If just one Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools administrator had taken a few minutes to show they genuinely cared about what happened to Smithfield Elementary School teacher Sonal Patel on March 20, you’d probably be reading something else in this space.
What happened instead goes to the core of the problem in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools.
Smithfield Elementary needs to keep teachers like Sonal Patel. Almost 70 percent of its students are minorities, and 61 percent qualify for the free and reduced lunch program.
Patel was fresh out of college, and people told her what most teachers hear. Certain schools are easier to teach in than others. But she liked Smithfield, and she didn’t listen to that.
“You think you can change what they said,” stated Patel. “You think you can make a difference. A kid is a kid. It doesn’t matter to me.”
A lot of teachers don’t have Patel’s attitude. Many would rather flock to the suburbs and teach well-behaved children whose parents volunteer at their schools and make sure they do their homework. As the superintendent search heated up in March, candidates to lead the school system talked endlessly to community groups about their strategies for keeping good teachers in all the system’s schools. Meanwhile, Patel fought her battle against the CMS bureaucracy alone.
On March 20, Patel mad the mistake of calling a parent of one of her kindergarten students who had been misbehaving in class. The parent arrived at the school and after talking to her child, decided to take him home. When the parent refused to go to the office to sign the child out first, Patel told the mom that, as per school policy, the child couldn’t leave.
According to an internal memo written by a teacher’s assistant who was present at the time, the mother assaulted Patel in front of her class. She smacked Patel and grabbed her by the face, “pushing her head against the wall with visible force.”
“Ms. Patel appeared dazed and at that point, she fell to the floor,” the teacher’s assistant wrote.
Patel says she was in a lot of pain and wanted a doctor. A school administrator eventually drove her to one, but only after Patel says administrators drilled her on the importance of not contacting the media about the incident or telling any of her colleagues about it. Patel says administrators propped her up on a rolling chair and pushed her to the parking lot along a circuitous route so no one would see her.
Patel couldn’t understand why no one called the police to arrest the woman who had just assaulted her or have her removed from campus. The first the police heard of the matter was from the mother, who called the day of the incident to provide her version of the story — specifically, that she was pulling on a door and that Patel was holding onto it, causing Patel to be accidentally knocked to the ground.
Patel says she called the school the next day to ask administrators to file a police report with her, but was told that everyone was busy in a meeting. No one ever called her back, she said, so she filed the report on her own. A school security officer did eventually call her, but not until two days after the attack, Patel says.
“In this particular instance, we followed our standard guidelines,” said CMS spokesperson LaTarzja Henry. “Anytime a teacher is a victim of crime on campus, he/she is encouraged to contact law enforcement officials and/or complete a police report.”
Henry says the school’s principal told Patel to complete a police report and that he contacted CMS Law Enforcement the same day the incident occurred.
Patel suffered a torn ACL, a knee joint effusion, and a chipped knee, and has had to undergo surgery and months of physical therapy. But her battle didn’t end there. School administrators initially coded the attack as an accident, which meant Patel only got two-thirds of her salary while out of work, rather than her full salary, which state law says she is entitled to if she is injured in an episode of violence in the classroom.
Meanwhile, the warrant for the mother’s arrest on assault charges languished for three months. Judy Kidd, president of the Classroom Teachers Association, was furious when she found out about what happened to Patel and helped her straighten out the mess, including the reinstatement of her full salary. A spokesperson for the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department (CMPD) says the department tried to serve the warrant on the mother twice in April, but couldn’t find her. It was finally served in June when frustrated former Charlotte City Council member Don Reid got on the phone with Sheriff Jim Pendergraph and asked that something be done. Though it wasn’t the sheriff’s responsibility to serve CMPD’s warrant, the woman was arrested within hours of the call.
Meanwhile, Patel is recovering from surgery at her parents’ home in Tennessee. Will she come back and teach again at CMS? So far, the young teacher who just wanted to make a difference remains undecided.
E-mail Tara at tara.servatius@creativeloafing.com.
This article appears in Jul 12-18, 2006.
Why does it seem that Pendergraph is the only offical in the county able to accomplish anything. Crime runs rampent on the west side, is increasing on the east side, and CMPD is busy making sure no ones drives around too much in uptown to do anything about it. Or for that matter, find a person.
