- April 25, 2024
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Flagler Schools handled nine internal investigations over 30 days in April and May, finding fault in five of them and issuing warnings and reprimands.
In two of the cases in which a staff member was found to be at fault, district staff were reprimanded or warned over grabbing hold of uncooperative elementary schoolers. In the other three, a teacher was reprimanded over an attendance issue, a bus driver was warned for driving a bus after she’d been ordered not to drive, and a teacher was warned for allowing students to use highlighters during a state exam.
The two cases of staff members physically manhandling students occurred with third-graders.
In late February, Rymfire Elementary School teacher Stephen Cairns twice moved a student by the arms, in one case after the boy threw flashcards at other students in class, according to a district investigation. Cairns also denied the student the use of a desk after the boy dumped his desk onto the floor. Cairns was reprimanded.
The second case, on Feb. 26, occurred at Belle Terre Elementary with a third grader who was refusing to get out of his grandmother’s car at the school drop-off.
The boy’s grandmother was able to drag him out of the car, but he then sat down and refused to move. He had a history of darting out into traffic at the car line, and Assistant Principal Katrina Feola and another staff member took his arms and pulled him off the ground, then steered him into the school’s wellness room.
The boy spit on, kicked at and tried to bite Feola and other staff members, and tried to bang his head on the wall and bite his own fingers. One of the people at the scene asked if anyone had a “spit sock” — a kind of mesh hood. A school deputy offered one, and it was placed on the boy’s head.
District Coordinator of Professional Standards Robert Ouellette faulted Feola for restraining the boy when he “was not at substantial risk for harming himself or others” and for allowing other staff to use the spit sock, which the report refers to as an “unapproved mechanical constraint.” Feola was also faulted for the fact that some of the staff members involved in the incident had let their Nonviolent Crisis Intervention Plan training lapse.
Feola, in a written response to the district, said she’d taken hold of the boy initially out of concern about him running into traffic, and had allowed another staff member to use the spit sock because of concerns about COVID-19.
She wrote that she’d done the best she could at the time, “while reacting in the context of a fast-paced, physical intervention with a student who was endangering himself and adults.”
The incident with the bus driver occurred on April 23. Driver Cindy Buteau had recently failed a retraining session, prompting a supervisor to order her not to drive until she passed. But on April 23, Buteau boarded a bus along with another driver, and drove it to Indian Trails Middle School. A warning was issued against Buteau.
In the remaining two cases, iFlagler teacher Irina Rang was reprimanded for working remotely after she’d been told to work from Bunnell Elementary School; and Wadsworth Elementary School teacher Rachel Boyett was issued a warning after letting students use highlighters during a Florida Statewide Assessments test. Boyett said she hadn’t known that highlighters were not permitted.
