LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- An instructional assistant at Coleridge-Taylor Elementary is challenging her termination for boarding two buses and threatening two students who were involved with incidents with her son.
Shawntel Alexander was fired by Jefferson County Public Schools Superintendent Marty Pollio in a Dec. 12 letter, according to documents obtained by WDRB News in response to an open records request.
But Alexander is appealing that decision, saying Coleridge-Taylor Elementary Principal Marcia Carmichael-Murphy went too far in firing her.
She told WDRB News on Tuesday that the incident followed multiple attempts to keep her autistic son from being bullied since the beginning of the school year.
"I said I can understand suspension without pay," Alexander said, noting that she made no physical contact with either student. "I totally get it. Something should have happened. I'm not saying nothing should have happened to me."
"But being terminated?" she said. "I don't think I should have gotten terminated because I was being an advocate for my child."
Alexander was accused of, and admitted to, misusing her status as a district employee so she could board two buses Nov. 12 and confront two students who had altercations with her son that day, according to a Dec. 2 discharge recommendation completed by Coleridge-Taylor Elementary Principal Marcia Carmichael-Murphy.
While she admitted to verbally accosting and threatening students and said she was wrong during a due process meeting days after the incident on Nov. 15, Carmichael-Murphy wrote that Alexander was not apologetic.
Alexander, who had worked for Jefferson County Public Schools since August 2005 and earned $22,592 per year, declined to sign the document.
She refused to sign because she actually apologized for her role in the incident, she said.
"(Carmichael-Murphy) stated in there that I was unapologetic, and that was not true," Alexander said. "That's the first thing I said, that I was sorry about that. I shouldn't have done it."
District investigators substantiated the allegations against Alexander after reviewing surveillance footage of the incidents.
Alexander was heard in that footage threatening to hold one of the students down so her son can "beat the (expletive) out of you."
"You forgot his mama worked here," she's quoted as saying in the discharge recommendation narrative.
Alexander said her confronted the two students -- a boy and a girl at Coleridge-Taylor -- after they threatened to beat up her son, who had been bullied at the beginning of the 2019-20 school year. The boy had been moved to her son's first-grade class about a week before the incident, which is when Alexander says the problems began for her son.
She said she got on the buses to talk with the students about leaving her son alone, not to threaten them.
Because the two had said they'd beat her son up, Alexander said she asked the girl how she'd like it if she was held down and attacked.
"She just looked at me," Alexander said of the girl's response. "She rolled her eyes."
Rather than following district reporting protocols, Carmichael-Murphy found that Alexander "took it upon herself to board the buses and verbally accost, berate, curse out and threatened children with harm."
"This behavior is intolerable and unethical for staff to make any such comments or threats to students (i.e. terroristic threatening), or use their stature as a JCPS employee to gain access to unauthorized areas with children (i.e. trespassing on the school bus while acting in the capacity of a parent)," Carmichael-Murphy wrote in the report.
Alexander says she has never been told that she can't board a school bus and has done it in the past when dealing with disciplinary issues.
She traces the beginning of her issues with Carmichael-Murphy to the beginning of the school year, when she said her son was being bullied by three other students.
Her requests to have her son moved were in vain, she said. Her son was punched in the stomach and pushed against a table, leaving a bruise on his face, she said.
Alexander said her concerns and requests to have her son moved to a different classroom were never taken seriously by Carmichael-Murphy until the boy's father said he wanted to meet with the principal on Aug. 29.
Their son was transferred to a new class the next day, she said.
"Don't look at me as an employee," Alexander said she told Carmichael-Murphy. "Look at me as a concerned parent."
Alexander says she just wants to return to work, noting that she had never been disciplined or received a negative performance review until her ouster.
"I got hugs every day all day in that school from kids that I didn't even know," she said. "But that was OK because I know some of those kids don't get that type of love and stuff at home."
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