On Thursday, February 26th the word around Trinity Elementary School was that a Special Education Aide intentionally escalated a situation in an already tense third grade Special Education at Trinity Elementary School classroom. The incident involved the son of a City School District of New Rochelle Board member who attends Trinity.
This is what we have so far. Tony (not real name), the third grade son of a City School District of New Rochelle Board member, complained to staff that another boy in the class was looking at him. His complaints were dismissed. We understand the situation escalated. When Tony refused to leave the classroom after being told repeatedly by the Special Education Aide, we are told that the Aide pulled the chair from under the child causing him to fall to the floor. This is when Tony, lost any composure he had left and the situation reached its peak. Sources tell us that the Aide often baits Tony to get him upset as way to get him removed from his current placement. We understand that the Principal and the Assistant Principal at Trinity were made aware of the situation. We also understand that word of the events spread like wildfire through the halls at Trinity Elementary School.
this is very, very strange
this is very, very strange — especially the quality and tone of the comments. I don’t know if it is true; neither do any of you. But, I will tell you that it (1) it is very easy to figure out who the school board member is if this did happen based on age and demographics, (2) that under no circumstances is pulling out a chair from under a child considered appropriate conduct for a special education teacher, and (3) if indeed this did happen and if the child was related to a school board member, that teacher should be fired and the boards should direct the superintendent to develop and implement a corrective action protocol to ensure it doesn’t happen again. This is an aide, I think, not a teacher as special ed teachers are well trained to avoid this type of behavior. There is no way it can be justified.
So maybe it is invented, but if not, another brick in the wall
Warren,
Sadly, this is a
Warren,
Sadly, this is a true story and are hardly the first instance of this sort of violence towards a child in the New Rochelle schools. We have unconfirmed reports of several other recent instances. We also have the story from about a year ago there was a security guard roughed up a middle school student. The result? The incident was hushed up and the security guard quietly transferred to New Rochelle High School.
You would think this is not complicated. You put a hand on a child — for any reason — you are fired, no questions asked. Welcome to New Rochelle where Job #1 is protect the “image” of the school district.
Bob, I have a question: who
Bob, I have a question: who wrote this article? It wasn’t you.
Agree or disagree with you, you sign your articles and comments. You stand behind your statements. You cite sources — sometimes inaccurately in my opinion — but nonetheless, you back up your statements with facts as you perceive them. You take the criticism and the praise that are offered as a result of your articles. Though I rarely agree with you, I do respect the fact that you sign your articles. (Please spare me the obvious irony of my remaining anonymous — I should point out that the purpose of my comment is to simply ask questions, not make statements about events of which I have no firsthand knowledge, thus who I am is somewhat irrelevant.)
So who are the “sources” he/she cites for the information presented? Who wrote this article? How do we know the incident — if there was an incident — happened in the manner it was portrayed? How do we know this isn’t simply a fabricated or grossly exaggerated story in an attempt to settle a score with a staff member or embarrass a Board member? What would motivate someone to write such a one sided, mean spirited article about a special needs child?
Unless and until we know who wrote the article, we will have no way of knowing how accurate the story as presented is — your website’s credibility is damaged by your allowing these anonymous postings.
Dear Anon,
Anyone can
Dear Anon,
Anyone can register for this site and write posts, upload photos, videos or add comments. We also allow non-registered visitors to comment anonymously but each of those comments is moderated (some comments are legitimate, some are attempts by trolls to hijack threads for their own purposes, some are spam with links to strange web sites). My personal view is that people should own their own words and I blog and comment under my own name, generally. The exception for me is when I am posting in some administrative capacity representing an organization and not just myself. However, anonymous speech has a long and storied history the pre-dates the founding of the country (e.g, The Federalist Papers were written pseudonymously by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay). The courts have always upheld the rights of anonymous speech so long as it is not otherwise found to be illegal (defamation, incitement to riot, etc.).
