Teacher Reprimanded for Defending Disabled Kids
Mr. Mike Collins of Reeds Spring High School has been put on administrative leave pending a school board hearing for his “immoral actions” while verbally defending mentally disabled children in his classroom from the constant barrage of harassing remarks from classroom bullies. Mr. Collins, the 2001 Missouri State Teacher of the Year, had written up these bullies multiple times, but nothing had changed.
Finally, Mr. Collins had had enough.
After another round of taunting, Mr. Collins took the verbally abusive children outside of the classroom and told them, “This is my classroom. You are going to stop f***ing picking on these kids.”
Keeping true to their contemptuous nature, the scolded students complained to the principal that they were threatened by Mr. Collins. The principal in turn reported the incident to the superintendent who ordered this harsh and unnecessary punishment.
How sad is the state of society when a long-standing, nationally recognized member of the community is chastised for standing up for the rights of a student. Instead of supporting one of their tenured faculty members, the administration of Reeds Spring High School has cowered in fear of retaliation. Most likely, this is due to a previous failed attempt by one of the “threatened” students to sue the school district which incurred several thousand dollars of legal fees for the school.
As you review this site, ask yourself what’s worth more: the self-esteem and safety of students or the price of a lawyer?
March 12th, 2007 at 12:37 am
Thank you for posting this. I don’t know if you have any pull with any national media, but I am afraid that is what it is going to take to get the superintendent and the board to back down. Now, they have to save face.
There was a huge board meeting with hundreds of people back in February (I want to say the 23rd of 24th) with all kinds of local media. Since then, the superintendents’ husband, Ron Bessendorfer has been put on paid administrative leave for allegations of sexual abuse or sexual harrassment. No media outlets are talking about it and we want to know what is going on. When the first charge came up, the story is the young girl went to the counsleor’s office and reported it. The counselor in turn told the principal, whoc in turn told Mrs. Bessendorfer. Now get this, supposingly, the principal, Mr. Bessendorfer (the alleged abuser) and Mrs. Bessendorfer (the superintendent) took this young lady into a room without any form of counsel what-so-ever…not even the counselor. The counselor supposingly saw her running out of the room crying approx. 45 minutes after the “meeting” started. To our knowledge, this was never reported to the authorities and supposingly over this, the counselor has turned in her resignation. We want to know what they are doing now and who is investigating his charges. Has this been turned over to the officials?
Yesterday, I was told this isn’t something uncommon at the high school for Mr. Besendorfer. The young girls all know he is a “wolf” as they say. One girl is a senior and won’t report it because she just wants to get out of school without any problems and she comes from a good family. She said her harrassment was vocal and she said when you feel like you need to take a bath and feel violated after he speaks to you, you know it is defintely considered sexual harrassment/abuse. (She had only gone back to his room to pick up something she had left in his class.)
The same Mr. Bessendorfer was also in trouble for drinking on school property and that also was swept under the carpet. I believe the story is there were 5 people who saw him drinking and out of the 5, the only one left at the school is Mr. Collins.
FYI on Mrs. Bessendorfer: the school board hired her and her only qualifications were that of a elementary or middle school principal. I have heard they gave her quite a package and it has some great bonuses such as giving her extra money each month for her children, a $5000 anual gas allowance (why? anywhere she goes, she is in a school vehicle or reimbursed for any expenes), etc.
The moral at our school is lower than a pregnant slug’s belly. If the story is correct, last year, we had 50 to 60 teachers quit and this year, at least half of that have already turned in their notices. We aren’t a huge school, so we cannot afford to loose good teachers.
The board president is a real jerk. His wife used to work for the school district but now works for some part of the school, only they say she isn’t employed by the school? I’d like to know more about that, also. At the big meeting they had, he put lives in jeopardy simply by refusing to move the meeting to a larger area. Finally someone called the fire board and the fire chief came and told him he would move it.
There is a hearing on March 19 for Mr. Collins and it will be an open hearing at the High School. Mr. Collins was wrong in swearing at the two boys, although they throw that word out all the time, so they weren’t bothered at all by it. They were bothered that they were caught being bullies. One of the kids has already transferred to another school and the other one if the story is correct has now been kicked out of school for pushing the principal. (Wonder if the principal used off-colored words during that little attack?) This same boy also previous to the incident at school jumped on a church bus and literally beat up a 30-year old handicapped man because his sister told him the man had touched her hind-end? This was a local church bus. If the man touched her, I am sure it wasn’t a sexual gesture. This young man was tossed in jail for that but because he is a minor, it hasn’t been made public.
Our school superintendent “allegedly” told some of the teachers to not worry about the grades of handicapped students on state and national testing because, “Their scores don’t matter.” Our school is so lacking in even caring about handicapped students. I could really get going on that topic but it needs to be investigated.
One more thing that most people don’t know is a few days before this bully incident happened, Mr. Collins became a proud grandfather. His grandchild was born with half a brain. That might have been on his mind when he stood up for the handicapped kids.
One more thing. Most people have heard about all his awards and they are deserving. The most awesome awards he has though are the ones coming to him now from all the phone calls, letters, emails, etc. from all kinds of people that he has made a difference in their lives or the lives of their family members. He’s not perfect by any means….just a good-hearted man who believes in every kid. One thing that most people don’t know about is his military record. I am not real sure as to what it is but the story is when we went to Iraq during Dessert Storm, Mr. Collins was out of school on an unpaid leave to go over there. Whatever he did, he was the only or one of the only men in the US that could do whatever it was he did.
Before the big meeting, one of our past superintendents (there were at least two past superintendants at the meeting and they were for Mr. Collins…one of them spoke and past board members spoke) met with our present superintendent and gave her advice on how to come out of this mess without going any further and to save face. She didn’t take his advice. Now the entire community is in an uproar. There are a few people that stand by the school board and superintendent but a very few. The rest of us are just angry and in shock that this can happen in our school to our kids. Our kids are the loosers no matter what. They are loosing out on an education with Mr. Collins. They see this anger. It isn’t good. As taxpayers, we are loosing every day! We have two men on paid leaves of abscence, which means two men on paid vacations as far as I am concerned. Not to mention the law suits that have to be stemming from all of this. And with Mr. Bessendorfer, are we footing the bill for this investigation?
What has our school come to when it is ok to have sexual harrassment charges flying around tht are known about and swept under the table? If this man was innocent, wouldn’t he have demanded at the time that his name be cleared so this wouldn’t come back and bite him in the hind-end? When is it ok to sexually harrass our young girls at school? I shudder to think what else has gone on that we don’t know about or haven’t heard about.
We have school board elections in April. Three of the board members’ terms are up and I imagine they will not be voted back in….especially our board president, Gerald Jenkins, nor Darrin Hustead and that is another thing….the Husteads built this little community and built houses, which they were able to get financing on at a good rate for the teachers and they made an excellent profit off of it…until they started getting sued for shoddy workmanship. At that time, he was our board president. You know, the board is an unpaid job and you go into it knowing that. To me all of this smacks of something really unethical…..get elected to the board and look at the clientel you have if you have a business. That’s not right.
Thank you for listening to me rant and rave. Please forgive me for the length of this and also for any mistakes. It is way passed my bedtime, so I’m not going to check for errors.
Again, thank you.
November 12th, 2008 at 6:15 pm
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