Remember the smart-phone video, shot by a student, that showed a Sebastian River High School criminal justice teacher physically subduing a defiant and disruptive teen during a Nov. 17 classroom altercation?
The video that, despite offering an incomplete and one-sided version of the incident, provided the basis for Indian River County Schools Superintendent Mark Rendell’s wrongheaded and reckless rush to judgment?
The video that School Board chairman Dale Simchick and board member Claudia Jimenez cited as the most compelling evidence against Joe Nathaniel during a January meeting in which they ignored a public outpouring of support for the respected teacher and former football coach, and, instead, eagerly embraced Rendell’s over-the-top recommendation to fire him?
There’s a real chance that Rendell and his team won’t be able to use the video when Nathaniel appears before a state Division of Administrative Hearings judge to challenge the superintendent’s already-flimsy case.
“According to School Board policy, a student can’t video-record a staff member without written permission,” Nathaniel said. “The video violated their own policy, yet they showed it to all the board members.”
In other words: The school district is relying almost entirely on ill-gotten evidence that exists only because a student broke the rules.
That is a dangerous precedent. It’s also a slimy way to conduct what appears to be an agenda-driven investigation that was as hasty as it was shabby.
So Nathaniel instructed his attorney, Mark Wilensky of West Palm Beach, to file a motion with the DOAH, asking an administrative law judge to prohibit the district from entering the video as evidence in his hearing.
Wilensky also filed the initial paperwork in Indian River County Circuit Court for a civil lawsuit against the district, which Nathaniel claims violated his privacy by ignoring its own policy and releasing the student-shot video to the news media.
Since what’s legal often has little to do with what’s right, there’s no way to know how the DOAH judge will rule. But Nathaniel is hoping to hear something from the agency this week.
Until he does, however, his date with the DOAH – his hearing was set for June 27 at the county courthouse – is on hold and probably will be rescheduled.
Nathaniel said he was scheduled to give a deposition on May 12, but it was postponed until June 22 as a result of his motion. He said he doesn’t know if the district will proceed with the case against him without the video.
Even if the DOAH judge rules the district may use the video, Nathaniel said he has a lineup of witnesses who will verify his account of the scuffle with Isaiah Speights, the 18-year-old he claims instigated the altercation and initiated physical contact.
His list of witnesses includes teacher Cathy Bradshaw and several students who were in her classroom when he responded to Speights’ provocation by grabbing him and pushing him to the floor.
He also has the powerful letter Assistant State Attorney Nikki Robinson wrote to the Sheriff’s Office on Dec. 15, after she concluded a review of the incident, which resulted in Speights’ Dec. 29 arrest on two misdemeanor charges.
Robinson, responding to a request by Speights’ mother to criminally charge Nathaniel for his role in the classroom clash, read the Sheriff’s Office reports – including witness statements – and studied videos of the incident before deciding there were no grounds to issue a warrant for the teacher’s arrest.
Instead, Robinson’s letter praised the 6-foot-4, 300-pound Nathaniel for taking control of a potentially dangerous situation, noting Speights was “being disruptive and disrespectful” and that Bradshaw “was not capable of physically dealing” with the 6-foot-1 teenager who refused to follow her directions.
“It would have been negligent on the part of Joe Nathaniel to have left the classroom, given Speights’ defiance,” Robinson wrote. “The safety of Ms. Bradshaw and the other students in the classroom would have been put in jeopardy.”
She also pointed out that Speights has, for some time, been a disruptive force at Sebastian River, which provided her with 34 pages of disciplinary reports detailing his bad behavior.
Robinson wrote that Speights, who was not injured in the altercation with Nathaniel but violently punched lockers and kicked a water fountain off the wall on his way to the principal’s office, has been “belligerent and disrespectful” to teachers and other students in the past.
She stated that Speights, who has been arrested several times on unrelated charges since the altercation with Nathaniel, “provoked the teacher’s response with his defiance” and that the “physical aspect of this incident began with the student.”
School Board member Charles Searcy, who publicly has been Nathaniel’s lone defender on the board, described Robinson as an “experienced and respected prosecutor” and said, “I give her opinion a lot of weight.”