There is a balancing act required and there is no “right” answer. In the case of Talk of the Sound, we allow any registered user to blog and have their comments appear immediately; those who do not register have have their comments held up pending review. The intent here is to encourage a frank, open discussion of topics of relevance to New Rochelle residents and other stakeholders in New Rochelle while preventing people from assuming the identity – even pseudonymously – of another person.
Just as it is not relevant to your comment as to you are it is also not relevant to the post as to the specific identity of the person who wrote this article. The events described in the article are either true or not true; the account is either accurate or not accurate. Likewise, the author may have obtained information with an agreement that the source or sources would not be identified. There are many ways to handle off-the-record information: unidentified, not-for-attribution, on-background, and so forth.
Now, to your most pertinent question: “How do we know the incident — if there was an incident — happened in the manner it was portrayed?”
I am not clear who you purport to represent when you write “we”, but the simple answer is that you do not know that the incident happened as it was portrayed. You may even chose not to believe that the incident happened. In this case, the article was published by “New Rochelle Community Pulse”. There have been many articles published by NRCP. You and other readers will have to judge whether those past articles are credible and therefore whether this latest article is credible. Neither I nor any other contributor to this site can demand that you believe every article or every comment.
You apparently believe that this article represents “bad speech” not “free speech”. In my view, the correct response to “bad speech” is not less speech but more “good speech”. If you or someone else reading this article have information that would shed more light on the incident you (or they) are free to publish it here either as your own article or as a comment.
Your other conclusions do not follow:
You wrote “What would motivate someone to write such a one sided, mean spirited article about a special needs child?” As far as I can tell this article is not “mean spirited” but even it were it is not “about” a special needs child it is “about” the alleged behavior of an aide at Trinity School.
You wrote: “Unless and until we know who wrote the article, we will have no way of knowing how accurate the story as presented is.” There is no correlation between your (or even the Royal “We” you seemed to have adopted for yourself) knowing who wrote an article and whether you can know if the story was presented accurately. I am sure you read stories regularly from plenty of news stories where there is no by-line and even more where you have no idea who the person is who wrote the story.
Finally, there is no connection between my allowing anonymous postings and the credibility of this web site. There may be an issue of the credibility of New Rochelle Community Pulse, the blog within our site where this article originated but only if it turns out this story is untrue or that the story has not been presented accurately.
Although I see a few (perhaps even one, over and over again) people complaining about the fact of the story I do not people challenging the facts of the story. If you or anyone else can provide an alternative account, you are more than welcome to publish it here; we will give it the same weight as any other article published to this site. Which is to say — none. It is not up to us whether readers believe a particular story or not; we provide a platform for people to publish. What they publish is up to them.
This article is going to get
This article is going to get you into a lot of trouble cox.. This is the one that’s going to bite you in the ass. Now you’ve gone too far. And whoever gave him this story, you’re in a ton of trouble. We know who it is and you’re being watched.
Leave this person alone.
Leave this person alone. Did you ever think of the effect it has on the family of the aide as well as the student. Do something productive with your life.
NOTE: this post was edited to remove the use of “all caps”.
As a former memeber of the
As a former memeber of the New Rochelle community and a fellow teacher my self I stick by the teachers aide. Instead of wait your time writing about things happening in New Rochelle get a life and do something productive. This teachers Aide is helping students. It takes a strong person to do what this aide is doing. Working in special education is a lot. I have been bite, kicked, hit it is something we deal with everday. I think before you make assumptions and say fire this aide find the fact to support your accusations. And before you fire someone you have to think about the high demand there is for specail educators. In the feild we have a lack of people who want these jobs. We need all the people we got. Get a life and bother other people not people working in education.
Anonymous,
Maybe you should
Anonymous,
Maybe you should stop lying, come clean and tell the readers who you really are and what you know. You commented twice in a matter of six minutes. You have commented before about this story. In every one of your comments you have attempted to discredit the facts presented in the post. You are way too invested in this story. Most people who think something is a lie, do not care and dismiss it as such. For some reason, you do not do that. Lets ask a fundamental question. If what is written here is a waste of time and non-productive, why do you bother commenting on it?
