Educator, suspended for allegedly abusing autistic student, elected Seattle teachers’ union president

NY Post ^ | 05/12/2026 | Caitlin McCormack

[DFG]

A special education instructor placed on paid leave for allegedly abusing an autistic third-grader was elected president of the Seattle teachers’ union on Friday.

Ibijoke Idowu-Holiday, a former Black Lives Matter organizer and special education teacher at Rising Star Elementary, won the election to lead the union representing 6,000 staffers in the Seattle Public Schools system.

The educator rose to the top in spite of the disturbing accusations against her.

Idowu-Holiday was accused of repeatedly abusing a disabled boy over the last school year by the student’s family, including one instance that was witnessed by his therapist.

The child, who has autism, a speech delay and is partially nonverbal, came home with bruises the size of adult fingertips on his arms in October, then again in December, according to a complaint obtained by the Seattle Times.

The third-grader’s therapist also saw Idowu-Holiday chuck a marker at the boy’s head while he was working at the classroom whiteboard in December, the complaint alleged.

The boy’s parents presented their son with visual aids, which he used to identify Idowu-Holiday as the perpetrator, the complaint said.

A police report obtained by the local outlet supplemented the family’s accusations and divulged extra details about the special ed teacher allegedly grabbing several students by the arm to the point where they complained about it hurting them.

Idowu-Holiday was placed on paid leave over the allegations in December, Bev Redmond, the Seattle Education Association’s chief of staff and public affairs, confirmed to the local outlet. The district also reported the allegations to the Seattle Police Department.

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TOPICS: US: Washington
KEYWORDS: blackcrime; blm; idowuholiday; seattle; teachersunion

[AppyPappy]

Autism Lives Matter

[SMARTY]

Is her name, “I be a joke’ ?

[ClearCase_guy]

Beat me to it!

[MarlonRando]

with her name, she could be a Marvel Superhero

[martin_fierro]

I kid you not.

[nuke_road_warrior]

Of course she’d elected as president of the teacher’s union, she has all the right socialist credentials. Black Lives Matter organizer, disabled child abuser, and no doubt wants to “tax the rich” to raise teacher salaries.

[Dave911]

Another example of how sick and depraved our teacher’s unions are.

[hal ogen]

Aren’t those “educators” a barrel of laughs?

Stop funding public “education” which for the most part is a grift on the taxpayer, a pathetic joke and child abuse.

[chajin]

"Autistic people have been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the BLM race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior, that they had no rights which any teacher of color was bound to respect; and that the autistic might justly and lawfully be reduced to abuse for her benefit."

Dred Scott, 2026 revision

[BobL]

“Educator, suspended for allegedly abusing autistic student, elected Seattle teachers’ union president”

And THOUSANDS of reliable Trump voters will STILL send their kids to those school...simply because they’re ‘free’.

It’s hopeless.

[sonova]

Is her name, “I be a joke’ ?

++++++++++

More like,

I be a shwoog.

[suthener]

“And THOUSANDS of reliable Trump voters will STILL send their kids to those school...simply because they’re ‘free’.”

Where I live if your child goes to a public school there’s about an 50% chance their teacher will be a low IQ ghettopotamus. I would never send my child to a public school. I went to a parent conference with a woman one time about her son. This was in a school for the “gifted” (high IQ students). The black principal and black teacher had a combined IQ of about 90. The conference went downhill when the woman I was with kept correcting the teacher’s Ebonics with actual English.

[brookwood]

Autistic children are prone to violent outbursts. In this case an attempt to control the child’s violence could be termed “abuse” by someone who for example wanted to sue the pants off the school district.

[Wuli]

This incident tells you all you need to know about the teachers’ unions - they are not about “education” and merely 100% about union power.

[GMThrust]

Looks like one of the Fat Albert characters.

[Biblebelter]

I wonder what the race was of the abused student.

I GUARANTEE if the perp was white and the student was black the race card would have been played.