Selwyn Elementary parents ask county for help after Teacher of the Year is suspended

A group of Selwyn Elementary parents pleaded with Mecklenburg County commissioners Tuesday night to help them get answers from Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools to better explain the suspension of a former Teacher of the Year.

Parents contended that county leaders have the authority to probe CMS’s decision-making to not return Lecia Shockley to her first-grade classroom. CMS receives about a third of its budget from the county.

“We are asking for your help sorting out how we can work with CMS to resolve this matter in a more transparent and timely fashion,” Burr Farrar, whose 7-year-old son is in Shockley’s class, told the commissioners. “We have not received responses that adequately address our procedural questions.”

The commissioners have a joint meeting with the school board Jan. 22.

Commissioner Pat Cotham said she’ll be seeking insight into how the former Teacher of the Year was treated.

“We can’t tell CMS what to do, but we can ask questions when residents contact us,” Cotham said in an interview Wednesday morning. “What are we doing to our teachers? It seems like the teacher deserves something here.”

Shockley was suspended in December after Tariq Bokhari, a Republican who represents south Charlotte on the City Council, accused her of behaving inappropriately toward his 6-year-old son in her classroom. Shockley was later cleared of any criminal wrongdoing, though she will not be returning to Selwyn, the Observer reported in December.

While Bokhari has said that he and his wife, Krista, “were trying to do the right thing by reporting what they knew” about Shockley, the episode called into question whether CMS potentially gave the City Council member preferential treatment.

“Our 6 year old son was coming home and reporting things that were happening to him that ANY parent would have found to be unacceptable,” Krista Bokhari said in a written statement to the Observer Wednesday afternoon. “When we learned another child in the class was being impacted, we were obligated to bring our concerns to the school principal, CMS investigated with no involvement from us, and she is no longer teaching at that school.”

Shockley’s students continue to ask about her whereabouts, questioning why she left without saying goodbye — others going so far as to ask if their teacher died. One student had even considered asking Santa Claus to bring Shockley back to Selwyn but then decided that was too big of a request, said Ansley Seguin, the mother of a first-grader in Shockley’s class.

Parents say they have been repeatedly stonewalled by CMS on both personnel and procedural questions.

That includes what support CMS offers to teachers who may have been wrongfully accused, as well as the process for “returning qualified educators back to the classroom quickly,” Seguin said.

“We need to ask why our teachers are being silenced and are unable to stand up and defend themselves — and why they are scared, petrified, to even stand up for a colleague,” Seguin said in her remarks to the commissioners.

There have been four different substitute teachers in Shockley’s class over the span of 20 school days, Seguin said. She said the parents aren’t planning to bring their concerns to the City Council.

But the circumstances at Selwyn have created a disruptive academic environment, parents told the commissioners. And it’s taken an emotional toll on the first-graders, leaving them “devastated” without a routine or structure, said parent Lola Campbell.

“Overnight, their classroom was no longer the magical place they had come to know over the past few months,” Campbell said in her remarks. “This is the reality of a public school classroom with no teacher.”

This story was originally published January 8, 2020 at 1:17 PM.