A B.C. high school principal has been handed a three-day suspension for failing to properly respond to a student’s report that a teacher inappropriately touched them.
The student reported the incident to the principal at 8:30 a.m. on a weekday morning in 2017, according to a decision made public Tuesday by the BC Teacher’s Regulation Branch.
The name of the principal, who has held a teaching certificate in B.C. since 1985, was not included in the decision documents in order to protect the student’s identity.
The student told the principal they wanted to be pulled from the teacher’s class and call their parents and explain what had happened.
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But despite knowing that the student was scheduled to be in the teachers class later that day, the principal didn’t immediately remove them from the class and instead doubted the credibility of the disclosure, the documents read.
He also didn’t call the student’s mother until 3:30 p.m. According to the regulation branch, the mom was driving to pick up her child and missed the call, making her unprepared to properly support her child at the end of the school day.
An investigation into the principal’s actions was launched on March of 2018.
The branch said that the principal failed to adequately protect the student from emotional and physical harm and that his judgment of the complaint was impacted by making an assumption about the student’s credibility.
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