New York Daily News – by PHILIP CAULFIELD
Surveillance video has emerged showing a Connecticut principal dragging two kindergarten students through the halls of the school by their arms and legs.
Carmen Perez Dickson was suspended from Tisdale Elementary School in Bridgeport for six months late last year after an investigation into the incidents, which occurred in February and March of 2012.
But videos of the ugly moments surfaced in local media last week, leading to renewed calls for Dickson to be fired.
The former principal, who has worked in the schools for three decades, is set to return to work at the school district in March, local ABC News reported,
She will not return to Tisdale Elementary, but could be a principal at another school, school officials said.
Nakeya Hargrove, whose daughter was one of the dragged students, told local ABC News she was outraged at the idea that Dickson would get reinstated.
NEWS 12 CONNECTICUT
Former Tisdale Elementary principal Carmen Perez Dickson will return to work in the Bridgeport, Conn., school district after her suspension for dragging children through school halls.
“She dragged my daughter like she was some kind of animal,” Hargrove told the station.
“Who in their right mind would let a principal go back to any school in Bridgeport and be a principal again?”
EYEWITNESS NEWS 3
Carmen Perez Dickson will not return to Tisdale Elementary after being caught dragging kindergarten students there, but could get a job as a principal somewhere else in the Bridgeport, Conn., school district.
During the investigation, Perez’s attorney said the videos didn’t tell the whole story, and that both children had caused repeated disruptions.
Bridgeport Public Schools’ chief Sandra Kase said the videos made her sick, but, ultimately, the school board made the final decision to suspend Dickson, not fire her.
It was the superintendent’s decision whether she would be given a principal’s job or an administrative one, she said.
“Principals are supposed to be protectors of children, they’re not supposed to hurt children,” Kase told ABC News.
As part of her suspension, Dickson was ordered to undergo training on how to deal with disruptive children.
A decision about her next job was expected to be made in the next two weeks, according to reports.
Having dealt in the past with kids whose intolerable behavior landed them in treatment, and having dealt with parents with zero parenting skills and zero desire to learn to be an effective parent to their “angels,” I wouldn’t be too hard on the principal. Give her, and the teachers, some training in PMAB and behavior therapy, and send her back in to set up a behavior contract with the parents on their angels’ behavior in school with consequences, positive and negative, for good behavior and bad behavior. The parents get all offended, but it usually works like a charm. By the time the parents’ employers tell them no more time off to get their children from school, or lose their jobs, the parents finally get serious about seeing that their “angels” learn to behave appropriately.
The only thing ugly I saw here was a newscaster trying to foment public outrage and make a mountain out of a molehill, and I would guess the writer of this story has not spent any time parenting young children.
No cameras at Sandy Hook Elementary?