Teachers in Trouble, Parents Ignored-- Part II

By Jay Mathews

This is the second in my series of columns about parents who are denied important information and find themselves frozen out of important decisions about their children's teachers. A less-detailed account appeared in The Post on May 7.

For a long time, Dawn Mosisa had trouble forgiving herself for the way she shrugged off her daughter's story about the teacher who hit one of her second grade classmates in the spring of 2003. Her daughter said the man ordered the class to count to 10 in French while he hit the boy 10 times with a ruler.

The girl was not in the habit of making up such stories, the mother said, but like most parents, Mosisa did not want to think that any educator would be so cruel, so she chose not to believe it. When the teacher left the school the next year, Mosisa grew more concerned. But she said she could not get anyone at Maryvale Elementary School in Rockville to explain to her or her child exactly what had occurred and how they should respond.

Abuse of a student at school is a parent's nightmare. Not only do such incidents harm the victims and their parents, but they also trouble the children who may have witnessed the event and their parents. Such cases usually remain undisclosed because parents do not want their children embarrassed or disturbed by public knowledge of what happened. But Mosisa, 44, a student financial services official for a public university, has given an unusually detailed account that sheds light on a rarely examined side of public education.

The instinct of school administrators to keep parents ignorant of allegedly unpleasant or controversial behavior by teachers is backed by state regulations, union rules and fear of lawsuits. The administrators who refuse to answer parental questions say there is nothing they can do. But the anger felt by parents like Mosisa is often not eased by the recognition that the administrators would like to tell them more, but are not allowed to.

Exactly what Mosisa's daughter witnessed at Maryvale Elementary remains unclear because the school's and the teacher's versions of events are unavailable. That is precisely why parents at Maryvale, and at other schools that suffer such episodes, are so upset with the way the system ignores their pleas for information. There appear to be no significant efforts to rewrite the regulations to allow them to know what happened to their children. Many parents say they think such efforts would be doomed by prevailing legal practices, so they instead try to forget about what happened and move on.

Eric Davis, principal of Maryvale Elementary at the time, said the second-grade teacher alleged to have hit the student is no longer working in the school system. Davis said complaints about the teacher are part of an evaluation that would be made available to any school thinking of hiring him. But Davis said the rules keep him from giving Mosisa, her daughter or two other families who say their children reported disturbing incidents involving the teacher any detailed information about what his investigation revealed.

State Sen. Brian E. Frosh (D-Montgomery), head of the Judiciary Committee, said he doubts that the Montgomery County school system is interpreting the law correctly. He said he thought school officials should have been able to tell Mosisa and other parents what happened to their children and ease fears that apparently produced, at least in the case of Mosisa's daughter, what the mother considered a heart-rending episode a year later.

Howie Schaffer, spokesman for the nonprofit Public Education Network, which promotes support for public schools, said, "School boards often use inaccurate interpretations of privacy laws and confidentiality agreements to conduct important school business out of the public eye."

At my request, Montgomery County schools spokesman Brian Edwards sent me legal language that the school district's attorney identified as buttressing the county's refusal to tell Mosisa what she wanted to know.

The Maryland state public information act says "a custodian shall deny inspection of a personnel record of any individual, including an application, performance rating, or scholastic achievement information" and "a custodian shall permit inspection by the person in interest or an elected or appointed official who supervises the work of the individual." Another state statute says "the administration [a reference to the state Social Services Administration] shall provide by regulation . . . procedures for protecting the confidentiality of reports and records made in accordance with this subtitle; conditions under which information may be released . . . "

I am no lawyer, but I don't see how these words prohibit a principal from sitting down with a parent and telling her what he thinks her child saw a teacher do that so traumatized her. Even if a judge says that prohibition is in the law, I don't see what harm would come from changing the law so a principal could have that conversation with a parent.

Montgomery County officials have stuck to their interpretation of the law. School officials also said they are not permitted to give me any information about the teacher that might help me locate him -- a rule I do understand and agree with. My several efforts to find him have not been successful. Since I cannot give his response, I am not using his name.

Other Maryvale parents complained to school officials about being stonewalled when they sought to inquire about alleged troubles with the teacher. Yanick and Lamoussa Djinko said in a March 2004 letter to then-Montgomery County school board President Sharon W. Cox (At Large) that their son Abdoulaye was regularly made fun of and hit five times on the buttocks by the teacher, but they said they could get no satisfactory answers to their questions. Another parent who contacted me by fax but declined to be identified for fear of increasing the emotional damage from the incident, said the teacher "hit several students with an object as the class counted in French to 10." The students who were hit were called to Davis' office and told their story, this faxed account indicated, but "nothing was done."

A school spokesman said Davis does not recall ever meeting with students about alleged abuse from the teacher except just before the teacher left the school in February 2004.

Mosisa said she and her husband enrolled their daughter in the French immersion program at Maryvale in 2000, based on enthusiastic recommendations from many people. Kindergarten and first grade went well, they said. Their daughter's second-grade teacher also seemed fine at first, but a few small incidents began to trouble them.

