October 4 2018 Email to the President of the PTA of MDCPS

Hi Nancy. This is Bill Detzner (from your Olli class on the 12 amendments) .I am asking that the PTA advocate for the removal of the child endangerment of the severely mentally retarded children of Neva King Cooper School (NKC) My website mdcpsallegations.com describes the current hazardous condition in great detail. In a nutshell, during the 2014-2015 school year, a child who is so prone to choking incidents that it is noted in his Individual Education Plan (IEP) began to choke on his food. The child’s teacher took immediate proactive measures and the child expelled the food he was choking on without losing consciousness, and immediately went back to eating his lunch. Principal Dr. Tracy Roos conferred with the school’s on-site nurses, who assured Dr. Roos that the child was fine. Dr. Roos took the unprecedented step of summoning an ambulance crew to NKC to examine the child. The ambulance crew also examined the child and found him to be fine. Dr. Roos then allegedly threatened both the ambulance crew and the child’s guardian with legal repercussions if those two parties failed to take the child to the hospital and press child endangerment charges against the teacher. Both of these parties declined to take either of these actions. Dr. Roos then wrote up potentially career ending charges against this teacher for child endangerment. As the entire school eats in the cafeteria at the same time, the entire staff witnessed the timely and proactive actions of this teacher in response to a choking incident that was not the teacher’s fault. As a result, all staff are now fearful that even if a choking incident that is not their fault occurs, and even if they take immediate, correct, and proactive measures that result in no harm occurring to the child, Dr. Roos may also write potentially career ending charges against them. For this reason, if an NKC child begins to choke on his food, the teacher, fearing his/her job is at stake, may hesitate for 30-60 seconds before summoning the nurses, hoping the child spontaneously ejects his food. That 30-60 second delay may literally mean the difference between life and death for an NKC child. In my blog, I describe a situation where an NKC child attempted to eat an entire pancake in one bite and stopped breathing for 2-3 minutes. The school was lucky in that one of the teachers was a fully fire academy trained paramedic who rode ambulances on weekends. It took this highly trained paramedic 2-3 minutes to remove the food. If you tack on an extra 30-60 seconds that a teacher hesitates to seek help, fearing his/her job may be at stake, the danger of a fatality greatly increases. The teacher who saved that child’s life is no longer at NKC. Also, during this choking incident, the on-site school nurses literally stood there and did nothing because they did not have the training to handle that situation. During the 2011-2012 school year, NKC exercised its (supposedly) legally protected right to explore conversion from a public school to a charter school. In court case 13-1492, Mr. Carvalho and top MDCPS officials give the appearance of breaking every law in the books to illegally smash that conversion attempt. Shortly after, Mr. Carvalho paid his one and only visit to NKC and made what many staff consider to be a very threatening statement. In the following 6 years, staff feel that NKC has been under a virtual lockdown, with many illegal and punitive measures taken against NKC staff. It is the feeling of the NKC staff that Mr. Carvalho intends to continue this illegal retaliation in perpetuity. The NKC staff also believe Mr. Carvalho is willing to risk the lives of NKC children to attempt to terminate NKC staff. I have sent Mr. Carvalho 6 certified letters over a 3 year period to address this issue. I have heard not a word of response from Mr. Carvalho. It is the feeling of the NKC staff that MDCPS is basically a criminal enterprise, with Al Carvalho playing the roll of Godfather. The staff also believes that only an outside agency can correct the hopelessly corrupt MDCPS cesspool. For this reason, I am reaching out to both Governor Scott and Bill Nelson, and people from the Marjory Stoneman Douglass community, and other people. The fear is that if this matter is not resolved PRIOR to the November 6 election, elected officials will lose interest in the case. Please feel free to share this email with Mr. Carvalho and MDCPS school board members. They have not responded to my certified letters. Perhaps they will respond to the PTA.