EVSC won't say how it 'rectified' issue with teacher screaming at special-needs students

EVANSVILLE – Months after a group of parents say a teacher repeatedly screamed at and mocked a class of special-needs students, Evansville Vanderburgh School Corp. Superintendent David Smith claims the situation has been "rectified."

But whatever the solution was is unclear. And the EVSC, as it's done in multiple occasions in the past, is refusing to release information to the public.

The EVSC responded to a Courier & Press records request for the teacher's disciplinary records last week by saying it "does not have any records or documentation" pursuant to the request. A group of parents have said a teacher shouted at and "made fun of" non-verbal children in a classroom at Culver Family Learning Center, an early-education institution on the city’s South Side.

Some of the outbursts were caught on recordings that have since been shared with media outlets, including the Courier & Press.

When a reporter asked EVSC spokesman Jason Woebkenberg to provide some inkling into how the issue was handled – since the EVSC claimed to have no documentation on the matter – he said it was "incorrect" to say there were no disciplinary files for the teacher.

"The records we have are exempt from disclosure per IC 5-14-3-4," he said, citing state statute.

That statute, however, says "the factual basis for a disciplinary action in which final action has been taken and that resulted in the employee being suspended, demoted, or discharged" can be disclosed. The Courier & Press asked if that meant the resolution didn't result in any those punishments, but Woebkenberg never responded.

Parents picketed outside last week’s school board meeting and confronted Smith at the end of the session, asking to have their concerns put on a future meeting agenda.

Smith eventually told them the school system did a “thorough investigation.”

“And we took actions based upon our investigation,” he said. “An additional and outside entity, the Department of Child Services, performed an institutional investigation and they found the claims to be unsubstantiated.”

He said he couldn’t tell the parents any specifics due to “state and federal laws.” When the group accused the EVSC of “backing a bully teacher instead of our children,” Smith denied that.

“Ma’am, I would not make those claims,” he said. “I think the meeting is over, if you’re going to make claims like that.”

School board members then banged a gavel and ended the meeting.

The incident was part of a continuing effort by parents of Culver students to find answers after a series of recordings captured a teacher yelling at young nonverbal children multiple times throughout a school day last fall.

The recordings – which the parents sent to the Courier & Press and have since discussed in multiple stories with WFIE-NBC14 – include several outbursts from a female teacher.

The parents provided the Courier & Press with the name of the teacher they say is shouting in the recordings, but since the audio doesn’t contain specific names, and because the reported teacher’s identity hasn’t been released by the school system and she’s allegedly faced no disclosable discipline, the Courier & Press isn’t publishing an identity here.

At times the classroom will sound calm – kids singing along to barnyard songs, other teachers offering praise – when shouts come out of nowhere.

“Quiet! Now get down! Stop it!” the teacher yells at one point. “Quit tearing up my stuff! Go away! Go away!”

At one point, an adult voice infers that a student doesn’t need to wash his hands because he “eats dirt.” At another, she calls one of the pre-kindergarten special-needs children “hard to love.”

In yet another recording, a person the parents believe to be the same teacher loudly mimics a noise a non-verbal child makes and follows it up with this: “I tried to be a nice teacher but y’all can’t handle it. … I have to turn into a mean teacher.”

Victoria Ford is one of the protesting parents. She’s since started a private Facebook page in which parents organize protests and offer each other support. The page even contains a sympathetic, anonymous comment from a person claiming to be an EVSC teacher.

Other parents, meanwhile, suggest and praise different EVSC special-needs programs that could offer similar services.

Ford said her daughter was in the classroom when the recordings took place, and that the yelling negatively affected her behavior at home. She’s since been able to get her child placed in a different classroom – something many other parents have done as well – but said changing school corporations is out of the question due to the cost and the scarcity of developmental preschool programs in the area.

“If this is occurring, changes and protocol need to be put in place to protect our kids. And (they’re) not," she said. "And none of us parents feel like we are being heard. That’s a scary feeling.

“I feel like in today’s age, sending your kid to school anyways, you’re always going to have the fear of what can happen because, well, look at history. But you’re talking about kids who can’t defend themselves. They can’t come home and say ‘mommy, guess what my teacher said.’

“And I truly feel like our kids have been taken advantage of,” she said, “because the teacher is free to say and do what she wants.”

How the Culver recordings came about

The recordings come from a camera another parent attached to her child’s backpack. It wasn’t meant to document yelling in the classroom. The parent didn’t know that was happening at the time. Instead, it was only supposed to track the child in case they darted from the bus stop.

But one day, Ford said, the parent told her the child came home not acting like their usual self.

“If you have a special-needs kid and a new behavior starts, there’s normally an underlying trigger,” she said.

When the parent checked the recordings, she discovered multiple incidents of a female teacher shouting at children in the class. Since the camera was tucked in the kid’s backpack, the videos are mostly just a black screen interspersed with occasional, blurry images.

Much of the audio, though, is clear.

The teacher yells at the children to “stop yelling.” A demand to “please sit down!” is followed by a loud, frustrated grunt.

“Please stop (unintelligible) my chair! … My god!” the female voice shouts in one of the videos. “God bless America.”

Other outbursts are harder to decipher. Meanwhile, different adults in the room continue to speak to the children in calm voices, praising them when they drop a rock in a bucket to signal their attendance for the day, or leading them in story times and sing-alongs.

The yelling, though, affected how Ford’s daughter acted at home – even though she wasn’t the target of it. Ford said if she or her husband even raised their voice slightly to get the attention of their other child, their younger daughter would immediately cover her ears and cry.

On Friday, Woebkenberg sent the Courier & Press an official statement from EVSC.

"When this incident occurred in November, we immediately conducted a thorough review and responded accordingly by taking the appropriate actions. At the same time, Institutional DCS conducted an investigation and review and found the claim to be unsubstantiated," it reads. "Please understand that all employers and all schools are limited in what can be shared publicly regarding employees and students. We understand these limitations can be frustrating and often lead to questions about trust and transparency. We have never and will never tolerate any derogatory behavior or statements toward our students."

But Ford said her and other parents feel like they aren't being heard.

"We’ve done everything we know to do as parents,” she said.

This article originally appeared on Evansville Courier & Press: EVSC teacher accused of screaming at special-needs students