Their daughter told them that during one lesson, when she made a mistake, the teacher encouraged all the other students to shout out the right answer. Mosisa's daughter burst into tears. When Mosisa heard about that, she told the teacher during a parent-teacher conference that she thought it was inappropriate for children of that age. She said the teacher replied that he no longer did that.

Mosisa said she and her husband were more upset when their daughter said the teacher yelled at her for getting the wrong answer on a test. Mosisa said both the teacher and Davis apologized.

In June 2003, their daughter told them about the incident involving the teacher, a boy and a ruler.

Mosisa, recounting the conversation, said she suggested to her daughter that she might be exaggerating the teacher's actions.

"No, he hit him," the girl insisted.

"When was this?"

"A couple of months ago."

"Show me what it looked like."

The 8-year-old pantomimed using a ruler to hit the boy as the class counted to 10: "Un, Deux, Trois . . ." and so on.

Mosisa said she did not believe it. The mother was shocked to discover several months later that the teacher had abruptly left the school, and she began to believe her daughter's account. She felt worse when she discovered that the episode influenced how her daughter subsequently viewed schoolwork.

In third grade, Mosisa's daughter was grinding through an hour and a half of homework a night. When Mosisa mentioned this to the third grade teacher at Back To School night, the teacher was puzzled. They discovered the girl had misunderstood the homework instructions, and was taking home assignments that she had not been asked to do.

Mosisa asked her daughter why she had not spoken up, since she sat in the classroom every day, watching the teacher review homework different from what she had done. The girl said she was afraid to say anything because in her second grade teacher's class, if you got something wrong, you were ridiculed or worse.

Davis, who Mosisa and other parents said had an excellent reputation at the school, indicated in an interview that he had received both bad and good reports about the second-grade teacher. When troubles arise with any teacher, Davis said, "I deal with it right away."

In March 2004, Mosisa and several parents whose children had been in the second-grade teacher's class asked Davis at a PTA meeting about various reports of troubling incidents involving the teacher and students. About 15 people were at the meeting. Mosisa said the issue had become a matter of principle. She said she felt she had to do more to find out what happened and let other parents know.

At the meeting, Davis announced that the teacher was no longer at the school, but provided no explanation. Mosisa asked that all parents be formally notified that there were children who had come forward to say they had been hit by the teacher. "Parents need to know that so they can talk to their child," she recalled saying at the meeting.

She also had a suggestion for the principal. Davis, she said, "is so loved and trusted by the kids, he should meet with that second grade class, the children who were in my daughter's class, and tell them, 'Look, I want you to understand this is what happened here. I am very sorry that we didn't act sooner, and it is our job to protect you and keep you safe, and I want you to know that you can come to me. We want you to know that it's unacceptable and it is not okay the way the kids were treated."

Davis told the group, according to Mosisa, "All I can say is that the teacher has been removed from the classroom and is no longer at Maryvale. That is all I can say. I can't say any more because of the confidentiality rules." Davis confirmed that account, though added that, in general, if he ever encountered such a situation he would speak to the students to try to reduce any remaining anxiety they might have. Later, through a county schools spokesman, he said that he addressed questions about the teacher raised by individual parents and that most were satisfied with how the situation was handled.

An attempt by a PTA committee, which included Mosisa, to draft a letter to parents ultimately failed. They could not use the teacher's name, or be very specific, Mosisa said.

Mosisa said she does not know where the teacher is now, and is concerned that because of all the secrecy, he might be able to get another teaching job without his new school knowing about complaints against him at Maryvale. Davis said he does not know where the teacher is either, but is confident that if any school sought an evaluation of that teacher from the Montgomery County school system it would learn what he was alleged to have done.

Parents on many occasions exaggerate the flaws they think they see in their local school, or their child's teacher. We all have our biases, and sometimes they get out of control. But in most cases there is enough data to determine how effective each teacher is in helping students learn, and often parents can supplement lessons they do not think have been well taught.

Emotional trauma visited on a student by a teacher is an entirely different matter. Not only is it difficult to erase its effects, but the current rules in school make it often impossible for parents to find out exactly what happened so they can discuss it clearly and intelligently with their child. Both educators and parents are caught in a web of fear and inertia that so far has left both dissatisfied with the outcomes. There is not much educators can do about what school district lawyers tell them they can and cannot say, but parents might find that legislators are more willing to consider revising the offending regulations if they were willing to speak out more about their experiences, as Mosisa did.

The typical reaction is just to try to get past it. Several months after the teacher had left the school, Mosisa left a phone message for another parent whose child had been in the same class. She said in the message that she had not seen her at any of the PTA meetings, and wondered if her son had had any problems. She had not wanted to bring the subject up with every parent, but this was a woman she knew.

Mosisa said the woman called the next day, very upset. She had not heard what happened to the teacher. Her son was in counseling because of emotional distress. She thought it was because of her divorce, but now she wondered if it was related to what happened in his second grade class.

Mosisa said she asked if the woman wanted to join their effort to get the word out to all parents in a formal way.

No, the woman said, she did not want to get involved. "But thank you for the information," she said. "It will be a great help to me."