The owner of an early childhood education center in north Fulton County said she’s doing everything she can to make changes after four teachers were caught “belittling” and “humiliating” toddlers in a classroom last year.
The incidents, which resulted in four firings, happened in a classroom for 2- and 3-year-olds at the Goddard School of Roswell on Woodstock Road, according to an incident report obtained by AJC.com.
The investigation started with a parent and a digital recording device.
According to a Roswell police report, Brian Connerat said his son came home with bruising on his arm and on both of his shins. Connerat asked the boy where the marks had come from and became suspicious of abuse happening at the school.
That led him to place a recording device in his son’s classroom, Connerat told AJC.com.
According to the incident report, the device was put on a shelf near the aquarium in the classroom on July 25, 2018. That weekend when Connerat listened to the more than 10 hours of audio collected, he found it captured the voices of the classroom’s three teachers and a fourth teacher from a different classroom encouraging students to hit another student. The fourth teacher is also heard making comments regarding “taking a child back to China,” the incident report said.
Connerat notified the school that he would be removing his son from the class, but he didn’t pull his son out right away, the report said. On Aug. 8, he placed the recording device in the classroom again “out of concern for any type of retaliation for the withdrawal,” the report said.
Connerat told police he met with Goddard School Owner Chris Dibling-West and Director Georgette Johnson on Aug. 13. The next day, he brought the attention to law enforcement, and a Roswell police officer investigated “a report regarding possible abuse against juveniles.”
Roswell police ultimately concluded there was no basis to bring charges against the school or any of the teachers, as there was no evidence of physical abuse.
However, the four teachers involved were terminated within a day of that meeting, Dibling-West told AJC.com.
“The meeting with the parent ended at 3:40 p.m. on 8/13/18,” a plan of correction from the Goddard School said. “By 4:15 p.m., we accepted the resignation of E.P., lead teacher, and terminated for cause J.W., assistant teacher.
“The other two teachers were not present in the school that day. They were both terminated for cause on their arrival back at the school.”
Dibling-West said she contacted Bright from the Start, the organization that regulates rules for child learning centers like the Goddard School, to investigate the incident.
“As a mother and a grandmother, it just hurt my heart,” she said.
That investigation, which was closed in September 2018, substantiated claims that children in the Goddard School classroom were “subjected to belittling remarks and harsh tones used by staff in the classroom.”
The school was ordered to produce an action plan of corrective behaviors and pay a $299 fine.
Dibling-West and school attorney Douglas Burrell said the incident led to six families in that class removing their children from the school. Each was refunded the month’s tuition. Dibling-West said one mother re-enrolled her child the next day, and that child continues to attend the school.
Dibling-West said the corrective actions went into place right away.
She said she met with 140 parents within the first week of hearing about the incident, and hosted a series of town hall-style meetings the following week. A School Stakeholders Committee made up of parents, teachers and administrators was created.
Each of the school’s eight classrooms was outfitted with a high-resolution camera surveillance system.
Documents from Bright from the Start’s visits to the school list the facility as being in “good standing” — even during a visit on Aug. 16, 2018, just three days after the school reported the teachers’ misconduct.
Dibling-West said the school now holds regular meetings with teachers for instruction on how to interact with students.
The school also hired an executive director who formerly worked as a Bright from the Start consultant. Earlier this month, Executive Director Jackie Brannon met with parents of students who were not enrolled at the school during the initial incidents to answer questions about what had transpired, Dibling-West said.
Dibling-West and Burrell said the Connerats and the other families involved have been asked to provide evidence that their children experienced physical or emotional harm, but they have not done so.
Connerat confirmed to AJC.com that he has hired an attorney, but said he is not pursuing legal action against the school.
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