Today's News & Record reports the Committee is specifically addressing how to handle a new state law targeting registered sex offenders who are GCS students.
N&R:
The system’s Governance Review Committee is developing policies to address a state law passed earlier this year restricting the access registered sex offenders have to places where children are, including schools.
One of those policies will address sex offenders who are students.
The board could decide to do one or a combination of several things including:
* expelling any student who is a registered sex offender
* expelling any student 16 years and older who is a registered sex offender, considering younger students on a case by case basis
* reviewing each case, applying various options to address the student based on the degree of the crime.
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Paid-by-the-hour school board attorney Jill Wilson is working side-by-side with the Committee on this issue. She tells the N&R that she is reviewing what other school systems and boards are doing and says ease case should be reviewed on a case-by-case basis.More:
“Do a true review of all the risks and benefits,” she said, noting that there is a wide range of crimes that can result in the person being a registered sex offender. Offenses can range from rape to cases of multiple peeping.
Wilson told the committee there is one registered sex offender enrolled in a Guilford County School.
However, officials declined to name which school or reveal any information about the student.
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And the irony is that a former Weaver Academy teacher was indicted for allegedly having sex with students.Today's N&R reports "former Weaver drama teacher Leanne Elizabeth Macklin was indicted on five counts of felony sexual offense with a student for alleged incidents between July and November 2007 with a then-17-year-old male student attending Weaver, according to police and court records. Macklin, 26, resigned from Guilford County Schools in June, according to records with Guilford County Schools."
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Slightly unrelated, but still on the subject of suspense and crime, this bus driver saga continues to get interesting by the day.To update you, longtime GCS bus driver Kathleen Neal of Greensboro was arrested and charged with multiple counts of misdemeanor assault, child abuse, communicating threats, false imprisonment, and one felony count of assault by strangulation. Neal was released from the Guilford County jail after posting a $5,000 bond Monday night, according to yesterday's News & Record.
And now the father of the victim is speaking out.
N&R:
The father of a student at the center of an assault investigation involving a former Guilford County Schools bus driver says his son was choked and threatened by the driver last Friday.
Brian Bentley, whose son is a 13-year-old Kiser Middle School student, said the incident started when his son complained that the bus driver was talking on her cell phone, and it ended with bruises and a police investigation.
The play-by-play of the incident is troubling.
More:
The incident happened about 4 p.m. Friday on bus No. 71 when it stopped on Westover Terrace after leaving Kiser Middle School, according to police and court documents.
According to his son, Bentley said, Neal was talking on her cell phone, and the son told her it was against the rules. The driver pulled over and started yelling at him.
“She called him 'poor white trash’ ... and it escalated from there, and she got up in his face screaming and hollering,” Bentley said.Bentley said his 14-year-old niece tried to make the driver stop yelling but was shoved to the floor.
“(The driver) grabbed my son by the throat and slammed him against a window,” Bentley said. “She said, 'I’m going to kill you.’ ” He said his niece tried to intervene again, and she was “backhanded and pushed.”
Bentley said his niece got off the bus along Westover Terrace and flagged down another car to take her back to school, and called him on her cell phone.
In the meantime, the bus returned to Kiser Middle School and students got off. Bentley went to the school, where he said he spent much of Friday evening talking with school officials and authorities.
Police said the incident was recorded on a student’s cell phone, but refused to release the video, citing an ongoing investigation.
But something made this veteran bus driver snap. What was it?
Still more:
However, court records indicate that Neal assaulted a minor by placing her hands around his neck, causing the minor student to feel light-headed, leaving marks around the student’s neck and threatening the student by saying, “I will kill you.”
Arrest warrants also say Neal pushed a minor child in the face and chest and detained a student by not allowing him to leave his seat.
Bentley said both his son and niece were left with marks from the incident, and he asked that their names not be used in this story.
“My son had bruises and marks on his throat and face and had a huge knot on the side of his head where he got slammed against a window,” he said. “My niece had a bruise on her shoulder and an abrasion on the left-hand side of her face.”
Bentley said he previously made two complaints against Neal for incidents in which she screamed at his son and others and called them names.
“There have been several incidents where he got off the bus crying because she berated him,” Bentley said. “(The school system) pretty much said they would take care of it, but nothing ever happened.”
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There's a lot more to this, somewhere.
Chalkboard's opened a strand on this issue. And not only that, the N&R is fishing for any reported school bus problems out there in the trenches:
Parents out there reading this... has your child experienced a problem on a school bus that you've taken action on? How was the response from the school system? Was anything done? Do you feel your child is safe on the bus?
We are getting some interesting feedback on this piece and I'd love to hear from more of you.
Shoot me an e-mail at ryan.seals@news-record.com
"cc" a copy of your e-mail to us here at Guilford School Watch: guilfordschoolwatch@gmail.com
E.C. :)
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