Staff member removed from Long Beach High School

Sources say alleged inappropriate contact with student is being ‘overblown’

Posted

special education teaching aide was removed from Long Beach High School on June 9 and reassigned after allegedly making inappropriate contact — captured by cameras in the school — with a nonverbal male student in the Life Skills program, according to three people with knowledge of the incident.

“The Long Beach Public School District is currently conducting an internal investigation of a high school staff member,” Schools Superintendent David Weiss said in a statement. “The staff member was removed from the classroom and will remain reassigned until the completion of the investigation.”

According to people familiar with the allegations, Nassau County police, along with the child’s parents, were called to the school to view the video, but there are currently no criminal or disciplinary charges against the teaching aide.

The contact between the staff member and the student was seen on video footage captured as the teacher was escorting the child in a stairway. The people familiar with the complaint said that in the video, the teaching aide was walking ahead of the student, and reached the bottom of the stairs first. As the aide turned around to help the autistic teenager down the stairs, the two were very close, and there appeared to be facial contact.

“As this is a matter of personnel, the district is legally prohibited from sharing further details on the matter,” Weiss said. “The district is working cooperatively with the Nassau County Police Department and will continue to do so moving forward.”

One person called the incident a “non-issue.” Two people who spoke anonymously added that the tenured teaching aide has a clean record, and they believe the incident has been overblown, citing the inconclusiveness of the video footage and a separate case involving abuse allegations made against former middle school teacher Lisa Weitzman, who was reassigned in 2014 and is involved in an ongoing disciplinary hearing.

The video was discovered after a few students entered the high school without submitting to a bag check following the report of a threatening message in a girls’ bathroom stall that week, the people with knowledge of the incident said. While school employees were watching the video footage in order to track down the students, the alleged incident was brought to light.

Nassau police offered no specifics about the incident, but confirmed that an investigation is in progress at the school.