Park View Teacher On Leave

A Loudoun County special education teacher has been placed on paid administrative leave after being connected with the death of a student in Killeen, Texas, where she previously worked.

The 2002 death of 14-year-old Cedric Napoleon was discussed on Capitol Hill on May 19 during a hearing about the alleged abuse of students in schools across the nation. His foster mother claims her son and the teacher, now at Park View High School in Sterling, got in a disagreement during the lunch period, after which the teacher allegedly smothered Cedric by laying on top of him to quiet him down.

According to sources, the teacher, Dawn Marie Hamilton, was about six feet tall and weighed over 230 pounds. Napoleon weighed only 129 pounds and stood at 5 feet, 1 inch tall.

Hamilton’s involvement with Napoleon’s death did not show up on her criminal background check for Park View High School because she was never actually charged with anything.

“If that teacher was just doing her job, then something is very wrong with the system,” Toni Price, Napoleon’s foster mother, told the House Education and Labor Committee last week.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) prepared a report for the congressional committee on cases of death and abuse at public and private schools. The report found hundreds of cases of alleged abuse and at least 20 deaths in these settings from restraining and confining students, particularly special education students. The GAO “found no federal laws restricting the use of seclusion and restraints in public and private schools and widely divergent laws at the state level.”

Nineteen states have no laws that prevent officials from restraining or secluding students, while eight states specifically ban restraints that restrict breathing, GAO official Greg Kutz reported at the congressional hearing.

According to the GAO report, Napoleon’s most recent psychological assessment noted that he “suffered from posttraumatic stress disorder, conduct disorder, oppositional defiance disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and narcissistic personality disorder. The child also had a fear of not being allowed to eat and often horded food as a result of his prior abuse, according to Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (TDFPS). The boy was in a special education class that focused on behavior management.”

Napoleon was taken from his family at the age of 9 after TDFPS received reports that he was being neglected and emotionally and physically abused, the GAO reported about his foster care records. He took food from trash cans and grocery stores to feed himself.

The day he died, school staff denied eighth-grader Napoleon his lunch as a form of punishment, GAO learned from TDFPS. GAO said that reports of what prompted this punishment differed.

“The classroom teacher told police she gave him a ‘delayed lunch’ because he had stopped working at about 11 a.m. and started asking if he could eat. She said this was a common occurrence,” the report said. “A teacher’s aide also told police that he placed the child on ‘delayed lunch’ at about 1 p.m. after the boy tried to steal candy. The child became agitated at about 2:30 p.m. and left the classroom, according to TDFPS. The aide ran after the boy and brought him back to the classroom, but he would not remain seated. The teacher warned him to sit down at least twice before forcibly placing him in his chair.”

Hamilton told police that she then used a “basket hold restraint” on him while he was seated, in which she stood behind him and grabbed his wrists while crossing them around his body. When that didn’t stop his struggling, she rolled him on to a mat, face down, in a “therapeutic floor hold.” She then lay on top of him, his arms pinned beneath him, with an aide holding his feet down, a student said. They ignored his screams that he could not breathe and continued this restraint even after he said, “I give,” and fell silent, said the GAO report.

Once fifteen minutes had passed, an assistant principal, who had been in the room while Napoleon was struggling, told the teacher to stop.

“The teacher and an aide put the child’s limp body back in his chair, and the aide wiped drool from his mouth,” the report continued. “The assistant principal told police that they thought he had been ‘playing possum.’ Once the assistant principal noticed that the child was unresponsive, she said she asked for the school nurse. The nurse arrived and performed CPR while someone phoned 911. The child was taken to the hospital and pronounced dead. A dozen students in the classroom had witnessed the incident.”

“If I’d treated Cedric that way, I’d be in jail,” Price told the congressional committee last week.

In his autopsy, medical examiners said that Napoleon died from mechanical compression of the trunk. “His death was ruled a homicide and local police investigated the incident for possible prosecution. During the investigation, the teacher told authorities that the school district trained her on how to restrain students,” the GAO report said.

The school district allows teachers to restrain students if the child is an immediate danger to himself or others, or if the child is trying to leave the school premises.

“One school district restraint trainer told police that [Hamilton] had a very difficult classroom—the worst in the district,” the report said. “[The trainer] also said she had reviewed [Hamilton’s] previous ‘therapeutic floor holds’ and found no problems with the way the teacher executed the procedure.”

During the September 2007 to June 2008 academic year, Texas public school officials stated they restrained 4,202 students 18,741 times, GAO reported.

“Loudoun County does not teach those kinds of restraints; we do not use those kinds of restraints,” said Wayde Byard, spokesman for Loudoun County Public Schools.

A Texas grand jury decided not to take action on Napoleon’s death, but TDFPS launched its own investigation, finding “reason to believe” that Hamilton physically abused Napoleon on the day he died.

Hamilton’s name was put on TDFPS’s “central registry” of people found to have abused or neglected children. There is no national registry of this kind.

An administrative law judge ruled that Napoleon’s actions did not threaten himself or others, and found that Hamilton “employed the restraint as an inappropriate disciplinary tactic, using excessive, unnecessary force out of proportion to the minimal risk posed by the child’s action,” according to the GAO report. Because Hamilton ignored Napoleon’s pleas to stop and warnings that he could not breathe, the judge ruled that Hamilton’s actions were reckless and that Napoleon’s death was not accidental. The judge upheld TDFPS’s abuse filing and allowed this information to be available to officials responsible for children. However, no criminal charges were filed against Hamilton, who is currently employed by Park View High School.

Upon hearing of Hamilton’s involvement through the GAO report, the American Association of School Administrators submitted a letter to the House Committee on Education and Labor on May 19, the day of its hearing. It said, “Late last night we were informed that one of the teachers involved in one of the cases GAO reviewed is currently employed by Loudoun County Public Schools. Upon notification, the teacher was immediately placed on administrative leave, pending investigation. … GAO has referred the matter of the teacher in question to the Virginia Board of Education for consideration.”

When Park View High School hired Hamilton in 2007, she passed her criminal background check and received positive references from her previous employer, the Rock Creek Academy, a private special education school in D.C.

Because of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), Byard was not at liberty to discuss Loudoun County’s actions regarding Hamilton.

Hamilton was placed on paid administrative leave on May 15 in determination of her employment. When hiring her, the school system ran an FBI check, police check, and Criminal Offender Record Information (CORI) check. Hamilton passed all of these checks, so there is little that Loudoun County could do differently in the future. The background checks involved sending Hamilton’s finger prints to the FBI and Virginia State Police to check if there has ever been an arrest or conviction, Byard said.

Employment applications for Loudoun County Public Schools specifically ask prospective teachers if they have ever been investigated on charges of child abuse or neglect. Hamilton checked “no.”