this really made me mad
 

Wow, I know this should be in the News thread, but this really pissed me off.
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Newburgh – An enraged mother with a violent past and her two sons broke into a church on South Street Tuesday and beat an elementary school teacher unconscious, city police said yesterday.
Ertha Augustin was pummeled with a desk, telephone receiver, fists and feet by Jamie Lynn Mereness and her sons, police said. The trio unleashed their beating inside a basement classroom at Calvary Presbyterian Church, said Newburgh Detective Lt. Santo Centamore.
Augustin teaches at-risk kids who aren't thriving in a normal classroom setting in the Newburgh School District because of violent tendencies or aggressive behavior, school officials said.
Mereness' 12-year-old son was one of her students, police said, and an altercation with the boy earlier in the day led to the late-afternoon beating.
According to Centamore, the attack unfolded this way:
Earlier in the day Tuesday, Augustin and Mereness' 12-year-old boy got into a confrontation. Augustin called Mereness to discuss the problems. During that telephone conversation, the boy spit in Augustin's face.
Then the boy pushed the teacher. Augustin told Mereness she intended to suspend the boy and send him home. Mereness threatened the teacher, who handed the phone to a security guard, police said. In that same phone call, police said, she told the guard that she intended to "come down and punch the teacher in the face."
The boy left the church to walk to his family's Johnston Street home. After class let out and the security guard left on a school bus at 3:30 p.m., Augustin and her 10-year-old son sat inside what they assumed was a locked building.
That's when Mereness, her 17-year-old son, William Ramos, and her 12-year-old son broke into the basement classroom and attacked Augustin, Centamore said.
"All three punched her, choked her. ... The 12-year-old hit her with a desk, and she lost consciousness," Centamore said. "Before she lost consciousness, she said she saw one of them with a chair in their hands."
When Augustin's son tried to call 911, Centamore said, Ramos punched the boy and yanked the phone cord from the wall. The boy managed to escape and get to a pay phone outside and call for help.
The trio fled and Augustin regained consciousness. She crawled to the security guard's desk and dialed 911.

A warning
Mereness called the school district's Grand Street administration offices before the attack to say she was upset and intended to hurt Augustin, police said yesterday.
District Superintendent R. Nick Johns said he was in a staff meeting when he got a note containing Mereness' name and a general statement saying she was angry and there had been a verbal confrontation.
Johns said as he left the meeting, he passed the note to Dr. Kate Farrell, assistant superintendent of school operations and the administrator responsible for the program.
Farrell said she viewed the note and immediately called a coordinator in charge of the campus "to find out what the situation was." She said the coordinator told her that a meeting was being scheduled with Mereness. The coordinator also told Farrell he was going to Calvary to check on the situation.
Based on the note and her conversation with the coordinator, Farrell said there was no reason to expect the teacher was in danger.
"Protection of our students and staff is our highest priority," she said.
According to Farrell, minutes after her phone call, she got a call from the coordinator saying the teacher had been beaten.
She immediately went to the school.
Yesterday, Johns tried to reconstruct the timeline of events and said the district "did respond within minutes.
"Unfortunately," he said, "this is not the first parent that's made a threat like this. We take every one of them very seriously."

A troubled past
Mereness, 34, appears to have a history of trouble with the law.
In 1992, she was arrested and charged with felony first-degree assault for stabbing her boyfriend. A year earlier, she was arrested and charged with misdemeanor second-degree aggravated harassment. And in 1996, Mereness was arrested and charged with third-degree assault, also a misdemeanor. Dispositions of those cases could not be learned late yesterday.
Around 11 p.m. Wednesday, Mereness and her sons were arrested and charged with second-degree burglary, second-degree assault and second-degree gang assault, all felonies. Ramos was also charged with endangering the welfare of a child and third-degree assault, both misdemeanors, for hitting Augustin's son, police said.
The 12-year-old was released into the custody of a neighbor Tuesday night. Yesterday, the boy was taken into Department of Social Services custody, along with Mereness' three other children, sources said. Mereness and Ramos were sent to Orange County Jail in Goshen in lieu of $25,000 bail each.
Following the attack, Augustin was treated at the Newburgh campus of St. Luke's Cornwall Hospital. She had bumps on her head, a swollen face, contusions, neck and back pain and bruises all over her body.
She was home recovering last night.

Link to the Story

yuck...
 

tells you again why public school teachers don't get paid enough. that's terrible.

...one of MANY reasons I chose not to teach.


I agree with mmcat-
Most under paid prof.
Policemen
Firemen
Teachers

What is going on in this world??? :confused:

Ugh....this is one of the many reasons that my parents and friends give me not to teach in the public school systems.

One of my friends was observing a class in the neighbooring county when one of her students asked to see her charm bracelet. She stretched out her arm for the child to see when he grabbed the bracelet and started running away. See, problems always start as little as this.

Oh, I was wondering, where the hell was CPA before this incident with the 12 year old??

I am not sure what Police make near you guys lol. But they do very well in NJ. A patrolman without a bachelors degree can easily make 70-90k a year depending on thecity they work. And its prediated on tax base, not on the degree of difficulty of your job.

There are 4 by 4 mile resort areas where patrolman make 70k a year base salary and are mainly traffic police.

I am not knocking it, if you can squeeze a lot of money out of your proffession more power to you.

Mrs. DeltAlum taught high school for a while in the early to mid 70's, including at a school for emotionally disturbed adolescent girls. She had a knife pulled on her once, but backed the student down. You don't mess with Mrs. DeltAlum -- just kidding as this is no laughing matter.

In terms of the lack of security guard, it sounds like the guard 's job was to go on the bus. It's unfortunate, but in today's economic situation the school probably can't have as many guards as it would like.

To be absolutely safe, teachers should probably be forced to leave when security leaves at the end of the day. That would also be tough.

I don't see an easy answer to the security question.

As for the alleged attacking mother and her kids, another example of a time bomb walking around the streets looking for somewhere to explode.

Can't help but agree with Arya -- this kind of thing really is maddening.

I hate hearing about these situations, it's just terrible. My father is a teacher, and luckily, we live in a generally quiet area where this kind of thing is unheard of. But still, times are changing. When I graduated high school, it seemes like everything was fine to me. Now, a mere 5 years later, they have police patroling the parking lot, security in the school, parking passes, and loads of other safety measures. I know schools in our district that have metal detectors! That kind of a rapid change scares me, and is a huge indicator of where things have headed in a short time.

SCARY!:eek:

It's unfortunate that our teachers are like military...putting their lives on the line at work.:(

Speaking as someone who is currently teaching(and I'm new to this, only 2 years so far) I can tell you that the budget situations don't help at all. Our district, which is normally very intelligent has decided to cut out the Sheriff's Deputy that was on our campus to save money. They didn't cut any teacher's jobs which is outstanding, however I felt better knowing there was an officer present on campus during the day. I know that our campus security is very reliable, however I just wish they would have kept the copper.

Now I know why I lock my classroom door at the end of every school day.:rolleyes:

that just ain't right. more proof why i need to take over the world and be King.

I agree with James on this one. Police in Toronto can make, depending on experience, education, etc, about 70-90K too (in Canadian $$$$ of course). Basically it's danger pay. A police officer out in the stix is going to make far less than a police officer in a major metropolitan area.

That is f***ed up big time! The woman threaten to harm the teacher and nobody did a damn thing to prevent the attack from happening. I am glad that the teacher wasn't seriously injure and is at home recovering. The mother and the kids really need major help What is this world coming to?

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