CORAL SPRINGS, Fla. – Broward County Public Schools officials said a fifth-grade teacher’s alleged misconduct during testing was under investigation at Eagle Ridge Elementary School in Coral Springs.
A fifth-grade teacher at the school was preparing her students in reading, writing, and math for the Florida Assessment of Student Thinking, or FAST, a statewide assessment for students from prekindergarten to 10th grade.
Stephanie Garcia’s 10-year-old daughter, a fifth-grade student at the school, at 11500 Westview Drive, said the testing scandal prompted her daughter to have to retake the test on Friday.
“The teacher was walking around and if she saw a student struggling ... she was breaking out her phone with her calculator and doing the work for the student and showing the student an answer on the calculator,” Garcia said. “My daughter said she didn’t ask for help. She didn’t feel she was struggling and the teacher offered it without anyone asking.”
Aside from the teacher’s alleged misconduct, some parents were also upset that school administrators made students write statements about what happened during testing on May 15 without parental consent.
“She is 10, she doesn’t know the implications of giving a statement under duress,” Garcia said.
According to Cathleen Brennan, a spokeswoman for BCPS, Lindsey Sierra, the school principal, started an investigation, which involved gathering statements and the Florida Department of Education’s guidance.
“The School and District are also in communication with the state regarding the allegation and to ensure all proper protocols are being followed,” Brennan wrote in a statement. “To avoid any issues with student scores, impacted students are retaking the FAST assessment. The teacher involved is being reassigned pending the outcome of the investigation.”
Garcia said the state should have invalidated the scores for the whole classroom instead of making her daughter and the few other students who the teacher allegedly helped retake it.
“I feel like parents should have been involved from the get-go,” Garcia said. “Parents should have the opportunity to be there when these students were being interviewed and writing these statements.”
According to Brennan, the teacher has been reassigned away from the school pending the results of the investigation. This upset Carmen Fuenmayor, the mother of another student in class, who is among the parents who support the teacher and want her to stay because they believe in her innocence.
“I don’t think she did it,” Fuenmayor said. “I think that she knows what needs to be done, she might say, ‘Read carefully! Pay attention!’ That’s the help of any teacher they give a student before a test: ‘You can do this! You are prepared for this!’ I don’t see her saying, ‘This is the answer, you need to do this, you need to do that.’”
Whether they believed or not in the teacher’s innocence, all of the parents agreed that school administrators could have handled the situation better. Some of the teacher’s students said the situation was unfair because graduation was just one week away.
Read the complete BCPS statement
“The school’s leadership was made aware of an allegation involving the recent administration of the Florida Assessment of Student Thinking (FAST) for math. The principal immediately notified the appropriate District staff and initiated an investigation, which involves gathering statements, to determine the facts of the situation. This investigation is ongoing. The School and District are also in communication with the state regarding the allegation and to ensure all proper protocols are being followed. To avoid any issues with student scores, impacted students are retaking the FAST assessment. The teacher involved is being reassigned pending the outcome of the investigation.”
Cathleen Brennan, Broward schools spokesperson