The Reason the Mother of a Boy Getting Paddled by His Teacher at School "Couldn't Do Anything"
Shana Marie Perez posted two very disturbing videos to Facebook this week of her 5-year-old son being paddled by two administrators at Jasper Primary School in Georgia and says in her posts that she "couldn't do anything to stop them." Put in a difficult position, Perez felt she was unable to help her son because his teachers threatened to suspend him if she intervened with the administration on corporal punishment — which is legal under certain school rules with parent consent.
Perez has had a long-standing dispute with her son's principal about his 18 absences this year — which she says were due to medical problems — and was previously arrested for truancy but is currently out on bond. She feared that if he were suspended for not receiving punishment — though she claims she never gave consent for corporal punishment — she'd go back to jail, which would leave her unable to work or take care of her children.
Because she felt she could do nothing to help her son, she pretended to text on her phone so she could take videos of the incident. The videos have been seen by the school district, which posted a statement on its website in response to multiple inquiries.
Unfortunately, the District is barred by State and Federal law from commenting about the specifics of this incident. . . . However, we can speak generally about the District's code of conduct which allows corporal punishment as one of the consequences for behavior. That code of conduct is provided to all parents. When corporal punishment is used, it is with parental consent. The District is investigating the incident and looking into its discipline policies at this time.
Perez believes that the way the women were handling her son was abusive, and she has a meeting scheduled with the administrators to go over the incident on Friday.