Horry school district, police should be up front on investigation of teacher, principal
After the arrest of a principal and a teacher at a Horry County elementary school parents need to be assured these actions were isolated and will be dealt with appropriately.
The school district and police must be forthcoming with information about any and all investigations so that parents’ trust in the school is maintained. Parents and the public deserve to know what is believed to have occurred and when without unclear disclosures that leave parents wondering. Even a hint of guarding information can sow distrust and bring up questions of whether the district is trying to protect its own.
Parents should never worry that the school they send their kids to doesn’t have teachers and administrators that care or follow the rules. Teachers and principals hold a special place in the public’s trust, and their conduct and investigations into potential misconduct must be impeccable.
Police need to ensure nothing was covered up and that the alleged abuse doesn’t go back farther than what’s suspected.
Caroline Williamson of The Sun News reported that Horry County Police Department charged Rebecca Schroyer, 47, principal at Ocean Bay Elementary School, with two counts of failing to report a child neglect allegation for an incident that happened during the 2021-22 school year.
“The alleged incident, which happened in February, involved a teacher ‘putting hand sanitizer in a child’s open wound,’ an arrest warrant states,” Williamson reported.
No doubt many parents have put hand sanitizer on a wound. A thorough investigation is needed to make sure nothing was awry. But additional reports of hitting children are more disturbing.
The police department also charged Grace McColgan, 60, a special education teacher at Ocean Bay Elementary, with six counts of unlawful conduct towards a child, stemming from the 2021-22 and 2022-23 school years, according to an arrest warrant. McColgan is alleged to have hit three students with an open hand on two separate occasions in late September after the students would not get their heads off the table, an incident report says.
Three adults were in the room with McColgan, the reports say. She was placed on administrative leave on Oct. 11. The public should have been notified right then, if not before, about any probe into suspicions of child abuse.
If the abuse was witnessed, as the report says, why was the teacher not immediately placed on administrative leave? It’s early in the reporting process, so some details are unclear, but if abuse was witness in late September there’s no reason why the teacher shouldn’t have been placed on leave in late September. The school or district surely looked into the reported abuse which lead to McColgan being placed on leave, but couldn’t that administrative investigation been done while she was on leave?
In the month leading up to the charges for McColgan was there any attempt to protect the teacher by the district? The district needs to release as much information as possible about the investigative process to the public to ensure that trust is maintained in the school.
Another question is brought up by the allegations. Was the reported abuse in September the only time this happened? Was this just a moment of anger for the teacher or was it a pattern? McColgan has been a teacher since 1984. That’s a lot of time now in question.
The school district and police investigators need to look beyond these current allegations to see if any abuse could have happened in the past.
Parent should be assured that the schools where they send their children have teachers and administrators that care for them as much as their parents.
The school district and investigators can do this by being upfront about the investigative process.
This story was originally published November 3, 2022 at 11:54 AM with the headline "Horry school district, police should be up front on investigation of teacher, principal."