“I’ve never worked [for a school district] more obsessed with mediocrity….”
On top of news headlines over safety problems at Jefferson, the district is also
investigating a whistleblower who is believed to be a teacher at the school.
Using an anonymous email account, the educator leaked to Isthmus and Channel3000 the behavior record of the student who shot two classmates with a BB gun. Isthmus did not report on the document when it was received on Dec. 11. But the television station ran with it, using the headline, “Student in BB gun incident previously threatened to ‘kill everyone in the school.’”
The leaked document was a report from EduClimber, software that teachers use to track student behavior incidents. It showed that the student on Sept. 20 was yelling threats in the hallway including “how he hated school and wanted to shoot it up and kill everyone in the school.”
The staff member who documented the incident also wrote that the student’s “language felt like attention seeking behavior rather than actual threats.”
“However, I have no idea how the students in class felt about his comments regarding shooting up the school and killing people,” adds the Jefferson teacher in the EduClimber report. “Over time he calmed down and was able to stay in the class.”
For weeks, Isthmus has been in contact with the whistleblower via email. The teacher says the document was leaked to the media because it was proof that Kurth had “been lying.”
After the BB gun incident, Kurth had written in a Dec. 3 email to parents that “at this time we do not have any reason to believe the student intended to harm anyone with it.”
A Jefferson parent, who did not wish to give her name, says her daughter was on the bus when the incident occurred. She was upset about how Kurth handled the situation, especially after she saw the Channel3000 story.
“[The story] revealed that this same boy threatened to kill everyone at the school and was involved in 25 incidents in just a few months. That seems like Dr. Kurth lied,” says the parent. “A typical person would know that his threats and behavior go hand-in-hand and that he needs help. Plus, it’s just scary to think that someone threatened our kids and we were never told by the school, and that the same kid was still allowed at school and on the school bus.”
