The Tribune

By EARYEL BOWLEG

Tribune Staff Reporter

ebowleg@tribunemedia.net

PARENTS have accused a teacher at Palmdale Primary School of bullying their children, prompting two to remove their child from her class and one to send her son to a different school.

The parents claim they have collectively complained to the school’s senior administrators, the district superintendent and the deputy director of education, all of whom failed to address their concerns.

In one incident, during a virtual learning session, the teacher allegedly told a parent: “Who ass I should cut, you or your child ass?”

Jannie Moxey said she removed her son from the primary school in January. She said during a virtual learning session, she told her son to take a picture of the computer screen to practice in the future. She said when her son took the photo, the teacher accused him of cheating.

She said the teacher called her after her son turned off his camera, uttering profanities.

“She called me,” the mother said, “and when she called me, I was in front of a pastor because I wanted my son to go to homeschooling. And I said to him, ‘I’m sorry I need to take this call but I need to take it on the speakerphone’.”

She said when she picked up the phone, the teacher reportedly said: ‘Who ass I should cut, you or you child ass?’

She said: “Is that any way to talk to a parent and talk to a primary school child?”

She said her husband got involved in another incident.

She said when her husband knocked on his son’s door to check on him, the teacher said: ‘I don’t want nobody in the room with you. Tell them get out. Who was in the room with you?’

The parent said her husband replied: “I live in this flippin’ house and nobody tells me where to go.”

She said her son was discouraged from signing into school classes and told his parents: “I keep on getting rowed. I could never do nothing right.”

Another parent said she often complained to the principal about how the teacher threw “jeers” at her son.

She said her son was eventually removed from the class, but the teacher still found ways to upset him.

The teacher, she said, told “children in her class they’re not supposed to speak to him anymore. He’s not in their class anymore. He’s not on their level anymore”.

She said she reported the problem to the district superintendent and the deputy director of education.

Another parent had her daughter removed from the class, saying after she complained about four missing grades on her child’s report card, the teacher began excluding her daughter from activities.

“She would refuse to call her by her name,” she said. “She would call her ‘she, the student, her.’ She would never call her by her name. I spoke to her about that and since then she has taken it to the extreme I would say, by having the security call the police on me when I went to collect my daughter from class.”

The Tribune approached the teacher for comment but she declined to comment directly on the allegations.

The school principal, Phyllis Johnson, denied the allegations.

“There are no pressing concerns that come. I have almost 500 students in the school and I have not had parents coming in in a drove complaining about teachers Maybe one or two disgruntled parents who are upset because they do not want to conform to the policy and procedure of the Ministry of Education and that of the school and everywhere we go, we do have parents who are disgruntled so they find avenues.”

Acting Director of Education Dominique McCartney-Russell said she was unaware of the matter. Deputy Director of Education Julian Anderson declined to comment.