B.C. high school principal suspended for professional misconduct
Credit to Author: Tiffany Crawford| Date: Thu, 17 Oct 2019 19:15:59 +0000
A B.C. high school principal has been suspended three days for professional misconduct after he failed to inform a student’s parents about a complaint alleging inappropriate touching by a teacher.
Neither the school nor the principal were identified in a decision posted Tuesday by the B.C. Commissioner for Teacher Regulation.
The student complained to the principal in the morning, saying a teacher had touched the student inappropriately, and did not want to be in the teacher’s class, according to the decision.
The student also wanted the principal to tell his/her parents what had occurred. However, the principal doubted the credibility of the student’s complaint and did not remove the student from the teacher’s class.
The principal did not contact the student’s mother until 3:30 p.m. to let her know about the complaint, according to an agreed statement of facts.
The report says the student’s mother missed the call, and was not prepared to properly support the student at the end of the school day.
In determining that a three-day suspension was an appropriate consequence, the commissioner took into consideration that the principal failed to adequately protect the student from emotional and physical harm and that he made an assumption about the student’s credibility which affected his judgment.