The New Normal: To teach swimming in Michigan schools, a teacher has to be a certified lifeguard. Johnathan Lamonte Sails, 24, a “long-time” substitute teacher at East Detroit High School, didn’t have that certification, but the school assigned him to teach swimming anyway. When a teenaged student sank to the bottom, other students informed Sails — but he was too far away to actually see what was going on and said the 15-year-old was “just fooling around.” When he finally saw the boy really was in trouble, he headed to the locker room to change his clothes. An assistant principal in suit and tie dove into the water to save the boy, but it was too late: he had drowned. “This is tragic but more importantly it certainly could have been prevented,” said Macomb County Prosecutor Eric Smith. “The inaction by Mr. Sails rises above normal negligence. It is a case of gross negligence.” And that is what he has charged Sails with. Smith thinks the school district is culpable too, for assigning Sales to a job he was not qualified to hold. “We tried to put together a case against East Detroit schools,” Smith said, “but we could not.” (RC/Macomb Daily) ...I guess their actions could only be proven to be normal negligence.
Posted on: Sun, 16 Mar 2014 15:31:03 +0000
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