Teacher shot at Newport News elementary school

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Anyone get the feeling that she may have been dealing to the school admins, hence an explanation why they went along with such asinine arrangements?

Nope. I think she fought admins all the way. "Not my precious baby" and in their incompetence, they didn't fight back. The admins who went along with this deserve jail time just as much as the parents.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Now it’s getting worse. It’s come out the teacher hasn’t been paid since February even though her contract goes until August. The school system tried in February to strong arm her into taking workman’s comp (which I assume would negate her argument re her lawsuit) so she refused and then they just stopped paying her.

This week, they fired her via email.

This entire case is just a $hitstorm. That poor woman. She’s had no income since February. None.

https://www.wavy.com/news/local-news/newport-news/newport-news-1st-grade-teacher-shot-by-student-was-fired-attorney-says/

If you don’t work, you don’t get paid. That’s how employment works. If she believes she is entitled to disability benefits, she needs to apply. It’s not automatic. You don’t just send someone a disability slip. There is a process that starts with affirmative action by the disabled employee. And, Most policies require six month waiting period, which means if she has coverage, and she applies and she qualifies, she will be eligible next month for benefits.

And, no matter how much her attorneys and she wants it to be otherwise, this falls squarely under workers’ comp. If she wants to try to prove otherwise, she’s not going to see paychecks for a few more years. In VA, you don’t get paid until you win after all appeals are exhausted.

Her attorneys are grandstanding and wanting to try to make new law - and she is bearing the financial burden. But she has options.

Most school systems don't treat their teachers and staff so callously.

Except they do. As evidenced by the max exodus of teachers. I hope this woman wins millions.

This, this, this. My district did very little after a kid was physically aggressive with me all year, cursed me out and threatened me multiple time. They did more than Newport did, but not much more. I didn't stick around to wait for a bullet though. Abby Zwerner paid a terrible price and many of us learned that staying could mean we could be taking our lives in our hands. No thank you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Now it’s getting worse. It’s come out the teacher hasn’t been paid since February even though her contract goes until August. The school system tried in February to strong arm her into taking workman’s comp (which I assume would negate her argument re her lawsuit) so she refused and then they just stopped paying her.

This week, they fired her via email.

This entire case is just a $hitstorm. That poor woman. She’s had no income since February. None.

https://www.wavy.com/news/local-news/newport-news/newport-news-1st-grade-teacher-shot-by-student-was-fired-attorney-says/

If you don’t work, you don’t get paid. That’s how employment works. If she believes she is entitled to disability benefits, she needs to apply. It’s not automatic. You don’t just send someone a disability slip. There is a process that starts with affirmative action by the disabled employee. And, Most policies require six month waiting period, which means if she has coverage, and she applies and she qualifies, she will be eligible next month for benefits.

And, no matter how much her attorneys and she wants it to be otherwise, this falls squarely under workers’ comp. If she wants to try to prove otherwise, she’s not going to see paychecks for a few more years. In VA, you don’t get paid until you win after all appeals are exhausted.

Her attorneys are grandstanding and wanting to try to make new law - and she is bearing the financial burden. But she has options.

No matter how badly you want to throw this teacher under the bus, taking a bullet or removing a gun from a 1st grader is not a reasonable expectation or duty of being a 1st grade teacher. Just because the accident happened at work does NOT automatically make it a workman’s comp claim. Again, it’s not expected for a 1st grade teacher to take a bullet or to be shot in a school shooting by a 6 year old. Not for any 1st grade teacher.

Seriously.

It doesn’t have to be expected for it to be workers’ comp. The standard is arising out of and in the course of employment. I can think of a ton of other examples of bad things (some even worse than this) where the right to recovery is exclusively workers’ comp.

I’m not trying to throw the teacher under the bus at all. What happened is horrific. I hope she recovers physically, emotionally and vocationally. And I hope a full root cause analysis is done. But the right to a legal recovery isn’t based on the level of horrificness of the event. It’s based on the law. And the law is just not what she (and you, apparently) want that law to be.

I actually am appalled at the attorneys in this case. To me it seems like they have an agenda and she is the mechanism to achieve their goals. I mean, any trace of respect I had all but vanished when they blamed the school for not providing disability benefits to her while all but admitting she never applied. If she is truly destitute and those benefits are available, why haven’t they assisted in the application?

Again, I am truly horrified at these events. I am truly horrified that there are no services for such a disturbed 6 year old so the school was stuck with him. I am truly horrified that this disturbed kid had access to a gun and that the mother’s attorney’s statements about gun safety mechanisms appears not to be true.

