Justin Butler, Heather Thomas, Hilda Atamenwan, Keishla Collazo, Anavelia Enderby and Jennifer Loving have been named as the employees who have resigned.
MIDLAND, Texas — The Midland Independent School District has released new details on Tuesday in the investigation into South Elementary School.
On Friday, Sept. 12, a member of the district’s Special Services Department reported a concern related to classroom practices in a Special Education classroom to district administration.
The district said an investigation of the report was immediately initiated, including a review of video footage from two Special Education classrooms at South Elementary.
A report was then allegedly filed with Child Protective Services, a full administrative investigation began and the Midland ISD Police Department opened an investigation.
“As a precaution, district special education staff were immediately assigned to South Elementary to oversee both classrooms. They have remained on campus since and will continue to do so for the next several weeks,” Midland ISD said.
As previously reported, six employees have resigned, and two remain on administrative leave. Justin Butler, Heather Thomas, Hilda Atamenwan, Keishla Collazo, Anavelia Enderby and Jennifer Loving have been named as the employees who have resigned. Butler and Thomas are reportedly teachers, while Atamenwan, Collazo, Enderby and Loving are paraprofessionals.
The school district said they are required to report incidents such as this to the State Board for Educator Certification (SBEC), and all employees have been reported to SBEC for an additional investigation. This will determine if sanctions will be placed on their educator certificates.
The Midland County District Attorney’s Office reportedly indicated it will be expanding the investigation. As a result of this recent information, and to be cautious, the district has placed two district-level administrators on administrative leave pending the outcome of the investigation, according to the district.
The district stated Midland ISD Police are working directly with Texas Rangers, the DA’s office and CPS on its investigation.
“The Special Services Department has carefully reviewed preventive measures and is developing a comprehensive plan of action to prevent an incident like this from happening in any of our specialized classrooms in the future,” said MISD Superintendent Stephanie Howard. “Midland ISD has communicated with families who have children served in specialized classrooms across the district, will be hosting Open Houses at each campus in the coming weeks, and will continue to work to ensure we maintain open lines of communication with all families whose students are served in specialized classrooms.”
NewsWest 9 will keep you updated as we learn more.