Principal goes on tirade against special needs students

School teachers and administrators today are learning that they must always assume they are on hidden camera. The latest to make the rude discovery is a principal in Haverstraw, New York, who has been caught up short by 3-year old recordings that have surfaced, appearing to show her verbally abusing special needs children as they prepare for an assembly.

“It’s important you’re on your best behavior,” she is heard saying in the tape, as reported by the local ABC affiliate. “If someone falls in dance, don’t laugh because I will rip your (expletive) out of there. It’s important not to embarrass yourself. Your family take pride in yourself. I will embarrass you, you all know me, if you don’t give a (expletive), neither do I.”

The teacher’s aide, Kenneth Egan, who recorded the incident was let go, he says, because he blew the whistle on such incidents.

“This is a retard,” she says of one kid in the recording. “How embarrassing, a disgusting embarrassment, get him the hell out of my sight.”

The school says that the incident was dealt with at the time, and is now water under the bridge, and ABC 7 reports that she was suspended for the tirade.

But anyone who works at a school is on notice that any exchange with students or colleagues could be recorded.

In 2012, a social studies teacher in North Carolina was suspended for telling a student that he could be arrested for criticizing President Obama. The conversation was recorded on a phone sitting on the student’s desk.

“As a teacher, I’m not supposed to allow you to disrespect the President of the United States,” she said.

“I wasn’t disrespecting, I asked a question,” responded the student, as reported in the New York Daily News.

“Do you realize that people were arrested for saying things about Bush?” the teacher says at one point. “As a social studies teacher, I cannot allow you to slander any president in here. Past or current.”

In some cases, legal questions have been raised about student recordings.

In 12 states, the law requires that both parties to an exchange consent to the recording. Moreover, California law specifically prohibits recording in the classroom, but that law seems to be targeted at non-students, according to a report in the Daily Breeze, in Torrance, California.

“If it’s a student, you’re not going to criminally prosecute them for recording their teacher,” said Lonergan, who also has worked with the U.S. Attorney’s Office, where she dealt with many wiretapping cases. After all, “they may be doing it with good motivations, as a study aid.”And in a 1999 precedent-setting case, a teacher was disciplined with evidence obtained from a student recording in the classroom. The teacher’s discipline was upheld on appeal, even though the recording was technically against the law.