Before Brandi Clark began a career with Spotsylvania County Public Schools in 2021, she worked with young children in California, Oregon and Colorado.
She was a kindergarten teacher at Cedar Forest Elementary School from 2021-24 but declined to sign another contract with Spotsylvania schools at the end of last year.
Clark said her dissatisfaction with the division stemmed from its attempt to have her sign a memo stating that she did not report an incident correctly to the administration after a behavioral interventionist struck a child in her class with a shoe in April.
The former employee, Gloria Joan Jackson, 73, was convicted Friday in Spotsylvania Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court of one count of misdemeanor assault and battery. Jackson received a deferred disposition sentence, meaning if she demonstrates good behavior for one year, the charge will be dismissed.
Clark was called to testify and painted a picture of a “chaotic” scene that day last spring, claiming no administrator responded to her pleas for help. Jackson saw the boy in question wandering the hallway, brought him into the classroom and attempted to calm him down for 45 minutes.
“The saddest part of the whole case is nobody else responded to the call,” said Jackson’s attorney Jason Pelt.
Multiple incidents recorded
A video of the incident obtained by the Free Press shows Jackson removing her shoe and striking the boy on the leg while he sat in a chair, resulting in a confrontation with paraprofessional Karina Rivera, who was assigned to another boy in the room. Paraprofessional Katie Vega covered Clark’s class and witnessed the incident as well.
Jackson denied the allegation of striking the boy with the shoe, but Rivera told her, “I saw you. Why would you lie? He’s literally rubbing his leg because you hit him with your shoe.”
Jackson also said the boy had been hitting her all day before Rivera responded: “He’s a child. You’re an adult.”
Jackson testified that the boy spit on her, elbowed and kicked her several times. She elbowed him multiple times in return, according to testimony from witnesses.
“Is that what we expect of our teachers — to be just punching bags?” Pelt said. “That’s what’s happening.”
A video played in the courtroom by prosecutor Crystal Montague-Holland showed Jackson contacting the boy with the shoe, conflicting with her testimony that she only displayed it as a warning to him.
As the boy, whose parents are from El Salvador, sat in a chair crying to the point of nearly choking, Jackson told him, “If you spit up on this floor, I’m going to make you lick it up.”
“It’s a very fatal thing for me, it really hurts me so much to watch the videos and see how my son cries when he is so traumatized,” the boy’s father told the Free Press through a translator. “Well, to that teacher hurting him and outraging him mentally and physically, I don’t understand why the school [resource officer] didn’t do anything about it.”
The father, who first viewed the video Thursday, said he plans to file a lawsuit against the school division, and questioned if the actions of Jackson, who is Black, were racially motivated.
According to testimony from Rivera, Jackson told the boy that he is in America now so he should speak English. The boy was born in the U.S. but, because his parents only speak Spanish, he speaks the language as well.
Clark noted that the victim is an English Language Learner, and his inability to communicate was his primary source of frustration at school. He is now a first-grader at Cedar Forest.
“The fact that this person is a bit older aged and can act this way towards a little kid is very sad,” his father said. “Obviously little kids sometimes don’t know what they’re doing. We grow to learn.”
An experienced educator
Jackson worked in Spotsylvania schools for 25 years. She testified that Cedar Forest Principal Scott Orth called her in October and asked if she would come out of retirement to handle the newly created behavioral interventionist position at the school. She had a caseload of 11 students.
In another video, Jackson berates a different student in Clark’s class while imploring him to sit down before eventually grabbing his arm as he sat on the edge of a chair, forcing him to sit up. She only faced charges related to the shoe incident.
“Sit in it, and you keep your little chubby self in there until it’s time to go and you bet not touch anything here,” Jackson said to the second boy. “Sit your little chubby self there. Touch it if you want to and I’m going to disconnect your fingers from your hand. Touch it again. Touch it. You’ve lost your mind. It’s not yours. Leave it alone. And when you get home, stay home.”
