By Fernando Del Valle, Valley Morning Star, Harlingen, Texas
Apr. 22–RAYMONDVILLE — Superintendent Johnny Pineda on Monday denied a parent’s claim that school officials downgraded charges against a student involved in a classmate’s video-recorded beating to protect the school district’s standing with the state education agency.
Regino Garcia, the father of a Myra Green Middle School student who he said was beaten by a classmate, said the girl who beat his daughter should have been charged with a felony assault.
Garcia claimed officials reduced the charge to simple assault, a Class C misdemeanor, so the incident would not lead the Texas Education Agency to put the school on the state’s disciplinary watch list for a second straight year.
Pineda said school officials charged the student with simple assault so the girl would not be expelled.
“I would not work the system like that,” Pineda said. “I don’t work that way. If something took place — good, bad or indifferent — I call it that way.”
Charges that do not lead to mandatory expulsion do not affect the school’s TEA standing.
School Police Chief Oscar Gutierrez said he did not have details of the incidents that led to the students’ expulsions.
TEA put Myra Green Middle School on its disciplinary watch list this year, said Deetta Culbertson, the agency’s spokeswoman. It was one of eight in Texas on the watch list this year.
With six mandatory expulsions for a student population of 523, Myra Green Middle School could be on the watch list again, Culbertson said.
If more than 1 percent of a school’s population is expelled, the school is monitored by TEA and can be forced to take corrective measures, Culbertson said.
“They have to come up with a plan to make the campus less dangerous,” she said. Such a plan could include “safety training,” or a plan to curb student fights including “conflict resolution training.”
Garcia, a principal at Edinburg Alternative Academy, a disciplinary school, said he is considering filing charges with the Raymondville Police against the girl who beat his daughter.
He said that his daughter Sara, 13, was beaten on March 11 by one girl while another girl used a cell phone to record the attack and upload it to YouTube, an online video-sharing service that displays personal videos on the Internet. Another girl provoked the girl to hit his daughter, Garcia said.
The recorded beating may have been removed by YouTube administrators because it violates the Web site’s policy against violent displays.
Garcia said his daughter did not know the girls who staged the attack.
A Raymondville doctor found Sara suffered a slight concussion, he said. She was not hospitalized.
Justice of the Peace Juan Silva said the beating case is in his court and a hearing date hasn’t been set.
It was the second time Raymondville school district students uploaded violent videos into YouTube this year, school board President John Solis said.
Solis said officials will hold a workshop this summer to discuss the district’s student cell phone policy.
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