DECKER PRAIRIE EL
Teacher: . Heather Kearns And Jennifer Battista
Two who shouldn't be teaching
Teacher Complaint About: Decker Prairie El - . Heather Kearns And Jennifer Battista
Author: Undisclosed
Grade: 3
Occur date: Feb 25 2009
Post date: Jun 15 2010, 07:15:16 AM
Teacher Complaint: . Heather Kearns And Jennifer Battista - Decker Prairie El
I first contacted Mrs. Ragan by letter in the year 2008 when I noticed my sons grades falling. I looked into school resources and found intervention classes and asked to have him in these. He went on to summer school and then was placed in the 3rd grade . On September of of this year while in 3rd grade, he told me that he didn't have to study because the library had a book club that gave tests to pass you onto the next grade level. I parked my car and asked Mrs. Pitts , the schools counselor if she would explain to him that this was a misunderstanding. Since I had an auto accident 5 days prior, our family was going through some difficult times and my son was being more defiant than usual about doing homework. Mrs. Pitts explained that I could speak with the schools counselor and I asked him to evaluate my son. My son complained nearly every day of his classmates harrassing him, calling him gay, slow and stupid and nothing was done about it. My son became angry and frustrated this year. I asked Mrs. Kearns what was going on and she said my son was not normal. During a conference, I was presented with a graph of his classroom grade fluctuations and a number of oops slips indicating he may have ADHD.
My son was placed on ADHD medication in February. In March, I was told by his teachers there was improvement in his behavior and grades. I found this to be very confusing because there was an increase in oops slips. During field day, he was slighted by some classmates and Mrs. Kearns sent him off to time out without any explanation. He cried, not knowing why he was in trouble. I asked his teacher why she sent him off and she said he pushed someone. I was videotaping this and he had not pushed anyone. I asked him if he gets in trouble alot without knowing why and he said yes. He also admits to the times he does do something wrong.
During the last 3 months of school. he said his teacher , Mrs. Battista, at times, refused to give him pencils when he needed one for assignments. I addressed this issue with her and supplied him with more pencils but there was still a problem. During one spelling test, he was afraid to ask if he could sharpen his broken pencil because some other student was told he couldn't sharpen his. He was unable to write any words down during the test and the teacher did not ask him why. He came home and told me why he couldn't take his test. After explaining this to his teacher she allowed him to take the test and he received a 93 which otherwise would have been a zero. During our last conference just 3 days before school ended for the summer, his teachers, the principal and the vice principal said he passed his TAKS tests but since he "refused" to do some assignments, he failed. I was told by one of the intervention instructors that he didn't even know the basics of math, yet in all of his timed tests he scored no less than 95 but he did require a few extra minutes (3) to finish. I contested to the retainment trying to explain why I think he had such grade fluctuations. The principal was not concerned and did not consider anything I had to say was relevant to anything. My son said he would ask for help and when none or little was given, he would ask to go to the assistant principles office to complete his work. Mrs. Ragan, the assistant principle, said that he always completed his assignments in her office. Also during this last conference, I asked his teachers if he ever complained of feeling ill or was sent to the nurses office. They said no, yet on the BASC questionaires for ADHD assessment their answers placed him on a "clinically significant" range scale. There were also many other answers that were not a correct reflection of my child.
I called the districts office and asked to appeal the decision to retain him, an appointment was scheduled for the next day. I presented my facts and disclosed that I had videotapes of all the meetings to this person I thought was handling the appeal and was told that it was still best to retain my son . When I said I wanted to appeal to the board of trustees he said I would need to appeal to the principal , again. It wasn't until after this meeting that I realized I was not appealing to the correct person. I want to file a complaint because I believe this year , my sons teachers did not give him the same opportunities as other students and prevented him from being able to work on classroom assignments. My son said he felt like a soul in the class with no body , invisible, because when he would ask for help, Mrs. Kearns would ignore him. They said the reason they are retaining him is because of the "gaps" in his grades. I believe those "gaps" were the result of his teachers preventing and interfering with his ability to do the work.
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