Friday, September 25, 2009
Parents upset about teacher fingerprinting students
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (WSVN) -- Parents are upset after a South Florida teacher who said she was giving a unique lesson after a crime on campus when she fingerprinted her entire class.
The teacher, who teaches at William Dandy Middle School in Fort Lauderdale, said her purse was stolen, so she wanted to use the moment as a teaching experience by fingerprinting her students.
When Moriah Devonish's son, Jayln Devonish, told her about it, she was furious. "So when I heard he was fingerprinted, I thought what excuse did she have? Why? For what? Was the police there? How come they didn't call me? All these questions. He was like, 'Well, somebody stole my teacher's stuff.' I said, 'It doesn't matter. We have a process we have to go through.'"
The event occurred in mid-September. The teacher, according to Devonish, decided to take formal statements from all the students in the class and take their fingerprints. "I was like, wow. I was surprised," said the son. "I didn't know what to say, I was just speechless."
Devonish said, during these statements and fingerprinting there was no police present, just a teacher and her students.
The statement from the Broward School District reads: "The teacher in question was given a letter of reprimand. She said fingerprinting was part of a forensics class; but the administration believes she went overboard."
Though the teacher was reprimanded and police have deemed it a procedural issue and not a criminal case, Devonish still feels furious over her behavior. She wants to speak out in hopes it never happens again. "You can't do that," Devonish said. "I wasn't even called. It was really, really mean and offensive."
Parents dropping of their kids at the school Friday morning feel the school should have done more to punish this teacher. "An apology of course, but then go from there and see how she should be penalized," said Lorna Salmon outside the school. "It's just an invasion of privacy because they are children, and there is no consent from their parents, so how could you do something like that?"
Craig Dennis said the actions by the teacher violates the basic rights of the students: "To take a child and subject them to the criminal process and to treat everyone like they're guilty, that goes against our laws in the country and the laws of the way we should treat our children."
Dennis said this would have never become an issue if the teacher had let school police handle the situation and not taken it into her own hands. "There's a school resource officer on premises. Let the officer do his job, let the teacher do his job, everybody's happy."
The school district has not returned calls inquiring whether the teacher has apologized to the parents of the students involved in this situation.
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