Oyster-Adam teacher arrested

[Anonymous]

Principal just sent an email. Said it was a result of allegations from parents. I will try to post it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It happened so late, principal may not have had time to react before school and she may need some sort of DCPS clearance in these matters before speaking about it.

Principals are on call pretty much 24 hours a day. DCPS gave a standard statement to the media.

Would it have been so hard to send the same thing to parents who weren't up watching the 11pm news?

"The safety of our students is a top priority," a statement from the school system said. "As soon as we became aware of this situation, we acted promptly to remove the teacher from the school and fully cooperate with MPD in this investigation." That would've been enough for me.

They could have added more reassuring stuff like "Counselling staff will be helping kids who have concerns at school. We'll send home information on how to deal with these situations. You will be notified of any further developments."

How hard was that? Jeez

Lack of communication has been a big complaint of the new principal. Maybe this was a rookie mistake.

The principal just released a statement. Are you happy now, or is 10:50 am too late? Should we publicly flog her for not releasing the statement before you dropped off little precious this morning?

[Anonymous]

June 3rd, 2015

Dear Families of the Oyster-Adams Community,

At Oyster-Adams, we highly value and are committed to fostering a learning environment where students feel safe and secure. We also want to clearly communicate with parents about safety issues when they arise.

On Monday, parents made allegations against one of our teachers. We immediately took action to remove the teacher from the school and to fully cooperate with MPD in the investigation. Yesterday, the teacher was arrested based on those allegations. The safety of our students is our top priority. We are focusing our attention on supporting our students, staff, and school community. As this is an active police investigation, we are not able to share further information regarding this incident. However, we understand that this incident is sure to raise many questions and concerns for our entire school. As such, we have additional counselors onsite to offer support to students, families and staff as needed. Rest assured, we have put plans into place to ensure learning and instruction continues in the class directly affected.

Please know that the safety and security of our students is paramount at all times, just as it is with you. I would like to thank MPD and the DCPS Office of School Operations for their ongoing support.

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact me directly.

Thank you for your continued support

Sincerely,

Mayra Canizales
Principal
Oyster Adams Bilingual School

[Anonymous]

I don't know what happened this AM, but if I was the principal, the proper protocol IMO would be to greet the families of the affected class that AM, in the classroom. Nobody else. Do all dropoffs in classroom schoolwide. Principal is there waiting, talks to families and kids. 4th graders are old enough. Then send the statement. It's possible that is exactly what happened, or something close. As a parent of a kid not in Mr. Pena's class, I couldn't care less that nobody told me about this at dropoff. It wasn't the right time anyway.

[Anonymous]

Homophobic bullying at an elementary school? Is the admin and PTA aware of this? Bullying of any stripe is abhorant!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Homophobic bullying at an elementary school? Is the admin and PTA aware of this? Bullying of any stripe is abhorant!

Guess I will cross O-A off my list as with MV.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I know Gio from a fair amount of interaction with him at OA. I am completely shocked --- I have never seen anything in his behavior that was anything but professional.

He's gay, right?

1. The overwhelming majority of instances of child abuse are perpetrated by adult males against underage females.
2. Adult males who molest underage males are to gay people as adult males who molest underage females are to straight people.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It happened so late, principal may not have had time to react before school and she may need some sort of DCPS clearance in these matters before speaking about it.

I haven't seen anything about the facts yet, it's not even clear if the victim was a student.

It is clear. Please stop trying to protect the criminals.

Nothing in the post you're responding to indicates an effort to protect the criminal, that PP was trying to explain what may have delayed the Principal's response to parents. You are jumping to a ridiculous conclusion with your post.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't know what happened this AM, but if I was the principal, the proper protocol IMO would be to greet the families of the affected class that AM, in the classroom. Nobody else. Do all dropoffs in classroom schoolwide. Principal is there waiting, talks to families and kids. 4th graders are old enough. Then send the statement. It's possible that is exactly what happened, or something close. As a parent of a kid not in Mr. Pena's class, I couldn't care less that nobody told me about this at dropoff. It wasn't the right time anyway.

