Posted on 11/10/2005 1:55:38 PM PST by Abathar
ELIZABETH, Pa. -- Angry parents told a school board it should fire an elementary school principal who publicly shamed an 8-year-old girl falsely accused of stealing $5 from another student.
William Penn Elementary School Principal Marlene Whitby paraded the girl from class to class last month, calling her a liar and thief. Soon after, the student who made the theft accusation recanted her story.
Whitby apologized privately to Katie White after the family complained to school administrators, but not publicly, said Ryan White, the girl's father.
Elizabeth Forward School Board members told angry parents at a meeting Wednesday they are "appropriately" handling the issue.
The president of the board, Lowell Meek, said he understood White's anger.
"If you understood my anger, (Whitby) would be gone," White said.
White said he spoke to Whitby and she acknowledged that she didn't look at a school bus video or talk to the bus driver to verify the theft accusation.
Tom DeRosa, a Forward Township supervisor who has a third-grade daughter, asked the board why it has taken nearly a month to investigate Whitby.
"There's no mystery about what happened," DeRosa said. "It should have taken one day."
Whitby, who remains the school's principal, didn't immediately return a message left at the school Thursday.
School board officials have refused to say what kind of discipline Whitby could face.
That which does not kill me makes me stronger...
Hey! How about all of you lackwits who thought this was a great idea now coming forward with you mea culpa. ??
How does objecting to your kid being publicly humiliated over a false charge equate to raising them to be liberals? Sounds to me like you two would prefer them to be drones, submitting willingly to any abusive authority just because they're kids.
He reminds me of the DUmmies who still support Mary Mapes and Dan Rather -- getting in an attack on Bush is more important than the picky little detail or whether or not the accusation is correct.
Ooh, gotta see that one! I've only seen the one with Orson Wells. That was a good one too. Nice looking man until he got all bloated in his later years!
I dunno Bob. My youngest attends public middle school. It's rife with thieves. I suggested he put a small lock on his backpack. He said they would just break it. He prefers not to have his backpack ruined. Whatever we are doing as adults to raise kids today is not working.
The other day my boy's maple wood drumsticks were broken in two by a kid reaching through a tiny opening in his locker. My son said he knew who did it. I asked him if he saw it. He said no, the other kids ratted this kid out. I said we can't do anything. My wife's like, I'm going to say something to the kid. I advised to do nothing since she can't prove he did it.
This Principal messed up but we don't have a good situation either way in my eyes. You let it go and it's a downward spiral from there.
The Principal must have asked the other kid and the other kid must have said they saw this kid do it. He said/she said. The Principal should have let it go. Happy?
Sue em! There's a lotto ticket under every rock!
sigh.
Wrong sue the bonehead principle for defamation, harassment, child abuse, felonious stupidity then sue the school board for not having sufficient oversight of what the hell is going on in the school .Instead of monetary damages demand a house cleaning that will make a Staliniist purge look like a church picnic.
Well, then just let's get a pair of scissors and cut the "thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor" commandment out of our bibles.
She must be spanked!
And...
Libel and slander laws have been around for centuries before this ever happened.
A "justice" without truth is simply a power play. I suppose you wish for the old USSR back?
I would have expected the OTHER kid (who lied) to get the shame treatment AND be made to apologize for getting the first one in trouble, if they were to be consistent in their principal principles.
You know what they say about free babysitting; you get what you pay for.
I agree with the idea that she should take the wronged student and go to each class she made the student go to, and stand there with her to face each class and apologize for what she did.
After that, then comes the deluge. Look hard at her whole record. Surely there is more than this one incident. Get her on past misdeeds and let her go.
If her record is spotless except for this, she could stay on only if she does ten thousand mea culpas and keeps her record clean from here on.
Well, it looked like she didn't even bother to investigate very much. Take her off the classroom floor and make her do an office job, the duller the better.
This is useful training for the captives so that they grow up realizing who controls their lives: the officials of the state, who never have to answer for anything, no matter how egregious their actions.
I was thinking the same thing, take this bad situation and use it to some kind of good, show the child how absolute power can allow things like this to happen and explain how to combat it.
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