This obviously is criminal and never should have occurred.
What's worse, in my opinion, is the system obviously failed him with the supports necessary.

I understand your frustration and anger, Scott. I have an autistic (non-Asperger's) family member as well (brother). What the teacher did was cruel and definitely wrong.

Yet I'm not ready to pass judgment on the teacher, at least not without more details. My guess is that she is overworked and underpaid, like most teachers. I also bet that she has little to no training on how to handle, or even recognize, special-needs kids. She probably had no idea why this one kid was a habitual behavioral problem. Fed up with it and likely frustrated from the lack of support from the rest of the system, she made a serious (and hopefully, uncommon) error in judgment.

My suggestion to people who are appalled by this story: vote for the damn school levies.

Sid, what is a school levy? Maybe Nebraska is different, I don't know what that is.

to all: I understand that the teacher is frustrated. I told a dozen children that the NC Dept of Education labeled as BEH. Turns out that all but one was dyslexic. I didn't know that having a wider field of visual focus makes you Behaviorally and Emotional Handicapped.

I would be more outraged at the principal and the school system *if the teacher asked for help and didn't get it*. If she is frustrated and did not ask for help, then, as a former teacher, I would be *very* upset at her.

Dude. Naathan.org is a good resource. We are considering homeschooling as well - something that evokes horror in the minds of administrators.

Sid, oh I'm sure that there's plenty of blame to be spread around. It doesn't all fall squarely on the teacher.

Bear, if you're going the homeschool route, we're doing Classical Conversations. Checking out http://www.nathhan.com/.

That's just ... wow. I'm sure there's more to the story, but how do you get to where voting a student out is seems like a good idea?

Makes me thankful for my school system and the patience, and thoroughness they displayed when going through diagnosing my daughter's ADD.

Oh, and I want to go to Port St. Lucie, find those 2 kids that voted 'no' and tell tehm how proud I am. And tell their parents congrats on raising a kid who stands up for the underdog.

Oh, and pink, a 'levy' is a tax to support the school district. In Ohio we have to vote for new levies every couple of years because of the screwy way the schools are funded. The state Supreme Court ruled it was unconstitutional a few years ago, but the legislature couldn't agree on what else to do, so they did nothing.

The district is funded by property taxes, but the law says that the actual dollars of the tax can't go up. So, each year the percentage drops to keep the dollars the same. So, due to inflation, this puts the district in the awkward position of having to come back every 2 years or so to ask for more money. That, of course, makes them look greedy and irresponsible, but it's just inflation and the way the law is written.

Oh, sorry pinakidion. I forgot different states fund schools differently. I'm so used to OH's public school system since that was where I was educated. salguod explained them quite well.

What I was complaining about is that the public is typically the one that under-funds schools by voting against levies (or their equivalents) and then complain about the consequences. I'm not sure if the story is one of these consequences, but I would bet that it mostly is.

salguod: OH still hasn't resolved that issue with the State Supreme Court?!? That ruling was made at least five years ago! It almost seems too late. OH is hemorrhaging brain power faster than almost every other state. Soon, there will be no one left who values education any more. Based on the voting patterns of the state in recent years, I'm glad to be part of that brain drain.

Ah, now I understand the levy.

Here, the state mandates that local property tax cannot be higher than $1.05 per $100 of value, unless you live in a learning community, then it is $1.10 per $100.

Locally, 95% of local revenue goes to the learning community - a collection of 12 local school districts. The Learning community then redistributes that money to the various districts.

On a state level, a 38 page mathematical formula is used to divy up funds to all school districts in the state. Most of the state money goes to disabilities and ESL programs within a district.

As such, no one ever asks for an increase of the levy, the school districts simple change the levy year to year.

I remember reading this a few days ago and wondering how a teacher could do that to a student.

You think she would have talked to the parents first, instead of doing something so mean and damaging to the child.

That poor child!!
This whole situation makes me want to go into a violent rage against the teacher. Good thing she is far away. ;)

Six commenters on one post? Be still my bleedin' liberal heart.

Why does funding schools have to be so difficult? I mean take the red light cameras or the lotto in our state (please, take them). Proceeds from both were supposed to go to education. Only the red light camera monitoring was so expensive that it never paid off and they did some voodoo with the lotto and no actual extra money is going to the schools. I hate to go all cliche (okay not really) but WON'T SOMEONE THINK OF THE CHILDREN?

That almost makes me madder than this stupid "reality tv" approach to this particular problem.

sid - Nope. No resolution. The legislature simply gave up and the courts seem to have let them. There has been no news on it for 2-3 years. Oh, and I think the original ruling was more than 5-6 years ago.

Kinda enlightening on the value of a constitution and a supreme court. Basically, the state constitution and the court is meaningless if the legislature is unified in opposing them. The people are powerless to enforce the law. Pretty scary if you let yourself think that one through.

My thought was to start fining every legislator $1,000 a day for each day that the funding is unresolved. I bet it gets fixed pretty quickly. I'm guessing the court has no authority to enforce it's own edicts or else they would have. I suppose they might also say that no property taxes may be used for schools until the system is fixed. That might get the people up in arms too.

Pink - the situation is that you choose how you want to pay for your school. Either you pay buy where you live in higher property taxes and higher home prices, or you pay in terms of tuition to a private school. Some choose to do both since the 'nicer' areas tend to have better schools.

I'm totally with you on this. Any teacher who treats a classroom like an episode of Survivor has no business in a classroom. Our education system is piss-poor. No Child Left Educated has made things worse, and things like this are totally beyond the pale.