Cobb fires teacher for putting child in trash can

The Cobb County School Board on Thursday voted to terminate the contract of a special education teacher accused of putting a secondgrader with autism in a trash can.

Mary Katherine Pursley, a teacher at Mt. Bethel Elementary, said at a tribunal hearing Monday at the Cobb school district office that she was trying to calm the child, not hurt him. She said the child was screaming and upset at an after-school program and she was attempting to get him to stop by holding him over a trash can to “shake out the grouchy,” comparing his behavior to Oscar the Grouch on Sesame Street.

“My intention was not to put him all the way in the can,” Pursley told a panel of former educators at the hearing. “I was sort of shaking him over the trash can.”

The board voted to terminate the teacher’s contract for the 2015-16 school year.

Attorneys for the school system argued Pursley “engaged in inap- propriate physical contact” with the student. Pursley has been with the school district for 21 years and has been on administrative leave with pay following the April 30 incident.

Pursley, 45, was arrested and charged with cruelty to children in the first degree.

Pursley then allegedly picked up the child by his legs, held him upside down and put him headfirst into a trash can, according to police.

The boy was crying, screaming and yelling “stop” while Pursley held him, the arrest warrant states. She then set him down on the floor. The incident was witnessed by two paraprofessionals and the school’s afterschool director.