In Virginia, in order for this to qualify as workman’s comp the commission would need to find that a first grade teacher getting shot by one of her students was a part of her duties and whether the activity of being shot is an accepted and normal activity within her employment and the extent to which the employer expects or required the employees to participate.

No that is not the standard.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The Uvalde Foundation gave Zwerner their first hero grant and allowed her to use it to offset medical costs.

The community should be supporting this woman. Every person. Everyone has been touched by a teacher, whether as a kid yourself and if you also have a child in school now.

The lack of empathy for this teacher is astounding and revealing. Someone really said “if you don’t work you don’t get paid.” SHE WAS SHOT AT WORK . What is WRONG with some of you?? The way you entrust your kids for hours every single day, 10 months a year, to these people yet don’t even see them as fully human. It’s pathological.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Anyone get the feeling that she may have been dealing to the school admins, hence an explanation why they went along with such asinine arrangements?

Nope. I think she fought admins all the way. "Not my precious baby" and in their incompetence, they didn't fight back. The admins who went along with this deserve jail time just as much as the parents.

Why are the charges so lax on the parents and nothing for the dad? Why isn't the child being charged? This is ridiculous they will never learn and this emboldens more of them to do this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Anyone get the feeling that she may have been dealing to the school admins, hence an explanation why they went along with such asinine arrangements?

Nope. I think she fought admins all the way. "Not my precious baby" and in their incompetence, they didn't fight back. The admins who went along with this deserve jail time just as much as the parents.

Why are the charges so lax on the parents and nothing for the dad? Why isn't the child being charged? This is ridiculous they will never learn and this emboldens more of them to do this.

why would the father be charged if he isn't in the home? If it wasn't his gun? What law?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Anyone get the feeling that she may have been dealing to the school admins, hence an explanation why they went along with such asinine arrangements?

Nope. I think she fought admins all the way. "Not my precious baby" and in their incompetence, they didn't fight back. The admins who went along with this deserve jail time just as much as the parents.

Why are the charges so lax on the parents and nothing for the dad? Why isn't the child being charged? This is ridiculous they will never learn and this emboldens more of them to do this.

what dad?? There’s been no word of a dad in the picture. It was mom’s gun at mom’s house.

[Anonymous]

The "father should be charged" and the "I am a Workmans comp lawyer and know everything" posters are super annoying on this thread.

This civil case is probably going to trial and the court needs to determine whether this falls under workman's comp. It is not as open and shut as the other poster claims. And yes, I am also a lawyer (so is probably more than half of DCUM readers).

But the optics for this are horrible. IMO they really should settle. Being so rigid and hardline over this case IMO is the wrong approach and sends terrible messages about how the school system views and treats teachers.

I am very interested to see the results of the special criminal investigation if they determine there should be criminal charges against the vice principal. Hopefully their decision will be released soon.

[Anonymous]

+1 Thank you

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The "father should be charged" and the "I am a Workmans comp lawyer and know everything" posters are super annoying on this thread.

This civil case is probably going to trial and the court needs to determine whether this falls under workman's comp. It is not as open and shut as the other poster claims. And yes, I am also a lawyer (so is probably more than half of DCUM readers).

But the optics for this are horrible. IMO they really should settle. Being so rigid and hardline over this case IMO is the wrong approach and sends terrible messages about how the school system views and treats teachers.

I am very interested to see the results of the special criminal investigation if they determine there should be criminal charges against the vice principal. Hopefully their decision will be released soon.

+1 Thank you

[Anonymous]

So if she’s no longer employed by the district, does that mean she lost her health insurance?

[Anonymous]

Her attorney likely advised her not to accept worker’s comp. If she had cashed the worker’s comp check, would it negate litigation? This is how Breit described it:

According to Breit, Zwerner has not been paid since February. He claims they tried to make her take workers’ compensation, but when she wouldn’t take it, they just stopped paying her.

“They sent a check to her back account,” Breit said. “Her worker comp check – two-thirds of pay – they sent it to her. We immediately sent it back. This is not workers comp.”

“They tried to see if she would cash the worker comp check so they could claim, ‘Oh, look, she took workers comp. She can’t sue us now.'”

https://www.wavy.com/news/local-news/newport-news/newport-news-1st-grade-teacher-shot-by-student-was-fired-attorney-says/

[Anonymous]

If the mom was in the classroom, didn’t they do a background check on her? Is that a reasonable expectation knowing she was going to be a regular presence in the classroom?

[Anonymous]

There a lot more to this story.......

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So if she’s no longer employed by the district, does that mean she lost her health insurance?

why will she need it she fine now...