Principal Fired for Failing to Report Sex Assault Case

I'm speechless. The New York Times reports

A high school principal in Columbus, Ohio, has been fired and three assistant principals suspended without pay because they failed to notify the police last month about accusations that a 16-year-old special-education student had been sexually assaulted in the school auditorium by a group of boys, one of whom videotaped the incident, school officials said yesterday.

The principal and her assistants not only failed to report the incident but also urged the girl's father to avoid calling the police out of concerns that reporters would become aware of the assault, according to statements given to school investigators.

So a student gets sexually assaulted, and the principal's immediate concern is the media? Believe it or not, it gets worse. After a teacher disobeyed and called the girl's father, the administration asked him not to come in right away to tend to his daughter. Then, when he did anyway,

Mr. Watson [the victim's father] and other administrators told investigators that the principal, Regina B. Crenshaw, had also advised the father to avoid calling the police, the investigation report says. Mrs. Crenshaw recommended that the father return the next morning and report the incident to a police officer who was usually stationed at the school but who was not there on March 9, the report added.

So, not only should they not call the police and risk media attention, the father is told to wait until the next day and talk to the on-site officer, whose job is primarily to run the D.A.R.E. program, with the promise that "you will be happy with the results!"

The story pretty much speaks for itself. Bill Quick writes

I remain convinced that most working teachers still try to keep the best interests of their students first and foremost, but the parasitical adminstrative [sic] maze that battens, topheavy, upon the corpus of the American educational system is like any other self-serving bureaucracy: Soulless, pitiless, monstrous.