Wednesday, February 03, 1999
Accusation not the first for teacher
Fired last year, Arbitrator had reinstated her after firing
BY DANA DiFILIPPO
The Cincinnati Enquirer
A Cincinnati Public Schools teacher charged last week with slapping a kindergartner had been fired last year for aggressive behavior toward colleagues.
An arbitrator in December ordered Mary Schneider, 33, reinstated. She started teaching last month at Heberle Elementary in the West End.
Cincinnati police arrested the Springfield Township woman Friday on a misdemeanor assault charge after the child complained to the principal that Ms. Schneider hit him on the face, said John Concannon, the school district's general counsel.
District administrators and Cincinnati police are investigating the incident. Ms. Schneider has been temporarily reassigned.
In two unrelated incidents in November 1994, she was accused of grabbing a student by his collar and threatening to kill him and throwing another student into a classroom, causing him to fall on the floor and bruise his elbow, according to district records.
Ms. Schneider was fired in March from a teaching job at Losantiville School after she was accused of using “profane and abusive language” about her principal and making “an unprofessional comment” about the sexual orientation of an administrator.
Ms. Schneider then tried to influence a student to help defend her in subsequent disciplinary proceedings, according to personnel records.
Ms. Schneider, who has taught in district schools since 1992, disputed the allegations in letters to administrators, saying her principal had a “crazy personal vendetta” against her. She couldn't be reached Tuesday for comment.
In ruling for reinstatement, arbitrator Mitchell B. Goldberg decided Ms. Schneider's “insubordinate attitude and inappropriate contact with her students” weren't serious enough to warrant termination.
Her use of profanity was “shop talk” often used between adults in workplaces, he wrote.
Because no students witnessed the exchanges, they didn't affect the welfare of the school community or teaching environment, he said.
He ordered her termination reduced to a 14-day suspension and restored back pay and benefits.
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