'Road to recovery will be long' Lawyer for Abby Zwerner to file lawsuit against Newport News Publi

[ShazzieB]

Source: WVEC (Norfolk, VA ABC-TV affiliate)

NEWPORT NEWS, Va. — The attorney representing Abby Zwerner, the Richneck Elementary teacher shot by a 6-year-old student, announced her intent to file a lawsuit against Newport News Public Schools Wednesday morning.

Attorney Diane Toscano made the announcement at Newport News Marriott at City Center, less than a week after Riverside Health System confirmed that Zwerner was released from the hospital.

Toscano accused Richneck's administrators of failing to act, disregarding safety concerns about the student by several school employees before the shooting.

"The administration could not be bothered," Toscano reiterated during a news conference. She stated her belief that the tragedy was preventable if school administrators had taken action.

"But instead, they failed to act and Abby was shot," Toscano said.

Read more: https://www.13newsnow.com/article/news/local/mycity/newport-news/abby-zwerner-lawyer-to-file-lawsuit-against-newport-news-public-schools-richneck-shooting/291-b123a065-dfda-4143-a8f0-05ee263d38db

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Lots more details, plus video, in article. No paywall.

[brush]

1. She won't have to teach again, and who can blame her...

for not wanting to relive that trauma every time there's a problen student in her class. That school district will have to pay big bucks for its negligence.

[onecaliberal]

2. Are these administrators at least on paid leave. The school is not safe.

[DENVERPOPS]

5. Once investigated

any school official that is found to have not taken immediate action on the reporting should be fired. And until then, they shouldn't be allowed back to their jobs.

[onecaliberal]

8. Wow, there is no way they should be on campus.

[Lonestarblue]

3. I hope this incident opens discussions of how to deal with disturbed and violent kids in schools.

Parents of such children often find it difficult to get treatment for their kids, but public schools and teachers should not be taxed with that responsibility. We need better ways of helping these children, and we need better laws fixing responsibility for violent children gaining access to unsecured weapons in the home that they then use to murder or wound someone.

[LisaM]

11. Yes, the mainstreaming approach.

It doesn't work, all the more so because charter and private schools can kick those kids out and public schools can't.

[thucythucy]

12. Rather than blaming mainstreaming in particular

or disabled kids in general, I think we should keep the focus on the number one issue this brings up: guns.

Without the apparent easy access to a gun this wouldn't have happened.

Secondly: WTF is up with this school's administration? Had the gun been confiscated at the first report, again, this wouldn't have happened.

But I agree, charter schools in particular are a pox on education. Especially when they're used to drain public funds away from public schools.

[LisaM]

13. The parents are really at fault.

This child was such a problem that up until the week this happened they had to be in school with him. The child aside, I cannot imagine how a teacher had to cope with parents being in her classroom. That child should never have been in the class at all.

I worked at a pre-school for a number of years. There was a father who liked to show up right before nap time (the child herself did not have problems). It was awful. He would sit in at story time when the kids were supposed to be winding down before nap and rile them up. He would want to go on the playground with his daughter when she was supposed to be sleeping. He was a huge problem and yet from his point of view, I am sure he thought everything was fine and that he was contributing to the kids' experience, when the kids needed structure and a schedule.

Having a problem child who needed to be accompanied by one or both parents is not right. That is an outcome of mainstreaming. It sounds as if this child should never have been there at all and if that sounds harsh, I'm sorry. There is now a whole classroom of children who will have PTSD forever because of this. Is mainstreaming worth it?

Just yesterday I was reading a friend griping about how her daughter's teacher wasn't following her IEP and all I could do was bite my tongue.

[thucythucy]

14. According to news accounts I've seen

the school district says it has no record of the parents ever accompanying the child to school. I also saw a substitute teacher or teacher's aide who taught in that class who in an interview said she never saw any parents on any of the days she was there.

And so forgive my skepticism, but I even doubt whether the child was all that disabled.

It sounds to me like the parents are trying their hardest to shift blame from themselves for the shitty job they did "securing" their gun. To blame a six year old, disabled or not, strikes me as the worst kind of scapegoating. And to put your own child on the spot like that seems quite cruel.

We'll know more as time goes by and the inevitable litigation makes its way through the courts.

As for your friend's problems with her daughter's teacher, at this remove I have no way to judge, but it could very well be that your friend has a point.

[IronLionZion]

4. Fewer people want to be teachers

schools are dangerous places. Made all the more worse by administrators failing to act on multiple reports of a student with a gun.

in Uvalde it was police failing to act. And everywhere it's lawmakers failing to act.

[Warpy]

6. She's got a damned good case

They should have been very concerned about a kid that young making those sorts of threats. There's a big difference between being a chronic behavior problem and being seriously disturbed and an experienced teacher would know that.

[FakeNoose]

7. The reporters and the lawyer never say the school "principal"

They repeatedly say the school "administration." Well that could be the office assistant, or even the nurse.

This is very puzzling - was the principal ever informed? Who made the decision not to call the police? They're dancing around the question of responsibility. Has anyone else noticed that?

[Coventina]

9. I hope she retires as a very wealthy woman. n/t

[Evolve Dammit]

10. Tragic. Maddening. Sounds like a slow and unpredictable "recovery." Fire all of them that failed

to act and prevent this. No excuses. They failed to act.