By Angie Thompson/senior reporter
TIFTON
March 24, 2008 10:53 pm
—
The employment of a former paraprofessional suspended without pay earlier this year for biting a kindergarten student at Len Lastinger was officially terminated by the Tift County Board of Education Monday.
According to BOE Chairman Rita Griffin, Vivian Collier Hightower was removed without pay from her newly assigned position working at the system’s bus shop Friday and her firing Monday is effective immediately.
Tift County School Superintendent Patrick Atwater told the Tifton Gazette Monday morning in an interview in his office that he would be making the recommendation to the board that Hightower’s employment with the school system be severed.
“As superintendent, Patrick Atwater would not have made a recommendation on an employee with a criminal record such as Ms. Hightower’s,” Atwater said.
The BOE met in a special called meeting to discuss selection of a contractor for projects at G.O. Bailey and to discuss the “EBS FCC License” for a planned BOE television channel. After that meeting ended at 1:30 p.m., the board voted to go into executive session to discuss personnel issues. They came back three hours later and adopted the personnel recommendations made by Atwater, including his recommendation that Hightower’s employment be terminated.
Griffin said the majority of time spent in the executive session was to discuss the annual evaluation of Atwater. In the board’s unanimous adoption of personnel recommendation was their decision to approve Atwater’s employment as superintendent for another three years. The board, minus members Erick Willis and Liz Carson Keith, who left before the executive session had ended, voted unanimously to accept the personnel recommendations as a whole. They did not vote with a show of hands on each specific personnel issue, including Hightower’s.
Atwater and Kevin Dobard, the school system’s human resources director, fielded questions in a meeting held Monday morning in Atwater’s office. Atwater told the Tifton Gazette that he wanted to follow up with the incident involving Vivian Collier Hightower “as it relates to recent articles that have been running in the Tifton Gazette.” He said he understood citizens’ concern for the “method in which things may or may not have been handled internally with both current and previous administrations.” Atwater said no one currently employed in the central office was involved in recommendations that HIghtower be hired.
“Ms. Hightower was employed and recommended for employment by previous administrations and I cannot speak for what background checks were or were not done or what questions were or were not asked by the previous administration,” Atwater said.
According to Dobard and Atwater, criminal history background checks are conducted on paraprofessionals and substitute teachers, as well as certified teachers and other personnel, every five years.
Atwater said Dobard had “completed a very thorough background investigation on information with the sheriff’s office very similar to what the Tifton Gazette has completed.”
“We would have to offer thanks to the Tifton Gazette for bringing some things to light that we haven’t had the opportunity or the manpower to research,” Atwater said.
Hightower was arrested on charges of aggravated assault by the Tift County Sheriff’s Office in 2006. The deputy wrote in his report that Hightower was threatening a 23-year-old and that Hightower was holding a machete when he arrived responding to the call. According Capt. Mike Walker of the TCSO’s Criminal Investigation Division, that department completed its investigation into the incident and forwarded it to the district attorney’s office in April 2006. Walker said last week that he had received no word from the district attorney’s office that the case would not go forward through the court system.
Len Lastinger Primary School Principal Dr. Kim Ezekiel maintains that she first learned on Jan. 22 of the Jan. 10 incident involving Hightower biting the finger of a kindergarten student in the car pick-up area of the school. Dobard said the passage of time between the incident and when it was reported by a witness employed by the school system delayed the investigation and ultimate one-week suspension without pay. After her suspension, Hightower again served as a paraprofessional at Len Lastinger.
“We were strictly governed by what was available to us through the personnel file,” Dobard said Monday. “Upon investigation, we learned that there was some information missing. Without having the manpower to actually go down to the courthouse ... we strictly have to rely on what is provided to us by law enforcement.”
Hightower’s former supervisor when she worked at HeadStart in the 1990s told the Tifton Gazette that she dismissed Hightower (who was named Collier at the time) after a teacher reported to her that she had witnessed Hightower hit a child’s hand. Hightower was subsequently charged with making harassing telephone calls intended for a teacher at the center she believed reported the incident to the director of the center. Both the director and the teacher filed incident reports and Hightower was subsequently ordered by a judge not to contact the center or any employees of the center and not be on the property of the center or any employee’s property. She was ordered to serve a 12-month sentence on probation and to pay fines.
BOE attorney John Reinhardt confirmed Monday that a criminal background check was conducted on Hightower at some point and it became a part of her personnel file. He wasn’t clear when that criminal history was conducted and confirmed that it was a portion of Hightower’s personnel file that was not copied and furnished to the Tifton Gazette.
