WMS Saga: Sex and FCAT

The Warrington Middle School saga continues as more parents and teachers come forward. We have reports of oral sex in a classroom while the teacher was present and another teacher not teaching the curriculum, but instead using class time to prepare for Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test.

When District Investigator John Dobbs reported on the sexual misconduct on a school bus loaded with basketball players and band members without a chaperone, he interviewed the band teacher Charles Rogers (pages 7-8). Dobbs wrote that Rogers wasn’t aware of any reported misconduct involving the female student from the bus incident, but “said that he had heard allegations of some misconduct in the Band storage area and due to the limited space in that area, discounted the allegation as false.”

A parent of band student shared what Rogers is referring to: A female student (same one that was on the bus) performing oral sex in a partitioned area in the back of the band classroom. Rogers was notified by a student when it was happening, but instead told the student to sit down and shut up. When the bus incident happened, several band parents confronted Rogers about the prior incident—-which is probably how Dobbs found out about it.

The other report I received is how an American History class was converted to preparation for the math portion of the FCAT test. “I was upset, because my daughter knows her math,” said the parent. “She was only taught American History about two months out of the year.” This story matches what LCDR (ret.) Thomas Jones told me about how the sixth graders were constantly being drilled on FCAT instead of the class subjects.

Jones said, “My son was doing FCAT reading (prep) before Thanksgiving. By January he was begging his teacher if could do something fun that day.”

How well did WMS do on the FCAT last year? The better students improved in math. The lower 25 percent did not. American History isn’t tested by the FCAT.