Teacher’s Allegations of Attack Investigated

Compton Unified School District officials said Thursday that they were investigating but could still not confirm a teacher’s report that she was drenched with excrement in an assault by four students outside her classroom.

Dominguez High School English teacher Shannan Barron said in an interview that she was leaving her classroom after second period Wednesday when four students emptied a wastebasket of liquefied feces on her.

Barron said she was hit by the contents of a second wastebasket as she turned to seek refuge in her classroom and summon help.

District spokeswoman Vivien Hao acknowledged that an incident had occurred but said she could not confirm Barron’s account because there were no eyewitnesses, even though other teachers and students were in the area.

“We cannot find anyone who can give us any corroboration of what the teacher said occurred,” Hao said.

Hao confirmed, however, that a vice principal escorted Barron from her classroom to the school gymnasium to shower after the incident and that there were “stains on her clothing.”

Barron, 28, a first-year teacher who was hired on an emergency credential in January, said she did not know the students and could only guess their motive. She said she suspects they were friends or relatives of a student she failed last semester.

She said she identified one of the attackers among a group of students rounded up by school police.

The youth was not detained, however, and Hao said there are currently no suspects. Hao said she was told that Barron said only that the student was nearby when the attack occurred, not that he participated.

Barron accused administrators of trying to “sweeten” the incident to minimize embarrassment to the district.

Her principal, Fred Easter, refused to allow reporters to interview students or teachers on campus Thursday.

Barron stayed home Thursday despite being told by a school district doctor that she was able to return to work, she said.

“This has gone past just high school pranks,” she said angrily. “What these kids did to me was horrible.”

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Although she had no physical injuries, Barron said she is emotionally scarred and has begun a course of vaccinations for HIV, hepatitis and tetanus and will continue taking shots for months.

“I don’t know if I can teach again,” Barron said. “I doubt it.”

Several education researchers contacted by The Times said they had never heard of a teacher being assaulted with feces.

However, intimidation and violence directed at teachers has been a growing concern, mirroring the general rise in violence on school campuses, they said.

One survey by the California Department of Education reported that the percentage of teachers citing student discipline problems as one of the three main reasons for leaving the profession nearly doubled from 1988-89 to 1993-94.

A Metropolitan Life survey of American teachers in 1993 reported that 54% of teachers “thought government should consider placing more security officers at violence-ridden schools.”

In the last two years, newspaper reports of attacks against teachers have included a teacher whose drink was poisoned, one who was set on fire and another who was bludgeoned with a sledgehammer, said June Arnette, communications director for the National School Safety Center in Westlake Village.

Although Arnette said she had never heard of an attack like the one Barron described, she cautioned that there are no national requirements for school officials to report crimes against teachers, and that many may go unreported.

“Many school administrators are reluctant to admit that criminal offenses occur on their campuses because of the dim view that the public may take of their schools or districts,” Arnette said.

Several students leaving school Thursday said they had heard of the incident, but were unaware of any ongoing problem of assaults on teachers.

Barron said most Dominguez students are well mannered, but a few who aren’t are “just horrible little monsters doing what they do best.

“Everybody is worried about these kids,” she said.