DeKalb Teacher Accused of Abuse, Anti-Semitism
The DeKalb teacher accused in January 2018 of abuse and anti-Semitism remains employed by the district.
Rachel is a reporter/contributor for the AJT and graduated from the University of Central Florida in Orlando. After post graduate work at Columbia University, she teaches writing at Georgia State and hosts/produces cable programming. She can currently be seen on Atlanta Interfaith Broadcasters.
The DeKalb teacher accused in January 2018 of abuse and anti-Semitism remains employed by the district, according to the DeKalb County School District.
The January accusations were made at Peachtree Charter Middle School, when a young student reported that the teacher had stuck out his foot to trip her causing her lunch to fly everywhere, then didn’t offer to help and instead laughed at her. This incident came after the student had already told her mother of other events, including the teacher saying to her daughter that he “would have known you were a Jew just by looking at you.” The same day as the tripping incident, a different student reported that the same teacher had pushed a small boy out of his seat, held him down, and yelled in his face with a megaphone.
The mother of the student who was tripped sent an email to the principal and vice principal once she learned about the incident. Although she was told the teacher would be removed from the classroom, he was not suspended or put on leave during the inquiry. The teacher was switched to a different classroom eventually, but he was not placed on leave until WSB-TV caught wind of the story and began investigating on Jan. 24, 2018.
According to a statement released Dec. 17, 2018 by the DeKalb County School District, “an investigation was conducted, and the teacher was appropriately disciplined and assigned to another position within the district.”
This was not the first time an incident of faith-based bullying occurred at Peachtree Charter. In 2013, DeKalb County School District entered into an agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice aimed at reducing bullying at the school.The terms of the agreement ended in 2015, but many critics of the school district have called for a need to step in once again to prevent incidents at the school. The agreement was initially signed after another former student was allegedly targeted with verbal and physical harassment because of his religion.
Lauren Menis, founder of the Atlanta Initiative Against Anti-Semitism, said the teacher should not have remained in the classroom after the most recent anti-Semitic incident. “If a teacher accused of something like this is still in a class teaching, that’s not good,” she said. “This appears to go beyond hate to actual assault.”
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