He obsessed over a girl in class, staring at her, demanding her attention, tormenting her if she withheld it. Teachers had mounds of evidence that Cruz was bent on violence, but it still took his teachers five months to transfer him from Westglades Middle School to the more therapeutic environment of Cross Creek School for emotionally and behaviorally disabled children, the Sun Sentinel found.īroward teacher Betsy “Miss B” Budrewicz said the pendulum has swung too far, allowing the rights of the violent few to outweigh the others.Īfter the Parkland shooting, she was haunted by the thought of a student in one of her elementary classes several years ago. One West Broward High teacher had to get a restraining order against a student who attacked her ― and only then, she said, was he moved out of her classroom.
“You can get him out of the classroom for a day or two or three, but the child comes back.” “You cannot get the child out of the classroom,” former teacher Patrick Jovanov said. Two members of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Public Safety Commission, Okaloosa County Sheriff Larry Ashley and Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri, question Daniel Gohl, the chief academic officer for Broward County Public Schools, about mainstreaming. The same laws that protect disabled students make it difficult for schools to remove a student like the profoundly disturbed Cruz, who was obsessed with hurting others before he killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland on Feb. Just ask Nikolas Cruz,” one schoolteacher told the Sun Sentinel. “Students with violent tendencies have more rights than the students that they endanger. The Sun Sentinel also emailed teachers in the Broward public school system, the nation’s sixth-largest school district, asking them to talk privately, if necessary, about what is happening in their classrooms. Nearly half of the youths had histories of mental disorders, and more than half had access to guns. In only 18 months, more than 100 unstable and potentially dangerous students across Florida have threatened to kill their teachers, classmates or themselves, records from 10 major counties show. It ensured that students with disabilities received an education in the same classrooms as their peers, a practice known as mainstreaming.įlorida went even further, requiring agreement from the parents, or a judge, before transferring a disabled child to a special-needs school with more therapeutic services and smaller class sizes. The federal law had a noble purpose when enacted more than four decades ago, long before the ranks of violent students swelled. It’s this huge nightmare.” ‘The child comes back’
“It’s just a no-win scenario right now,” said attorney Julie Weatherly, of Mobile, Alabama, who advises school districts on the legal complexities of removing aggressive students when they have a disability.
Sun sentinel drivers#
Violent students have injured thousands of teachers, bus drivers and staff in Broward County alone and undoubtedly thousands more across Florida, records obtained by the Sun Sentinel show. Even threatening to shoot classmates is not a lawful reason to expel the child. State and federal laws guarantee those students a spot in regular classrooms until they seriously harm or maim others. In an eight-month investigation, the South Florida Sun Sentinel found that a sweeping push for “inclusion” enables unstable children to attend regular classes even though school districts severely lack the support staff to manage them.
0 kommentar(er)