I hope you are jocking. if the beloved star tacher of my child is arrested (and found to be ) a child sex predator I would never want to be told with my child present. this is something hard for parents to face, and it is much harder for 9 year old 4th graders `finding out that the adult they learn to love, respect and trust was a sexual predator (assuming the accusations are true obviously) is not easy, and as a parent I would like to get guidance from a counselor on what to say and how to support the child. the school has phone and e-mails of all the parents, in an emergercy situation like this it should not be difficult to contact the parents in the class (heck, you just need to contact the room parent, who can then contact everybody else).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wow, it's outrageously egregious that they got the name of the school wrong! DC Bilingual should be lawyering up immediately, that is scandalous and awful (and I'm no big fan of DC Bilingual myself, but that is just awful!).

From now on, we're sure to see a new type of headlines...

"Monolingual politician arrested for bribery"

"Monolingual policeman kills unarmed and monolingual robbery suspect"

"Monolingual math teacher arrested on allegations of child abuse"


...and so on.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We are at Oyster-Adams. We have not had any information from school about this even though it was on the news last night. I wish DCPS could have at least put out a statement before kids got to school. Many will be upset and very confused. If parents had known, we could have prepared our children at least somewhat. There were parents crying on the sidewalks when they found out. Many are close friends with him and were in complete shock.

The principal made a huge mistake in not communicating with us about this before school.

I imagine that they're lawyering up, clarifying the scope of the situation, and creating a plan, but the lack of communication with parents is inexcuseable. Why were parents finding out first from the news. I would be livid.

Let us know the next time you have to deal with complex legal issues involving criminal charges. It could be that they were prohibited from speaking about this until the charges were filed. You have no idea what happened behind the scenes, as you shouldn't, because this involved minors. The amount of armchair quarterbacking of things the posters have no idea about amazes me.

[Anonymous]

This is really disappointing--I have met him and he is very pleasant, very above-board acting. I hope, I really, really hope, that this is just a mistake. And mistakes DO happen. But the fact that an arrest throws a teacher's career in the trash can instantly just bothers me. If it is true then he merits whatever the punishment is. But if now...then I tremble for him because having been a teacher I know how easily an incorrect accusation can cause a wildfire.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It happened so late, principal may not have had time to react before school and she may need some sort of DCPS clearance in these matters before speaking about it.

Principals are on call pretty much 24 hours a day. DCPS gave a standard statement to the media.

Would it have been so hard to send the same thing to parents who weren't up watching the 11pm news?

"The safety of our students is a top priority," a statement from the school system said. "As soon as we became aware of this situation, we acted promptly to remove the teacher from the school and fully cooperate with MPD in this investigation." That would've been enough for me.

They could have added more reassuring stuff like "Counselling staff will be helping kids who have concerns at school. We'll send home information on how to deal with these situations. You will be notified of any further developments."

How hard was that? Jeez

Lack of communication has been a big complaint of the new principal. Maybe this was a rookie mistake.

The principal just released a statement. Are you happy now, or is 10:50 am too late? Should we publicly flog her for not releasing the statement before you dropped off little precious this morning?

Who pissed in your coffee? If you even have kids, I'd like to think that you would want their school environment to be free from harm. This has nothing to do with parents thinking their kids are overly special or some shit, it's about wanting a school principal to have the common sense to communicate with parents before or around the time that news breaks on tv. This gives parents the confidence that the school is on it, and that information and counseling will be forthcoming. So to answer your question, yes. Yes, 10:50am is too late because news broke about this situation last night.

My guess, however, is that you don't have young children given the insensitive nature of your comment.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Homophobic bullying at an elementary school? Is the admin and PTA aware of this? Bullying of any stripe is abhorant!

Yes. But it's not widespread and happens more in grades 5-8 at the Adams building.

[Anonymous]

Allegations made on Monday and the arrest on Tuesday? That's a very quick turnaround. Typically there is an interviewing process and information gathering process.