As a member of the staff at Scmithfield Elementary, I was shocked at the way Sonal’s situation was handled. We were told in a faculty meeting “not to discuss the situation because we didn’t have all the facts. There were things going on that we did not know about” Hush..Hush…. Don’t stir up the media. Most of us were really upset about the way the situation was handled. This could have happened to any of us and we would have expected it to be handled in a proper professional way. Other situations arose in the school that were not handled period.
The motto at Smithfield and in other schools in CMS is “Don’t Rock the Boat” and everything will be fine. Thank goodness the teachers of CMS have Judy Kidd and the Classroom Teacher’s Association. Although their voice is small it is still a voice. If CMS wants to keep teachers it’s time they acknowledged that teachers have rights, and nurture their young teachers; don’t drive them out of CMS and out of education altogether. My message for Sonol is not to give up on education because of this incident.. but to seek your dream elsewhere where you will be appreciated.
It seems to me that Gorman desperately needs to put in place an ombudsman in order to give teachers and teaching staff a means to get their concenrs past the filter of the self-interested bureacracy.
Thank you for the article.
The way teachers are treated is horrible. Government officials seem to only want to talk about the need for pay raises for teachers. Although I am not against pay raises, they are missing the boat entirely. New teachers are leaving the profession not because of low pay but because of bureaucracy that disrespects them and hinders them from being what they entered the profession to be – good teachers.
The sad reality is that this woman will probably get off with hardly any repercussion for her assault. It is any wonder our situations in schools and society are deteriorating when such actions as these are tolerated.
Given the violence against teachers and students in CMS and the ubiquity of video cameras, why not install video cameras in each and every classroom. Sure, the teachers don’t want a record of everything they say and do, but in CMS it may the only way to “fairly” screen out the problems without relying on “he said/she said.” Don’t they use these cameras in the school buses?
CMS in action once again. An out-of-control parent assaults a teacher in front of an entire classroom of impressionable witnesses, and CMS fails to stand up to do the right thing until it was shamed into doing so.
Of course the teacher has a “black mark” on her personal record that can never be erased… she spoke with the press without “permission” and told the ugly truth about how CMS was more concerned with image than justice.
Of course, this happened under the Haithcock Administration…
and I experienced a similar set of circumstances under the Pughsley Administration. Maybe this this will end with the new “sheriff” in town. One can only hope.
As usual, it’s the teacher’s fault that the thug-woman assaulted her and got away with it. At our school, a thug-woman like that refused to leave the bus parking lot and tried to back her van over about 10 teachers in the bus parking lot, actually bumping 2 teachers! Adminstrators did nothing about it; she was not banned from the property nor were charges pressed against her for doing this. We are always told the mantra–“Don’t tell the media about anything.”
Great article, it’s so sad that it sheds an accurate light on the events that happen in the schools here. This story is only the tip of the iceburg that goes on in CMS schools. At a nearby middle school, I was assaulted by a student and no support was rendered by admin. After a short stay at a psychiatric facility the student returned to the class.
The job is about 90% babysitting and student just are not held accountable for their actions. All the blam for any incident lies on the teacher and I’m here to tell you…you are alone in your stuggle! It is almost complete insanity for any teacher to work in this county with the current political environment.
The best solution I see is more alternative schools and tougher penalties for violent kids & parents…otherwise CMS will never become the place for teaching & learning that it should be.
Good Article. School authorities think they can get away with such behavior. I guess not any more.
Josh
I’m sorry to say that as a former CMS employee I had a similar incident occur during my first year as a teacher at a school in an extremely low income neighborhood. After a student threatened me with a gun (the child was only 11 years old), I told the principal I was not comfortable having him in my classroom and as a result the child was transferred to another homeroom across the hall. Aside from a couple of days of out of school suspension, I believe that was the only punishment he received. These kinds of things happen too often in schools throughout CMS- even the so-called “good” schools (where I have also worked and seen what goes on behind the scenes). I am now a parent and I’m pretty sure that I won’t be sending my daughter to any public school, whether it is in a good neighborhood or not. Sadly, we cannot trust that our children are safe in a school system that values PR more than the welfare of its students.