Follow-up on ‘Teacher Forces ‘Only Friend the Five-Year-Old Ever Made’ to Denounce Him Publicly’
In my May blog post Teacher Forces 'the Only Friend the Five-Year-Old Boy Has Ever Made' to Denounce Him Publicly, I covered the Alex Barton (pictured) case. According to one news report:
Melissa Barton said she is considering legal action after her son's kindergarten teacher led his classmates to vote him out of class.
After each classmate was allowed to say what they didn't like about Barton's 5-year-old son, Alex, his Morningside Elementary teacher said they were going to take a vote, Barton said.
By a 14 to 2 margin, the class voted him out of the class.
Barton said her son is in the process of being diagnosed with Aspberger's, a type of high-functioning autism...
Alex has had disciplinary issues because of his disabilities, Barton said. The school and district has met with Barton and her son to create an individual education plan, she said. His teacher, Wendy Portillo, has attended these meetings, she said.
Barton said after the vote, Alex's teacher asked him how he felt.
He said, 'I feel sad,' she said.
Alex left the classroom and spent the rest of the day in the nurse's office, she said...
Alex hasn't been back to school since then, and Barton said he won't be returning. He starts screaming when she brings him with her to drop off his sibling at school.
Barton said Alex is reliving the incident.
They said he was 'disgusting' and 'annoying,' Barton said.
'He was incredibly upset,' Barton said. 'The only friend he has ever made in his life was forced to do this.'
The Palm Beach Post recently did a follow-up article on the case. From Year suspension backed for teacher who had kindergartners vote to oust class mate (11/18/08):
FORT PIERCE — A St. Lucie County teacher who sparked a national controversy for instructing her students to vote on whether an autistic boy should remain in his kindergarten class was placed on unpaid leave Tuesday.
The St. Lucie County School Board voted unanimously Tuesday night to accept the recommendation of Superintendent Michael Lannon to place Wendy Portillo on unpaid leave and to remand the issue to the state Division of Administrative Hearings.
In a letter to Portillo sent earlier this month, Lannon said her actions caused “worldwide outrage and condemnation.”
“Causing 5- and 6-year-old peers to pass judgment on one of their own, to state the reasons for their ‘vote’ and then to act on the outcome is a true failure to apply professional judgment at best,” he wrote.
Lannon also said he would ask the state Department of Education to revoke Wendy Portillo’s teaching certificate during her suspension, said he would not allow her to teach pre-school or elementary-age students again and further recommended that she return to work on an annual contract after the suspension.
Those recommendations would be subject to the results of the DOAH hearing. Such a review could take another eight months; if Portillo wins at DOAH she would receive back pay.
Portillo, a veteran at Morningside Elementary in Port St. Lucie, set off a firestorm of controversy in late May when she asked her students to vote on whether Alex Barton should stay in class after misbehaving. The class voted 14-2 for him to leave.
The school district received hundreds of email and phone calls condemning her actions, and Alex Barton’s mother, Melissa Barton, removed her son from Morningside...
Read the full article here.
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