South Carolina Teacher Charged With Assault Threatening To Strangle A Student
A South Carolina middle school teacher was arrested after being accused of threatening to strangle a student.
School violence is on the rise among children, but it also is occurring between teachers and students as well. A middle school teacher in South Carolina was recently arrested for assault against a student. Her case is one of multiple similar incidents recently within the area and it sheds light on a growing concern in the public school system.
According to reports from The Post and Courier, 58-year-old Brenda Dean Inabinette turned herself in to police on Tuesday, August 30th after being charged with third-degree assault and battery on a student. The middle school teacher from White Knoll school has been educating children for nearly 30 years. But that didn’t stop her from allegedly acting inappropriately and violently against a student, who she is accused of threatening to strangle.
The unnamed student went to the school’s assistant principal with these accusations, “shaken” both physically and emotionally by what had just occurred, as the school official recalls. The child said that he accidentally entered the charged middle school teacher’s classroom after leaving the restroom. He recalls the teacher getting angry with this, telling him that she wanted to strangle him as she grabbed him by his school lanyard hanging from his neck.
Following the incident, the Lexington County School District put the middle school teacher on leave. It is unclear whether or not this is a paid or unpaid leave of absence. While she has been teaching for nearly three decades, this is only her third year at the White Knoll middle school. She is currently being held at the Lexington County detention center.
The incident with the Columbia-area middle school teacher is just one of a string of recent aggravated ones that have landed school staff in hot water for the treatment of students. Last May, a Brookland-Cayce High school assistant principal was charged with assaulting a student. He had allegedly overstepped boundaries and got himself inappropriately involved in a student altercation between two children. Just a week after that incident, a Cayce Elementary school teacher’s assistant was accused of assaulting a special needs child.
Cases of child neglect and harm in school settings like with this middle school teacher are reported all across the nation. This upward trend may resonate with a serious issue in schools, which deals with low pay and the teacher shortage. Many schools are ridiculed for offering teachers and support staff bare-bones salaries. Low incentives could mean that schools are forced to hire underqualified employees that may not be best suited for the arduous jobs.
On top of that, teacher shortages are making districts desperate to fill vacant positions. While not necessarily always the case, this could lead to a lack of proper background checks, or even add burdening stress to longstanding educators, making them lash out like the South Carolina middle school teacher did.
The investigation is still ongoing, and it is unknown whether or not the White Knoll Middle school teacher will face further punishment for her alleged actions. Despite the fact that working with kids day in and day out can be a tumultuous task, educators are responsible for knowing how to react and handle all kinds of situations. Threatening children with violence should never be the solution to school issues.
