A teacher was placed on administrative leave after allegedly taping a 10-year-old student to a chair at a school in the Forney Independent School District (FISD).
The boy’s mother, Charlotte Johnson, whose son attends Crosby Elementary School, wants the teacher arrested and terminated from employment with the district.
“I’m very emotional. I haven’t had any sleep,” Johnson told NBC News. “That’s something you don’t do to a child.”
Johnson’s son was allegedly throwing a football into the air in a hallway on February 22 after lunch. When he was asked to stop by a campus employee, he stopped, Johnson claimed. However, the teacher in question allegedly grabbed him by the arm and walked him to his classroom.
“She went to another teacher’s room to get some tape. She came back into the classroom and that’s when she began to tape him,” claimed Johnson, speaking with NBC 5.
The teacher left his arms free but taped his body to the chair. When she left the room, other students reportedly began hitting the boy.
“My son has dwarfism. He’s 10, but he doesn’t look like he is,” Johnson told NBC News. “He tells me one of the students told him, ‘I’m going to slap you as hard as Will Smith slapped Chris Rock.'”
The boy managed to free himself, and upon his teacher’s return, he said he had a headache. He was then sent to the nurse’s office.
“Regardless of what a child does, when is it ever appropriate for a school teacher to reprimand them in that way?” asked Krystal Williams, Johnson’s attorney, speaking with Fox 4.
Johnson told NBC 5 that she has been seeking records from the school regarding the incident and video footage of what her son was doing in the hallway. But she has been told that she would need to file an open records request with the district.
The incident follows a recent poll conducted by The Dallas Express that found a plurality of respondents wanted their local school districts to be more transparent. A majority of parents in the Dallas Independent School District (DISD) registered that same sentiment following years of scandal.
Police are currently investigating the alleged taping incident after Johnson insisted charges be filed.
A district spokesperson told Fox 4, “The teacher has been placed on administrative leave. Forney ISD police are investigating. There are two sides to every story. We will allow police to carry out its due diligence.”
The Dallas Express reached out to FISD and asked whether the teacher in question had a background check conducted upon being hired and if she had a disciplinary record with the district, but no response was received by press time.
