ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, November 17, 1996 TAG: 9611180066
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DIANE STRUZZI STAFF WRITER
A Roanoke County teacher's aide convicted of assaulting a physically disabled student in his care had a history of complaints concerning his treatment of the teen-ager.
Five times during the year that John Peters worked with the teen-ager at William Byrd Middle School, staff members alerted administrators about how Peters talked to and physically restrained the 14-year-old boy, according to a police investigation. The teen-ager has cerebral palsy; he communicates through a letter board, not with spoken words.
School administrators would not comment specifically about the case, but said they acted swiftly and appropriately when they discovered the complaints. In an interview last week, Peters said he was told of only one complaint, which resulted in a warning about his language.
Some authorities and child advocates question the school's response to the assault, which occurred last March. The case revealed confusion and disagreement about what constitutes abuse, what must be reported to the Department of Social Services, and the special education staff's need for training in this area.
An outside consultant who reviewed the child's case in April recommended that the staff get more training on issues of abuse and behavioral management, which she said many schools in the state need. School administrators rebuffed the suggestion, said Anne Malatchi, who is project director at Virginia Commonwealth University's Virginia Institute for Developmental Disabilities.
They replied that the March incident was not abuse, Malatchi said.
"The teachers wanted" the additional training, she said. "The administrators did not."
Peters, a certified English teacher who began working in Roanoke County schools during the 1995-96 school year, said no administrator expressed concern about how he talked to or handled the child during his annual evaluation. He said he knew of only one complaint - when he left the boy alone in a bathroom and then reprimanded him on his return.
"I said, `darn' or `damn,''' Peters said. "But it wasn't anything more than that."
In March, after the complaint by staff that he apparently had hit the student, Peters told school officials he had only tapped the boy on the buttocks to get his attention and keep him from defecating on himself. Peters was suspended and later resigned.
Administrators determined that the incident was a permissible form of corporal punishment. Corporal punishment is outlawed in Virginia schools except in special circumstances, such as maintaining order or control in a classroom or if a student or teacher is in danger. The law prohibits the use of corporal punishment as a way to modify a child's behavior.
Since administrators did not believe the case was one of abuse, they reasoned that it wasn't necessary to contact the Department of Social Services. By law, school employees must report suspected child abuse to social services within 72 hours.
The Department of Social Services and the Roanoke County police became involved only when the teen-ager's mother contacted them. After a police investigation began in July, Detective Dave Flynn charged Peters with misdemeanor assault and battery. Flynn said that social services found the case to be a minor incident of child abuse.
Last month, a juvenile court judge convicted Peters and sentenced him to a month in jail. He is currently free on $1,000 bond, pending his appeal.
"I don't think it's a matter of semantics," Roanoke County Commonwealth's Attorney Skip Burkart said about the difference made between corporal punishment and abuse in this case. "Not when you have marks on the child's face and the slaps are heard by people standing 15 feet" away.
As a result of the case, Superintendent Deanna Gordon changed school policy. In June, after discussing it with the School Board's attorney and Burkart, she instructed principals to report any incident of corporal punishment directly to social services.
"We did not want another principal to get in the same dilemma of whether it should be reported, only to find out later that someone else determined it was abuse," Gordon said.
Also in the summer, school administrators surveyed teachers and found that in-service training on a variety of issues was desired. Some aides are frustrated by a lack of in-service training on how to work with special education students, said Doris Boitnott of the Virginia Education Association. Boitnott represents about a third of the 173 aides in Roanoke County and acts as liaison between school administrators and the county's education association.
Training for teachers and aides is a priority in the coming year, in particular training to handle children with special medical needs, said Carol Whitaker, director of pupil personnel and special education in Roanoke County.
This year, the school has held one in-service training day for teachers and aides, as it did last year. Teacher's aides were not required to attend, but 90 to 95 percent of them went to those sessions, said Ruth Wade, supervisor of classified personnel with the school district.
School administrators concede that training is imperative, but argue that they provide aides with more training than is required by the state. Virginia does not mandate training or certification for teaching assistants. Each school district must provide its own programs, on its own initiative.
And because there are no guidelines, the quality of care by aides can be uneven. A good teacher is not automatically equipped to handle children with communication barriers, physical disabilities or behavioral problems, experts say.
"The major problem is that schools have got more and more disabled kids, and they have to start thinking like institutions do," said Irwin Hyman of Temple University in Philadelphia. Hyman runs the National Center for the Study of Corporal Punishment and Alternatives.
"They need to train their people on how to de-escalate and how to physically restrain students [properly] when they have to. There has to be a higher threshold for accepting certain behavior."
Hiring and keeping competent teacher's aides comes down to money, say educators who train special-education paraprofessionals. In Roanoke County aides are paid between $6 and $8.75 an hour. At that wage, say some parents, there is no incentive for a well-trained aide to remain in the district.
Carolyn Robbins, whose son has cerebral palsy and speaks through a communication device, said her son's aide taught himself to work with her son's communication tool.
"He was wonderful," she said. "But he went on to another job. Now we're going through the process of an aide training herself [again]. ... What the aide puts into it, they don't get out. They can't keep the good ones."
Training protects not just the children but also the aides, said Malatchi, the outside consultant from VCU. She recommends that school administrators meet regularly with teacher's aides, integrate them into their students' curriculum planning and give them support when they becomes frustrated. She also recommends that schools not allow aides to be alone with individual students.
"It's crucial to look at the education of paraprofessionals and make sure you're not setting them up in a situation where they're isolated," she said. "That just leads toward he-said, she-said."
That is what authorities, administrators and Peters now face.
Burkart said he plans to meet with the Roanoke County School Board to discuss details of the case. School administrators are standing by their handling of the investigation and their decision that it was a case of corporal punishment.
"We are child advocates," Assistant Superintendent Jim Gallion said. "If this school division is anything, it is a child advocate. I think when all the evidence comes out that'll be borne out."
As for Peters, he said a matter of seconds has ruined his life.
"This has been a nightmare for me," he said. "If I felt I was truly guilty of assault and battery, then I'd want to pay for the crime. In some ways, I feel like the victim. If one is a sensitive and caring person, you're paying for whatever you're charged with or accused of."
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