Washington Gadfly

NYC Teacher Suspended For Threatening To Kill Blood Thirsty Student Assailant

Evan Gahr Investigative Journalist
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The New York Post today tells the harrowing tale of a veteran Queens educator ousted from her job because she invoked her right to self-defense to stop an angry student from bludgeoning her with his heavy arm cast.

The Flushing High School student got a mere slap on the wrist and returns to school on Tuesday.

The City Department of Education’s “new student-discipline code, which discourages punishment,” likely explains why he escaped serious sanction, the Post reports. Nationwide, the Obama Administration is pressuring schools to decrease student suspensions altogether because the disciplinary measure disproportionately impact minorities.

“The kid threatened to assault me, and they’re bringing me up on disciplinary charges,” English teacher Eileen Ghastin, who looks whiter than snow white in her Post photo, told reporter Susan Edelman.

On May 17, Ghastin’s surly young charge arrived late to class and started yakking away to his friends. When she insisted he sit somewhere else the teen “went berserk,” Ghastin recalled. “He jumped out of his chair, rushed toward me and raised his arm.”

And not to play patty cake.

His arm, which, in a hard cast from his hand to elbow, was pretty much a deadly weapon.

Ghastin said he yelled. “I’m a boxer, so I can ­really f–k you up.”

Petrified, she nonetheless said, “If you beat me I will kill you.”

He left the room and went bellyaching to the school office that Ghastin had threatened him.

Principle Tyee Chin instead shunted him off for just five days to a “two hour after school program.

Ghastin has been relegated indefinitely to off-site clerical work while officials investigate her minimal self-defense effort.

Although the student is white his kid glove treatment may be partly due to the Obama Administration playing racial politics with school discipline, leaving educators averse to suspending anybody at all.

As investigative reporter Paul Sperry wrote in the New York Post this April, “The Education Department has threatened school districts with lawsuits and funding cuts wherever if finds racial ‘disparities’  in suspensions and expulsions, arguing such disparities have created a ‘school-to-prison pipeline’ for African-Americans children. The agency claims such disparities are the product of racism in schools.”

But Obama’s penchant for soft treatment of school house thuggery is really color-blind.

The Education Department website “Laws and Guidance” section on “Re-Thinking Discipline,” says that, “Teachers and students deserve school environments that are safe, supportive, and conducive to teaching and learning. Creating a supportive school climate—and decreasing suspensions and expulsions—requires close attention to the social, emotional, and behavioral needs of all students.”

Administrators, educators, students, parents and community members” are urged to  find “alternatives” to suspensions and join “a national conversation on how to effectively create positive school climates.”

Let’s hope Ghastin’s comments to the Post starts an honest one.

 

Evan Gahr