Teacher Betty Cox Put on Arkansas Child Abuse List for Bullying Students
Berryville Elementary School teacher Betty Cox was put on the Arkansas Child Maltreatment Central Registry earlier this month for bullying students in her care. People are placed on the list if investigators find evidence of verbal or physical abuse.
The alleged abuse involved student Jerry Lou Schoe, 12. The boy’s father, Richard Schoe claims Cox berated his son’s intelligence, wouldn’t provide a book he needed for an assignment, and put him in a seat away from other students for six days in a row. Schoe claims his son considered committing suicide over these incidents, and they now homeschool their son.
The Schoes weren’t the only parents who had problems with Cox. Christi Armer said Cox constantly yelled at her 13-year-old son and once poked him in the chest. Another parent, Jo Butler, said her 13-year-old daughter was afraid to attend Cox’s class.
The school board has placed Cox on paid sick leave for the rest of the year. She plans to appeal being placed on the state list, and feels that parents don’t understand the difference between discipline and bullying.
School superintendent Mike Cox - who is Betty’s husband - believes human services acted without giving his wife due process. He claims they only interviewed parents and didn’t talk to anyone from the school. He says they never talked to Principal Matt Summers, who had investigated the charges and found no problems.
I’ve seen a similar situation at my child’s school. One family didn’t like a teacher and got friends to start a letter writing campaign. The principal and the school’s board investigated and found out that while the teacher did yell, she wasn’t abusive. In fact, many parents liked that this teacher was strict.
It was a case where the mother didn’t want anyone yelling at her darling baby who had not been finishing her school work, and was leaving the classroom without permission. The family ended up transferring their children to another school because the teacher wasn’t fired. Then they retaliated against the school by starting rumors about the principal cheating on his wife and stealing money.
Sometimes parents can behave as badly as the teachers…or worse. You decide who’s right and wrong here.
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Betty Cox, Mike Cox, Berryville Elementary School, Arkansas Child Abuse List, child abuse, bullying
June 19th, 2007 at 12:07 am
You need to revise your article. This statement is not true:
“People are placed on the list if investigators find evidence of verbal or physical abuse.”
In Arkansas, all it takes to be on that list is for some kid to whine. No investigation, no questions. They are just automatically placed on the ACMCR. It is up to the teacher to hire an attorney at her own expense to fight to have her name removed from the list.
And the career of yet another good teacher is ruined.
September 13th, 2007 at 10:58 pm
What Jo says in not intirely true. There were reports to the superintendent (who happens to be the accused teachers husband)over a period of no less than 3 years before any action was ever taken against this teacher. The reports to Mr Cox were no where to be found when the time came for the schoolboard to get off their asses and finally take action. And this took the the public pickiting each schoolboard meeting for over a year.
My son had this teacher 2 years ago and in his class she had the nerve to tell one of his classmates to “go to hell” I know this was reported to the school officials because I spoke to Mr. Cox myself about the situation. He assured me that it would be handeled. It ws not! The next year sho told a whole class that they were “the stupidest children God had ever created”.
As for Mrs. Cox hiring her own attorney, it would have been nice if she did not try to have our school tax dollars to pay for her attorney.
Jo neglects to say that Mr Cox was let go with full pay for the remainder of his contract and his wife believe it or ont is still an employee of our school! Mrs Cox was allowed to sign a new contract while all of this controversy was going on. By who, our school board president and members!
She has yet to show her face on campus because our school board in its infinite wisdon has allowed her to not only use her accumuliated sick days but has granted her the right to use her husbands personal and sick days with pay. So she is in effect out with pay for some time.
In short our school is paying Mrs. and Mr. Cox a total of over one hundred and fifty thousand dollars between the two of them for doing nothing this year. Not to mention the fact that we will be paying Mr Cox for the next three years. Go Figure. So Jo, get your facts straight before ranting about ruining another good teacher. You must be a fellow teacher, or you have no childern in the school system. Because if you did you would be furious like the rest of us parents!
October 7th, 2008 at 7:52 pm
I had Betty Cox eighteen years ago in fifth grade, when she taught at East Elementary in the Greene County Tech School District in Paragould, and I still remember the experience. My husband also had her a couple of years later. Mike Cox, her husband, was superintendent of Greene County Tech at the time as well. He ended up resigning over some embezzlement scandal a few years later, and she left the district then too. I was a quiet, shy little girl who made good grades and never made a peep, and this woman was so relentlessly and needlessly cruel I would go home and cry. I would literally get sick before I had to go to school in the mornings. I didn’t even get the half of it; she seemed to single out the least popular children in class for the brunt of her abuse, and made no bones about who were her favorites. My own mother was a teacher in another town, and I am a firm believer that parents are too quick to jump on teachers these days for trying to discipline their children, but this was NOT the case with Ms. Cox. She literally got enjoyment out of talking down to and berating those weaker than her. I am SO glad she finally seems to be reaping what she has sown!