N. Andrews M. Ed. (Distinction)
Oct 15, 2008 at 4:27 am
I don’t like the authoritarian way things are going in American educational practice. School resource officers, my arse… they’re police officers.
Cultural pathology.
Mrs. C
Oct 15, 2008 at 6:24 am
Um, and if he weren’t autistic he’d have just been told not to do it again and maybe (maybe) gotten detention.
I think we’re all just asking for fairness and understanding. Must agree with Andrews on this one, though unfortunately with Columbine and whatnot, I do see where some people do freak out when the word “school” and “violence” are spoken in the same sentence.
Leanne
Oct 15, 2008 at 10:38 am
I’d be interested in knowing if the ‘light hit’ left a mark. Also if this is a first physical transgression.
I’ve found the opposite in our school. My son, who’s autistic, would probably have gotten spoken to about his behaviour, while a ‘normal’ student would have been punished more severely on the assumption he would know better than to strike a teacher.
Regan
Oct 15, 2008 at 1:33 pm
Reading the comments in the newsstory, this sounds somewhat complicated with divergent views on what happened, but I agree with David Andrews about the euphemisms. If someone can be arrested or issued a citation…sounds like a police officer.
The part of the story that interests me quite a bit is the statement that Shane Gregory’s behavior plan was not being implemented.
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