Questionable punishment

TOLEDO, Ohio - A Toledo Public Schools first grader was told by his teacher to get on all fours and crawl around the classroom like a dog as a form of punishment, his mother said.

Though spokeswoman Patty Mazur said the school district is investigating the Oct. 9 situation, Holly Casey said Burroughs Elementary Principal Thomas DeMarco has already told her nothing will be done.

"I could tell by the look on his face that something was wrong," Casey said. "He was almost in tears and I said, 'What's wrong?'"

After some prying, her son told her his teacher had embarrassed him in front of his class by making him crawl around the classroom like a dog, while the other children laughed.

As soon as she got home, she called Burroughs Elementary because she was concerned about the issue, but never received a call back from school administrators.

On Monday, Casey had a meeting with Principal DeMarco and the first grade teacher.

"She basically stated, yes I did make him crawl from my desk back to his desk, and she didn't see anything wrong with that, which I do," Casey said. "He's humiliated, and he doesn't ever want to go back to school."

The mother of the first grader said the teacher justified her actions by saying the student had been having behavioral problems and that she was just at her wits end.

"I'd have to ask if in the first quarter of the school year, she's at her wits end with a 7- year-old?," questioned Jarred McMillin, the first-grader's grandfather. "What's she going to be doing to the 7-year-olds in May when your child's been in that school for seven months?"

The student's mother said this incident is the first she and her father have heard of behavioral problems with her son at school. Casey wants her son disciplined, but says what happened on Friday was unnecessarily humiliating for him.

"She could've done a number of other disciplinaries that is not a disciplinary, that's nothing a teacher, a mother anyone should do to a child," Casey said. "That's awful."

Casey would be satisfied with a classroom transfer for her son.

Mazur said education is her school district's No. 1 priority.

Another meeting is planned with the mother, principal, and assistant superintendent. Casey, though, has not been notified on the second meeting.