Abuse complaints against former Lansing teacher date to ‘03
LANSING – A Lansing School District teacher was allowed to continue working with special needs students for more than a decade after issues first arose about his interactions with students.
School district staff and mental health officials raised red flags over Lester Duvall’s actions toward students as early as 2003, and on at least four other occasions, according to documents obtained by the Lansing State Journal.
Duvall resigned in April after an investigation found he shoved a student to the floor and into a bookcase after the youth disobeyed Duvall's order to step away from a pencil sharpener. Jennifer Garza, the mother of that student, filed a federal civil lawsuit against the district and several of its employees earlier this month.
The district has denied liability. Spokesman Bob Kolt declined to comment Thursday for this story.
The Lansing Schools Education Association, the union that represents teachers in the district, and Duvall have not responded to messages seeking comment.
Madelaine Miller Strauss, the law firm representing Garza, released to the State Journal hundreds of pages of documents it obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.
Those documents show that between 2003 and 2014 district officials were warned about Duvall’s interactions with students, which ranged from allegedly pushing, slapping and choking students.
He kept his job until this year despite letters and testimony from half a dozen coworkers and a strongly-worded letter from the Community Mental Health Authority of Clinton, Eaton and Ingham counties.
Warning signs
Duvall joined the district as a full-time teacher at the Beekman Center in 2002 through the federally funded Troops to Teachers program, which helps place military veterans into classrooms, he told the State Journal in 2007.
Documents obtained by the law firm from the district show:
•In November of 2003, teaching assistant Star Elliston wrote a letter to supervisors saying she saw Duvall slam a student at the Beekman Center into a table after the student hit him.
Elliston described working in a classroom environment where Duvall routinely yanked students from chairs.
“I am very surprised a student hasn't been injured yet!” she wrote.
She described an incident where a student took a piece of food off another student’s plate, saying, “Lester grabbed her face and squeezed until it popped out of her mouth.”
Duvall also attempted to force-feed a student that fall, Elliston wrote. When she tried to do the same a few days later, Duvall informed her force-feeding was against the rules unless approved by a parent or guardian.
Duvall also told her not to belt students to chairs, though she was informed he’d done it on at least one occasion.
•In April 2005, fellow teacher Karen Pruitt reported to Sheryl Bacon, then-principal of the Beekman Center, that she’d seen Duvall slap a student on the playground. Documents show he later admitted to slapping the student although he said it was a reaction to being bitten.
Many of the incidents documenting Duvall’s behavior included references to reports made to Bacon. How many of those still exist isn’t clear. Bacon notified district officials in 2012 that she shredded all staff evaluation notes after retiring. Kolt declined Thursday to answer questions about staffing within the district. Bacon, reached Thursday, said she declined to comment at this time.
•In 2007, a Cindy Putnam, who is not identified in documents and whom the district declined to discuss, described in a hand-written note to administrators an incident where Duvall forced a student to spit out a piece of candy. After yelling at the student to spit it out, Putnam said Duvall grabbed the student’s mouth and forced it open. The student suffered cuts on the face and was seen crying hard after the incident.
After witnessing the incident, Putnam wrote, ”I am really afraid for myself after seeing him attack (name redacted) over a small piece of candy. The anger in his eyes is really bad.”
•On Oct. 4, 2012, substitute teaching assistant Emily Dove and Alton Mizga , a special education assistant, witnessed a student stand up from her seat against Duvall’s instructions. Duvall grabbed the student by the throat and hand and sustained the grip for between 10 and 15 seconds.
The incident occurred during iPad time, when Duvall would go from student to student, working with each individually for 20 minutes or longer while the rest of the class was instructed to wait patiently in their seats, said Dove, who no longer works for the school district and agreed to be interviewed for this report.
She said she remembered the student’s frightened gaze as Duvall applied enough pressure that his arm muscles flexed. In his account, Mizga told district officials, “Her eyes were coming out of her head.”
“I talked to the other assistant in the classroom (afterward) who assured me it was normal,” Dove said last week. “The more I thought about it, the more I found myself questioning his actions.”
She later requested a transfer from Duvall’s classroom. Dove said she had tears in her eyes when she went to request a transfer. Working with students with special needs had been her immediate goal after graduating from high school the previous spring.
She said the district has not called her for substitute work since last year.
•On Oct. 10, 2012, representatives from the Community Mental Health Authority of Clinton, Eaton and Ingham Counties filed a request with the district to not place a student with special needs in Duvall’s classroom.
“Mr. Duvall has consistently demonstrated an inability to provide educational opportunities for individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder based on evidenced-based practice,” the letter read. “Furthermore, there have been repeated instances and allegations of him using physical force, control tactics and verbal threats to elicit compliance from his students.”
Officials from the authority have declined to comment, citing student privacy laws.
On Oct. 24, 2012, Duvall received a letter from the district’s Human Resources department notifying him of a three-day suspension for violating the district’s corporal punishment policy in connection with the choking incident earlier that month. He had been on paid administrative leave since Oct. 9 while the district investigated the incident.
Duvall twice denied putting his hands on the student when asked by Bacon, though he later defended his actions by saying he was using sensory pressure compression to calm the student, according to documents.
•Community Mental Health documented what they described as a compilation of concerns in the 2012 letter, including four instances from 2010-11 involving Duvall. These ranged from a student coming home with bruises and scratches to Duvall admitting he had dunked a student's head under water in a swimming pool when the student become too loud during pool time.
Licensed to teach
Duvall was charged after the 2014 incident with fourth-degree child abuse, and had he been convicted state officials said they would have had grounds to challenge his teaching certificate. In June he pleaded no contest to a lesser charge, disorderly person/jostling.
Because the lesser charge is not grounds to challenge his certificate, Duvall is not precluded from teaching in another Michigan classroom, according to the Michigan Department of Education.
It’s not clear whether Duvall has found employment as a teacher elsewhere, though his certifications in history, cognitive development and autism spectrum disorder won’t expire until 2017.
The Lansing School District maintains it has taken the necessary steps following last fall’s incident. Duvall did not return to a classroom within the district after being placed on administrative leave, according to a news release sent earlier this month. The district also said it is required to inform any district looking to employ Duvall of his resignation following the investigation into the 2014 incident.
No place for force
The use of physical force to discourage a student’s behavior isn’t advisable, said Summer Ferreri, an assistant professor of special education at Michigan State University. She teaches her students to use empirically verified educational techniques. Force and sensory pressure compression are not among those techniques.
“There's a zillion other things you can do before physically engaging with a student,” she said. “Whether they have autism or not.”
Ferreri said she instructs her prospective teachers to engage with students on the autism spectrum by using applied behavior analysis, or ABA. It’s a broad categorization, she said, which at its most basic involves emphasizing and reinforcing positive behaviors while dissuading negative patterns. It’s also important to recognize and respond to the signals students with autism make, which can be difficult at times, she said.
“What we find with autism spectrum disorder students is that when they have an aggressive behavior, it’s typically a form of communication,” she said.
Ferreri said one of the keys in improving educational opportunities for students with special needs involves decoding atypical actions while simultaneously helping students understand better ways to make their needs known.
“When we teach basic expression skills, we see huge decrease in disruptive behaviors,” she said.
Contact RJ Wolcott at (517) 377-1026 orrwolcott@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter@wolcottr.