Your comment suggest that you support the Aide’s behavior unconditionally, based on your own experiences and opinion on the difficulty level of her assignment. Were you there when it happened? Have you spoken to someone who was? Have you spoken to the child? Do you anybody who has spoken the child? There would be no story here if the child denied anything happened.
Lets state some of the obvious. Trinity is a school for children. The children are placed in the care of adults. Adults need to behave responsibly and exercise good judgment. The overwhelming majority of educators do it. Adults need to be held accountable when the do not exercise good judgment or act in the best interest of children. The victim here was not a criminal, but a third grade grade child (8 years old) with special needs.
Nobody on this blog has asked for the dismissal of anybody. Everybody is entitled to due process. The post is intended to bring to light the events that occurred in the classroom that day.
Finally, it is clear that you are definitely not a teacher. Any competent teacher reading your comments knows the reason why. But, you wont know why they know. You are more than likely someone close to these events and is trying to cover it up.
I find it hard to believe
I find it hard to believe that you’re a teacher to begin with. Do you even care how you present yourself as a member of this proffession? Your poor grammar and spelling aside, did you ever retaliate against one of the children in your charge? THEY are children, YOU are the adult. No matter what they might do, there can be NO reason to react with ANY retribution. I don’t care whio you proffess to be. If, in fact you are bwho you say you are, YOU should be asking the questions ,and, if the story is true, you should be the first to chastize this person if only to protect the reputation of the proffessionalism that IS required as a teacher, let alone to protect the children. You are a mandated reporter, ain’t you?
First of all how can you
First of all how can you actually think that the accusations against the teachers aide are true? Did you ever think that the accusations were made by a co-worker who did not care for the teachers aide? Second of all anyone who has ever dealt with a special education student knows that some of them have trouble dealing with authority figures, some are mentally disturbed, some are even physically violent. How can anyone judge the teachers aide and say to REMOVE THEM when they themselves are not aware of the situation which occured in the classroom. You have no idea what went on in the classroom, so you cannot comment on a situation in which you only know one side of a story. It’s sad to say, but let me tell you that some children in special education classes actually do need to be restrained, I’m sorry that ignorant people cannot tell the difference between restraining an unruly student and a full blown assault. I cannot believe that people are so ignorant as to say that someone is a “bad apple” when you don’t the person you are persacuting. It’s also sad to say that the story spread like wildfire through the school with only hearing one side of the story. I have faith in school employees that they know how to do their jobs & if the aide thought a physical restraint was necessary then the school should stand behind his/her decison or at least find out what really happened. On a different note the person accusing the teachers aide of the “assault” of this student, does he/she actually know the child, do they deal with the child on an everyday basis as the teachers aide does? Does he/she know the child’s temprament? Obviously not because the original blog says “sources say” the aide often baits “Tony” to get him upset. Come on people we are adults & should know better than to go by this he said she garbage. Can this just be a person looking to cause trouble?
Posted by an anonymous former special education childcare worker…
Anonymous,
Please tell us
Anonymous,
Please tell us which part of the post you believe is not true. Or, were you there? Did you see what happened? Who else was there? What happened?
First, you need to
First, you need to differentiate between the person who wrote the original post and people who are commenting on the original post. I did not write the original post but I have no reason to doubt the story. If you have some facts to introduce that can shed additional light on the matter please do so. If the aide or someone from the school or the district cares to present additional information they are welcome to do that.
You must be new to New Rochelle if you think that the problem here is that the school district does not “stand behind” district employees enough. The District has a long of history of attempting to cover up cases of misconduct by employees. The District has a policy (an illegal one at that) that no one is permitted to criticize an employee of the district for any reason at a school board meeting. They go to great lengths to with hold pertinent information from parents about problems in the schools. When they are forced to address an issue publicly they go into PR mode and do their utmost to attack critics and low-key their response or do the old soft-shoe routine.
