COLUMBUS, Ohio – A Franklin County judge criticized Columbus City Schools yesterday for putting Spanish-language classes at East High School in the hands of a long-term substitute who didn’t know Spanish and showed students a movie containing graphic sex and violence.
READ MORE: In The Columbus Dispatch
“This is what happens when you put a teacher in a class that she cannot teach,” Common Pleas Judge Charles A. Schneider said before sentencing the former substitute to 90 days in jail, according to a report in the Columbus Dispatch.
The movie is called “The ABCs of Death” and consists of 26 chapters, each depicting some form of grisly death, such as “E is for Exterminate.”
“They put a permanent substitute in a high-school Spanish class who can’t speak Spanish at all. Here we are, with the Columbus public schools telling us what wonderful things (they) are doing.”
Sheila Kearns, 58, was convicted in January of four counts of disseminating matter harmful to juveniles. Schneider placed her on probation for three years but made the jail time a condition of her probation. He ordered her to report to the county jail on April 10 but said he will delay the sentence if she appeals her conviction.
Kearns told police she showed the movie to her classes on April 11, 2013, without reviewing it in advance. She told a detective she had her back to the screen and never turned around to watch the movie as it played for five separate classes throughout the day.
Schneider told Kearns yesterday that her claim is “unconscionable. There’s no way you’ll persuade me that’s what happened.”