In Florida, 11-year-old autistic boy charged with felony battery for outburst at school

From The News Herald in Panama City, Fla.:

BAYOU GEORGE, Fla. — The family of an autistic 11-year-old accused of assaulting school administrators said the boy was made an example of and the situation did not need to escalate to the extent it did.

Terrauce Jones was in assistant principal Harold Weaver’s office Tuesday discussing allegations he hit another student when he became upset and struck Weaver with a binder, principal Charlotte Marshall said.

Terrauce then left Weaver’s office and entered the main office, where Marshall met up with him and tried to calm the boy down. Terrauce kicked at Marshall but missed, school officials said. Administrators were able to calm the student temporarily, but when he went to the cafeteria, Terrauce became upset again and threw a soda bottle at Marshall, according to a news release.

Authorities charged the 11-year-old with two counts of felony battery.

Francis Green, Terrauce’s grandmother and part-time caretaker, said she was very upset the incident led to felony charges and the situation should have been handled differently in a number of ways. She said she doesn’t understand why no one at the school was able to restrain and control the child; he simply could have been put in a room until the family arrived.

“This could have been handled a whole lot different,” Green said. “I feel like (Marshall) changed how she would have reacted to demonstrate the need for SRD (school resource deputies).”

Superintendent Bill Husfelt, however, contends arresting the child was a last resort and school employees exhausted all possibilities before resorting to calling law enforcement.

In the wake of county budget cuts, the Bay County Sheriff’s Office eliminated eight school resource deputy positions this year, leaving middle schools to rotate deputies.

Marshall and Capt. Steve Harbuck of the community services division said Tuesday they felt the situation could have been avoided or at least contained if a deputy had been on the campus.

Green said she agrees the school needs resource deputies on campus, but she feels her grandson was unfairly made an example of to drive that point across to the public. The deputy who arrested Terrauce later told the family he wasn’t informed the boy was autistic and that if he had known, he simply would have supervised him until the family arrived, Green said.

“I want the charges dropped and my baby to get the best education possible,” she said.

Husfelt countered the only way the situation would have been handled differently if SRDs had been on campus is that “the handcuffs would have been put on earlier.”

When a parent or guardian can’t be reached, school employees must be concerned first and foremost with the safety of the student and any other employee or student with whom they may come in contact, Husfelt said.

“Administrators and teachers have to be very careful about how they deal with a hostile situation,” he said.

A school official restraining the child is a very delicate situation because it can result in charges for the teacher or administrator, Husfelt said. For that reason, school employees do not make physical contact with the student, but leave that to a parent, guardian or law enforcement.

“If a teacher or principal grabs a student and holds on, what’s to stop the parent… from filing charges?” Husfelt said.

Terrauce was diagnosed with autism when he was 2 years old, Green said. To this point it has been controlled through medication and careful supervision, she said.

“We’ve struggled with him fitting in, trying to find the right school, trying to find the right teacher to deal with his temper tantrums or meltdowns; we call them meltdowns,” she said.

The transition to middle school has been difficult for Terrauce. Green said her daughter, the student’s mother, approached the administration two weeks ago about home schooling Terrauce because he was having difficulty coping with the changing classes, being around more students and bullying.

“My daughter is an LPN (licensed practicing nurse) and she works at night, but she can’t sleep during the day because she’s worried. She knew something like this would happen,” Green said.

School officials, however, assured the family Terrauce was “too smart” for home schooling and all of the appropriate measures to meet his needs were in place at the school, Green said. So, Terrauce was taken to the doctor to have his medicine adjusted, and they continued the process of trying to adapt.

The first outburst in Weaver’s office was brought on by frustration because Terrauce felt the administrator wasn’t listening to him as he tried to explain he hit the other student only when the student hit him first, Green said. This frustration and confrontation led to a meltdown because Terrauce was on a low dosage of medication because of the recent change in treatment, she said.

The second outburst was a result of not being allowed to sit with his friends in the cafeteria and attention being drawn to him because he was chaperoned, Green said.

Terrauce is a good student who enjoys school and gets As and Bs, Green said. But Wednesday morning, after seeing his picture on the news and reading the story about the incident online, he was ashamed to show his face.

“I hate she (Marshall) did that. I hate she used him as a scapegoat,” Green said.

Marshall did not return The News Herald’s phone calls Wednesday, but Husfelt said the school staff went “above and beyond” to try to calm Terrauce’s meltdown before calling 911. Second guessing their decision after-the-fact is difficult because the urgency is not the same, he added.

“Arresting a child’s the last thing we want to do,” he said. “… Unless you’re in the middle of a situation, you don’t know how you’d handle it.”