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Teacher sex case is a scandal, and lesson

By SUE CARLTON
Published October 27, 2007

The 15-year-old girl told people what she heard was going on.

Her persistence got her suspended from school.

Turns out her tale was true, or at least police think so.

So what's the lesson here?

Shatavia Kendricks, a student at Tampa's Middleton High, said a special-education teacher was giving the boys special favors. Worse, rumor had it the teacher had something sexual going on with a student.

So Shatavia told an assistant principal, like her mom said she should. The school principal looked into the rumors. The boy and the teacher denied them - which, true or false, you might expect.

The investigation did not go beyond the school, was not sent up the ladder to the district department that can investigate serious allegations against teachers. Law enforcement did not get involved. A school spokesman said the girl's previous issues with the teacher figured into the situation.

When Shatavia kept telling her story, the teacher contacted her union.

Then Shatavia found herself suspended, pending a school conference with a parent. She was out of school a week before her mom, a hotel housekeeper and single parent, could get time off.

In all the Monday morning quarterbacking over how this story turned out, this should be said: Kids have been known to make ugly, unfounded allegations against teachers. Or just spread rumors. They're kids. Principals make judgement calls daily. Not every one of those calls will be the right one.

And then on the other side is the all-too-familiar litany of mug shots of teachers facing criminal charges for having sex with their students.

By now, you know the rest of this one. This week, police encountered a bunch of teens driving in a Jeep Grand Cherokee belonging to special-ed teacher Christina Butler, 33. The 16-year-old driver said she let him take it.

In the investigation that followed, the teacher confessed to having sex with the boy up to a dozen times, police said. Butler now faces charges of lewd and lascivious battery.

And what about Shatavia?

School officials say the suspension pending a parent conference wasn't intended as a punishment, though I bet it sure felt like one. It won't count on her record, and she can make up work she missed. Her mother said an assistant principal apologized.

All well and good.

Hillsborough Commissioner Kevin White, who has a daughter at Middleton, is calling for a review of School Board policies and how this situation unfolded "to see where the breakdown was." And Friday came the inevitable news of a lawsuit on behalf of both Shatavia and the boy.

Here's the question: What's the message to a kid who gets kicked out of school for talking about something wrong going on? Not to be believed is a terrible thing.

Maybe there is a lesson for Shatavia as well as the grownups involved: People make mistakes in judgment. When they do, they should apologize, figure out what went wrong and make sure it doesn't happen again.

* * *

Times columnists Sue Carlton, Ernest Hooper and Howard Troxler will appear today from 11:30-12:45 at the Times Festival of Reading at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg. For information on the daylong festival, go to www.festivalofreading.com.

[Last modified October 27, 2007, 00:06:34]