When looking at public school systems, one thing you often hear is that the safety of students and staff is of the utmost importance. That's supposedly job number one.
And I'm sure that at many schools, that's absolutely true.
But for one teacher at a school in Newport News, Virginia, that didn't seem to be how her school looked at it. This, of course, would be the teacher who was shot by a six-year-old student who brought his mother's gun to school, and who somehow made it past literally every administrator who had been told he likely had a gun.
Now, a civil trial has come to trial, and honestly, this just gets wild.
The civil trial filed by former teacher Abby Zwerner against former assistant principal Ebony Parker is taking place this week. Zwerner filed the $40 million lawsuit after she was shot by a 6-year-old student and nearly killed. Evidence and testimony so far in the case confirms that Parker was warned four separate times that the 6-year-old boy might have brought a gun to school.
An education expert testified yesterday that Parker had a duty to respond to those warnings.
Ann Shufflebarger, an expert on school administration called by Zwerner’s attorneys, testified that people alerted former assistant principal Ebony Parker four times to the gun they believed the student brought in a backpack...
"There are many things that needed to be done, and none of those were done at that time."
Shufflebarger testified that it was Parker’s job to confiscate the backpack, secure and search the student and contact law enforcement.
Not only did Parker not take these steps herself, she prevented anyone else from doing so.
A guidance counselor and administrator at the school said Parker also “forbade” teachers from searching the 6-year-old for a firearm, saying his mother would pick him up soon, the complaint says.
And how did that work out?
Well, we know that Zwerner was shot by the student.
John Sexton, at our sister site Hot Air, has some thoughts on what may have happened.
Parker's defense has argued that she did nothing wrong that day, but as I argued yesterday, I think there is likely a racial issue at play in this case that no one wants to talk about. Why didn't Parker act? I believe it's because the child, who had been in trouble at school before including choking a teacher the previous year, was black. Parker, as a black principal, was probably concerned about the so-called school to prison pipeline. If she had searched the backpack and found a gun she would have been obligated to call the police and this incident would have followed that student for years to come. I think she was hoping to avoid all of that, essentially for equity.
Honestly, this likely fits, though it's mostly speculation because Parker isn't about to admit to making a mistake like that.
The problem is that this fits a lot of the so-called social justice narrative we've seen in the last half-decade. The idea that if we just don't act and punish people, then they will somehow just start acting better and not go down the wrong path later in life.
This is an inane and insane idea to anyone who has dealt with children at any point in their lives.
Regardless of the speculation, though, this is a clear case of a school administration dropping the ball entirely. They were informed multiple times that the student had a gun. They did nothing to isolate the child, disarm him, or anything beyond apparently calling his mom to come and get him. Nothing at all.
It's a miracle no one was killed.
Zwerner is suing for millions, and I pray she gets every penny of it. She deserves it, and there's absolutely no way any administrator who does anything so stupid--and just claiming you did nothing wrong doesn't change the fact that anyone with two brain cells to rub against one another knows otherwise--should be in charge of cleaning a toilet, much less the education of young people.
How many other schools have so-called administrators doing the same thing, only they haven't been caught yet? How many people allow their supposed good intentions to cloud their judgment, allow the media's narrative to direct them to do something they should know is wrong, and just haven't gotten caught up in it yet?
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