Searcy, who stood alone against the board’s cowardly decision to punt the case to the DOAH rather than face a potentially hostile crowd here, said he asked Rendell about Robinson’s letter after Vero Beach 32963 reported on it in March. He said the superintendent told him he was unaware of the letter when he authored his charging document.
Not that it would’ve changed anything.
In response to an email asking if he might reconsider his decision to seek Nathaniel’s termination in the wake of Robinson’s letter and other factors – overwhelming public support for Nathaniel and the teacher’s previously unblemished record, which includes a best-you-can-get, “highly effective” rating on his 2014-15 job evaluation – Rendell wrote that he had “no further comment at this time.”
Everything he wanted to say was contained in his Jan. 12 charging letter, which accused Nathaniel of escalating the incident by taunting Speights, continuing to move toward the teen in an aggressive manner, and physically abusing and yelling at him.
Robinson’s letter did, however, have an impact on School Board member Shawn Frost, who said it “certainly has opened my eyes to look at other things and not just the videos.”
A second video, recorded by a camera in the principal’s office, shows Nathaniel physically preventing Speights from making a phone call that, given the volatile circumstances, the teacher believed posed a potential threat.
Frost acknowledged that “a lot of information has come forward since that first board meeting.” He said he’s keeping an open mind and hoping to learn more from Nathaniel’s DOAH hearing.
“One of the benefits of having the DOAH hearing is that we’ll have access to all of that discovery – not just a couple of video clips – so we’ll have a better perspective when it comes back to us for review and a final vote,” Frost said. “Mr. Nathaniel will get the benefit of due process, and the gaps will be filled in.”
If there is, in fact, a hearing.
Will the district go forward with its case if the DOAH judge excludes the student-shot video? And if the video is admitted, how much weight will the judge give to it, knowing it is incomplete and doesn’t accurately depict everything that happened in the classroom?
You’d like to think that Robinson’s letter, the witnesses’ testimony, Speights’ trouble-filled history and Nathaniel’s impressive record as a teacher would be more than enough to win the case.
“I was a teacher for two years, so I know how tough it is to stand in front of a classroom full of today’s kids,” said Frost, who taught science at Sebastian River from 2006-08 and knew Nathaniel as a colleague. “Education in 2016 is not an easy business.”
Frost called the Nathaniel incident “unfortunate” and expressed concern that the district might be “taking away an asset because of one momentary lapse in judgment.”
Many of us, though, don’t see any lapse in judgment.
We disagree with Rendell’s ridiculous overreaction to a teacher using force – and only the force necessary – to subdue an angry, violent, out-of-control teen who initiated a physical confrontation and posed a threat to others in that classroom.
We agree with Robinson, who is familiar with Speights’ rap sheet and wrote that Nathaniel responded responsibly, arguing that it would have been negligent for him to walk away.
And we believe it is disgraceful that Rendell would stoop to using a flawed video in a pathetic attempt to get rid of a terrific teacher who did nothing wrong.
“Is there something more to this than we know about?” Searcy asked. “We’re making a huge decision on a man’s life.”
And on a good teacher’s career.
“I love what I do,” said Nathaniel, more familiarly known as “Coach Joe” on campus. “I love Sebastian and my students. They are what matters. … Did you know I told Rendell my desire was to be the first black principal at Sebastian River?”
Nathaniel knows that’s not likely to happen – not any time soon, anyway – but he has spent the past three years working toward a doctorate in higher education leadership through an online program.
He might need that degree to move on, if Rendell is successful.
Not only is the district trying to fire him, but, having accused him of code-of-conduct violations, Rendell also was obligated by law to forward his charging letter to the state Department of Education’s Office of Professional Practices Services, which has the clout to suspend or permanently revoke Nathaniel’s teaching certification.
“They are attempting to end my career,” Nathaniel said. “I’ve told the truth. I have nothing to hide. And I think I’ll win the case. But this has been stressful.”
He was accused of improper conduct and harming a student, and he was removed from his classroom for the remainder of the school year. He was confronted with Rendell’s recommendation that he be fired. His state teaching certification might be in jeopardy.
“It’s important,” Rendell said when he was hired in March 2015, “to make sure teachers know that the superintendent has their back.”
Well, it sounded good at the time.
“They get away with too much,” Nathaniel said. “Maybe this will help other people fight for their rights.”
Maybe, win or lose, he’s not done filing lawsuits.
