Parents: Teacher swore at students
Recording device catches mistreatment of special-needs kids
Cursing, the sound of slapping and autistic kindergartners’ screams and cries can be heard on a recording of a Pembroke Pines elementary school teacher and a teacher’s aide, a police report says.
Broward Schools Superintendent Robert Runcie met with the parents of the seven children who attend the Pasadena Lakes Elementary classroom where the two educators allegedly verbally and physically mistreated their special-needs students.
Runcie vowed that the teacher and the aide would never work in Broward County again, parents said.
Everyone at the meeting was “genuine enough,” said Jason Segelbaum, whose 5-year-old was in the kindergarten class. But he largely felt Runcie was paying “lip service.”
“When you’re dealing with a system as large as this and as dysfunctional as this, making changes is nearly impossible,” Segelbaum said.
When other parents, the Adars, heard their son curse at home, they sent him to school with a recording device attached to his backpack.
What they heard was the teachers allegedly lashing out at students, many of them non-verbal and unable to communicate.
“You better not touch me or scratch me, you understand? You are getting a diaper change!” one teacher said.
The same teacher was captured using profanity.
“That mother [f——-] say [s—-] to me,” she said.
“Get to work. … Drag your ass over there. Watch me. Try me,” a teacher is heard saying in the recording.
Verbal abuse wasn’t the only mistreatment allegedly heard on the recording, according to a Pembroke Pines police offense report.
“In the recording, the suspect sounds angry and what appears to be slapping sounds can be heard,” the report said. “The victim yells out and begins to scream and cry.”
One parent told a police investigator his son “had come home in the past with abrasions and marks on his body,” according to the report.
Miriam Adar, of Fort Lauderdale, said she and her husband attached the device to the side of their son’s backpack and it “was visible.”
The situation is “extremely upsetting,” she said. “They treated him like garbage. Had I known, I would never have sent him there for one minute.” She has removed her son from the school.
“What these teachers did to these children was abuse,” said Segelbaum, who wants the teacher and teacher’s aide fired. “If you listen to the amount of hatred that they have toward certain children in the class, it’s frightening.”
Adar’s son “came home cursing up a storm,” Segelbaum said. “[His parents said] ‘He’s dropping the F-bomb and we don’t know where this is coming from.’”
The Adars initially thought there was a problem on the school bus, but recordings there over three days captured the driver and the driver’s assistant consistently singing “Wheels on the Bus” to the children.
Then they thought there was a problem on the playground. But a recording May 7 stunned parents when they heard the teachers’ voices instead.
“We were disgusted,” said Segelbaum, who has since gotten his son reassigned to another school.
Segelbaum, of Hollywood, said he is advocating for the placement of cameras in the classrooms for special-needs students to “intimidate the teachers” into not doing “anything to these students.”
“There’s no other way,” Segelbaum said. “Our children can’t tell us what’s going on.”
But on that front, Runcie and his staff, weren’t so promising, Segelbaum said.
A Pembroke Pines Police spokeswoman said the investigation is ongoing. The Broward Sheriff ’s Office’s Child Protective Investigations Section, which conducts investigations on behalf of the Florida Department of Children and Families, is also investigating, according to the Sheriff ’s Office.
The teacher and teacher’s aide “have been reassigned away from the school and students” and the “school and district staff continue to work with law enforcement,” a school district spokeswoman said. No other details were released by the district.
Late last week, the school district sent a robocall to every parent in the district with a message from Runcie. He assured parents that the teacher and teacher’s aide had been reassigned outside the school. “We are here to protect your children … and we will never compromise on that.”
Typically, such calls are directed to parents with children in a specific school, not the entire district. A follow-up robocall announced it had been sent districtwide in error.
Anna Fusco, the teacher’s union president, said the audio needs to be vetted to determine the “authenticity of it” and confirm it “wasn’t sliced or altered.” She also questioned if the recording was legal.
Florida is a two-party consent state, meaning both parties have to consent to a recording.
“Whether it’s [the recording is] going to be admissible in evidence, that’s up to whatever court this is in front of,” said attorney Martin Berger, who is representing three of the families.
The union is only representing the teacher’s assistant; the teacher is not a union member, Fusco said.
Neither the Broward schools or the union would identify the employees involved.