Audria Atkinson, the second boy’s mother, said her son is now living in Ohio with family because she did not want him to return to Spotsylvania schools.
Atkinson viewed the video for the first time Thursday, saying it made her “mad” because she did not think that would happen with an employee at the school, although there were concerns throughout the year.
“I didn’t want him to go back to that school because I had so many issues with that school,” Atkinson said. “Now that I’ve seen the video, I don’t know if I should go up there and raise hell or not.”
Atkinson said her son initially loved school, but that changed “after a little while.” She said there were mornings he refused to go, but he never expressed why. She said he was “very hyper,” had an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) and made frequent visits to the guidance counselor and principal’s office. She had some interactions with Jackson and “she sounded really nice.”
“I wouldn’t believe she’d be mean like that,” Atkinson said.
Dispute over reporting
Clark said she called both paraprofessionals, Vega and Rivera, later that night to remind them they are mandatory reporters of child abuse or neglect. She also alerted Child Protective Services.
She said the SCPS Human Resources Department and CPS had all the videos she recorded the day of the incident, and the Spotsylvania County Sheriff’s Office had the videos by April 11.
Amy Williams, the chief human resources officer for SCPS, claimed in the memo that Clark refused to sign that the teacher “failed to accurately report suspected abuse of a student to school administration.” The memo stated that Clark properly notified CPS but did not provide a written explanation of the events to school administrators — including Orth — as requested. Clark provided an email to Assistant Principal William Kuhnert with an explanation of the day’s events, but did not include the shoe incident because she did not notice it until viewing her recording later.
Division policy states that the reporting requirement is to provide information to the local department of social services, the Virginia Department of Social Services’ toll-free child abuse and neglect hotline or the person in charge of the school or department.
Virginia law requires mandated reporters to report immediately any suspected abuse or neglect that they learn of in their professional or official capacity unless the person has actual knowledge that the same matter has already been reported to the local department or the department’s toll-free child abuse and neglect hotline.
Spotsylvania County School Board Chair Lorita Daniels said she has not viewed the videos and declined to comment on the incident or aftermath.
Clark, who has been licensed since 2001, said the issues in the classroom last year are not a matter of inexperience, noting “this isn’t my first rodeo.” As the class was set to head to the library that day, there were three children who were in a behavioral crisis, according to witness testimony.
Clark said she didn’t record that day to catch misdeeds by Jackson. Her main concern was that the school’s administration provided little assistance since the start of the school year because they believed that with three employees available to the classroom, they should have it under control or be able to walk any students causing disruption to the office.
Clark said she often felt helpless in what she deemed an “unsafe environment,” so she began to record the daily pandemonium starting last October. She also reported her concerns to HR. During the shoe incident, Clark said the room was “destroyed” with materials strewn throughout the class.
“When the child is being hit with the shoe, there is another child in the front of the room throwing blocks and there is a child in the back of the room throwing sharpened pencils and running around trying to stab other kids with a pair of open scissors,” Clark told the Free Press.
‘Nowhere in the manual’
Clark added that she did not step between Jackson and the boy that was struck by the shoe because the behavior interventionist is viewed as the authority during those situations. She said teachers are also not trained to remove students from classrooms. Children know that teachers are not allowed to touch them, so “they continue to run around the room, and we can’t do anything,” she said.
“I could not pick up the students and carry them out of the room,” she said. “I cannot touch their arm. The only safe thing I could do would be to hold my hand out for them, so they can grab it, and I can walk out of the room with them. That is why it looks like we’re just allowing it to continue … We have to basically corner the child and then try to coax them out of the room.”
Jackson was the final witness called to testify at the trial. She repeatedly denied hitting the boy with the shoe, claiming she took it off and showed it to him as a threat to get him to stop kicking her injured knee.
Judge Marcel Jones told her that parents do not expect their children to be struck by school employees. He added that even removing the shoe as a threat was unacceptable and “nowhere in the manual to use as any type of deterrence.”
