Assistant principal accused of striking 5th-grader retires

Official: Pasteur would rather leave early than fight allegations

An assistant principal at a school for troubled students has decided to retire early rather than fight allegations that she struck a student with a walkie-talkie and then tried to interfere with an investigation.

Tara Pasteur, 65, stepped down this week from Pine Ridge Education Center in Fort Lauderdale, an alternative school for students with behavioral and academic problems, where she’d worked since 2017.

She was being recommended for a five-day suspension for an incident involving a fifth-grade student. The boy showed up to school in December 2018 despite being suspended. While in the front office with Pasteur, he became defiant and tried to leave. “Pasteur suddenly became upset, grabbed her walkie-talkie by the antenna and charged at [the boy], then struck him in the back with her radio,” according to a district complaint.

When district investigators came to the school in January to review the case, Pasteur called a school clerk who witnessed it and asked her to downplay what happened, telling her, “Please don’t get me in trouble. I was only playing with him,” according to a district complaint.

Pasteur, who makes $88,000 a year, planned to appeal the five-day suspension to a state judge. Now that she’s retiring, the district will withdraw the discipline request, according to a statement from the office of Chief Communication Officer Kathy Koch.

Pasteur had planned to retire at the end of the school year but decided to leave now, said Lisa Maxwell, executive director of the Broward Principals and Assistants Association.

“She made a decision with her family she did not want to go through the process and

opted instead to just not finish the school year,” Maxwell said.

Reached by phone Friday, Pasteur hung up before a reporter could finish explaining the reason for the call.

The December altercation with the fifth-grader happened while Pasteur was still on state probation for another incident involving a child. In 2015, while an assistant principal at Margate Elementary, she was accused of putting her arm around a 12-year-old girl’s neck, placing the student in a bear hug and pinning the student’s face against the wall, according to a state complaint. She also received a reprimand from the school district.

Broward Schools Superintendent Robert Runcie first brought the proposed fiveday suspension to the School Board on Sept. 5.

“Certainly when you hit a child in any form that’s a minimum of five days for us,” Runcie said at the meeting.

But School Board members questioned whether the suspension was too lenient, given this was her second incident. The district often uses “progressive discipline,” or increasingly harsher penalties for employees with multiple infractions.

“So the third time you hit a kid it’s 10 days and the fourth time you get terminated?” asked Board member Laurie Rich Levinson.

Runcie first suggested the employee may be terminated if there’s another infraction. But after Levinson asked if that means an employee can act inappropriately three times before being fired, Runcie said, “No, that’s not always the case. It depends on the circumstances.”

Board member Donna Korn also voiced concern at the meeting, saying, “to have an administrator at that location feeling as if taking physical action allows them to continue to be in that position is troubling.”

School Board Member Rosalind Osgood said there’s more to the story. She said Sept. 5 that Pasteur’s hand was in a sling because of an incident involving another child at Pine Ridge.

“That says to me there is a lot more going on at the school,” Osgood said. “I’m not for anyone hitting kids, but I am for being fair. I don’t want a kid to be in a situation to be beat and mistreated, but I also don’t want an employee to be in a situation where they’re being beat or mistreated.”

Runcie had planned to recommend the same five-day suspension at a Sept. 17 meeting, despite some School Board members requesting tougher action.

Although she won’t be suspended, her case will still go to the state Department of Education for review, which could result in fines and action on her teaching license.

Pasteur