Just in the immediate past, the District attempted to cover up the noose incident at Isaac, the kid with the two broken arms at Isaac, the stabbing incident at the high school, the guy at Jefferson making racists comments to students and staff, the man and woman having sex in a school, the guy smoking cigars on school grounds, the security guard who physically assaulted a student, the censorship of books at the high school, the gang activity at several of the schools. Shall I continue.
The simple fact is that the District, as an institution, is not interested in anything other than keeping the flow of dollars coming from a quiescent public in order to continue to fund their operations and their income. Within the institution there are good people, bad people and the vast middle who do their best impersonation of Sergeant Schultz, see nothing, and try to get out the building each day with their dignity as professional educators and staff intact.
The one thing the District does not want is an open platform where anyone can present their point of view of a particular incident or issue. If there were such a platform it would mean they no longer can control the public discussion about what goes on within the school district. This is precisely why many people connected with the District are upset about the existence of this web site. Imagine a place where they no longer control the microphone and cannot call security if someone starts to ask questions they don’t want to answer.
For those who skipped civics class, this site is about “free speech” and sometimes free speech is messy. The alternative, however, is not worth discussing unless you support the kind of censorship they had under Stalin.
WOW
So eloquently put.
Do
WOW
So eloquently put.
Do you by any chance believe your own BS, or do you give actual thought into your writings, you do not know where you come from or where you are going with any given piece of Sh…t you post.
My advice to you is get the facts straight before you do anymore postings cause you really sound as ridiculous as you look.
First Name
Michael
New Rochelle
You get the rest when you post something noteworthy.
Michael,
You come across as
Michael,
You come across as unreasonably angry about something you believe to be factually inaccurate. Using potty words in no way furthers an argument or point of view. If you know something, let us know and set the record straight. By the way, nobody needs your name.
I do not know who posted
I do not know who posted this Blog but there has to much more to this story than what actually was printed, what this writer is saying that there is a problem with Special Education Students Listening to there aids, I have Family involved in teaching Special Education, One Family memeber came home with bite marks, one came home with there clothes ripped, lets get the whole story before we slam the hardworking Special Education Teachers across this and every other State, this writer says that the third grader was repeatedly told to leave the classroom, I am not a Rocket Scientist but to me there is a piece of this one-sided story missing.
By a Concerned Lifetime New Rochellean
Like most anonymous
Like most anonymous commenters to this site who rush to excuse any reports of bad behavior by school district employees you confuse a legitimate concern about a specific individual with a blanket condemnation of all teaching professionals. Before you write comments like this do you once consider how ridiculous you sound attempting to equate a report of bad behavior by one person out of over 1,000 employed by the District with slamming “the hardworking Special Education Teachers across this and every other State”. I suppose that would be about 100,000 people, give or take. So, if a parent reports a problem about one district employee that is the same as insulting every single person in the profession?
By this token, we should never criticize an individual police officer or a priest or a doctor or any other person in a position of trust — no matter how bad their behavior — because to question the actions of one individual is to unfairly attack every single person in that particular like of work. I suppose this makes sense in cloud-cuckoo-land but here in the place we lovingly refer to as “reality”, normal people are able to differentiate between a few rotten apples and the rest of the bunch. The way to make sure those rotten apples don’t spoil the bunch is to REMOVE THEM.
As far as I can tell you have not offered a single reason to discount this report other than that you do not want it to be true. Please do us a favor. Bend over and gently place your head back in the sand from whence your removed it.
Now run along to bed so the grownups can talk.
Cheerio, my good man.
It is not clear which post
It is not clear which post you believe you read. This particular post is about an adult assaulting a third grade child with special needs. Furthermore, if anybody had the courage to drill down a bit they would learn the truth.
This post is not about a non compliant suspect in an episode of Cops. Nowhere in this post do we indicate that the child is violent. This post does not attack Special Education Teachers either. Most educators understand the implications of working with children with special needs. It is odd that you default to defend the adult rather than the child they are entrusted to educate.