Atwater said that there was a criminal history report conducted on Hightower when she was hired as a substitute teacher in 2004. Hightower indicated on booking records obtained from law enforcement that her current employer at the time of her April 5, 2006 arrest for aggravated assault was Annie Belle Clark.
“She was probably working at Annie Belle Clark the day she was arrested,” Atwater said, explaining that substitute teachers don’t work at the same school every day.
Also revealed in the copies of Hightower’s personnel file was that she indicated on her verification for work experience that she worked from September 1992 until May 1994 as a teacher assistant at Tifton HeadStart. The form was verified by Carolyn Sanders. It is not known whether Sanders was personally contacted by the school system prior to Hightower’s hiring as a substitute teacher in 2004 or if Sanders was employed with HeadStart at the time of Hightower’s firing from that agency. Sanders made no comments on the employee verification form. Atwater said it was current policy to call former employers of those applying for positions in the school system.
Also, on a copy of a form related to her application for employment as a substitute teacher dated Sept. 8, 2004, Hightower indicated that “she had never been discharged from any position or the armed forces for unprofessional conduct.” She also indicated that she had “been convicted of a misdemeanor other than a minor traffic offense.”
On a “State of Georgia State Security Questionnaire” in Hightower’s personnel file and dated Aug. 14, 2006, Hightower answered “no” to the question “Have you ever been convicted, or are any charges now pending against you by Federal, State or other law enforcement authorities, for any violation of any federal law, state law, county or municipal law, regulation or ordinance?”
According to Atwater, paraprofessionals or substitute teachers are not allowed by policy to administer “any type of corporal punishment” and that fact was part of the decision to suspend her without pay. Dobard said punishment for Hightower’s offense “could have ranged anywhere from suspension to termination.” Atwater said suspension without pay is the “most serious punishment that can be levied short of termination and her history with us, she had no records to indicate that she had any problems with her employment and no evidence of letters of (prior) reprimand.”
“As far as we know or as far as our records and her employers, she was a good employee,” Atwater said. “The current administration’s knowledge of her employment was that she had been a very good, dependable, reliable employee. Had we known the detailed incidents involving her past, the result would have been much different.”
Dobard said the guardian(s) of the student bitten were “basically satisfied with what was decided.”
In Ezekiel’s letter dated Jan. 22 reprimanding Hightower for the biting incident, Ezekiel wrote that she had investigated and interviewed two eyewitnesses to the incident and concluded that Hightower had bitten the child; that Hightower had “denied the allegations and said that no such thing took place”; and wrote to Hightower that “harming children, lying about the incident, and intimidating adults will not be tolerated.”
“It is clear to me in observing your lack of professional behavior that you need help with controlling your temper when you become frustrated about working through difficult situations. In the future, you will need to work harder on your manner in which you handle difficult situations (biting a child will not be tolerated).”
Atwater said Monday that Ezekiel had expressed no disagreement or concern with the decision to place Hightower on a one-week suspension without pay concerning the biting incident.
Dobard said that he believed “the perception, according to parents, is that she (Hightower) is an intimidating person.
“I don’t know of any documentation where she actually confronted a parent to intimidate them,” Dobard said.
Atwater said he encourages anyone to “be open with complaints.”
“We can’t operate an efficient school system if people aren’t open with their concerns,” Atwater said.
“I would like to say point blank that if any parent, employee, child or anyone, if you feel you have gotten to the point of intimidation, please contact me immediately, contact this office immediately,” Dobard said. “We don’t want an air of intimidation going on in the school system.”
Dobard also encouraged anyone not to hesitate to come forward with information.
“Timing is everything,” Dobard said. “Don’t sit on it. People shouldn’t worry about any sort of reprimand or backlash.”
After the board voted to terminate Hightower’s employment, board member John Smith said that “our students have rights, our employees have rights” and “after investigation of this employee, I move we accept the recommendation.” Smith said that the investigation was conducted as soon as possible after all facts in the case were gathered.
“It may have seemed like we were not making a very hard, fast, firm decision, but as we talk about the livelihood of all employees, I would certainly hope that due diligence or due process would be given me or any other employee, whether it be a custodian all the way up to superintendent or assistant superintendent and that the employee would be given the opportunity for a full and complete investigation,” Atwater said. “Our first and foremost objective is to provide fair and ethical and safe treatment of all employees, faculty and staff.”
To contact senior reporter Angie Thompson, call 382-4321.
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