As important as it is to conduct a background check on potential new hires, it is just as important to ensure your employees are staying out of trouble once they are hired.
A Texas Charter School teacher has been fired and now faces criminal charges stemming from an incident caught on video of her assaulting one of her 13-year-old students. A warrant had been issued for this teacher’s arrest over a year before the assault occurred for criminal mischief - she is accused of slashing another woman’s tires in January of 2009. If the Charter School had a policy in place to re-check their employees’ background annually, they would have learned of the warrant and taken the appropriate action. Perhaps then this unfortunate incident would not have occurred.
Charter Teacher Who Beat Student Was Wanted
(May 13) — The Houston charter school teacher caught on a cell-phone video beating a 13-year-old student was wanted on a criminal mischief charge, accused of slashing a woman’s tires last year.
Sheri Lynn Davis, 40, was fired Monday by Jamie’s House Charter School. However, she won’t lose her teaching certificate because she never had one, the Houston Chronicle reported. Texas law states that only bilingual and special education teachers must be certified in order to work at charter schools. Davis is a science teacher.
Davis taught at the charter school for more than a year while a warrant was out for her arrest, stemming from the alleged tire slashing in January 2009. Davis is scheduled to appear in court on that criminal mischief charge, a misdemeanor, on Tuesday, according to Houston’s KRIV-TV.
She lost her job after school administrators saw a cell phone video recorded by one of her students in late April that showed her slapping and kicking 13-year-old Isaiah Johnson, then dragging him across the floor and slamming his head into a wall. The boy’s mother, Alesha Johnson, said Isaiah suffered a black eye and other bruises in the attack.
