Teacher accused of abusing nonverbal autistic student at Zachry Middle School<\/a><\/p>\nDaisy Pena said she feels guilty that she wasn\u2019t there to protect her son.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wasn\u2019t there as his mother to protect him, and just ugly guilt,\u201d said Daisy Pena.<\/p>\n
Donovan\u2019s parents say Northside ISD staff called them in March to review footage of Donovan\u2019s teacher yelling at him. The district would not allow them to record the video, but Daisy Pena recorded audio.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t like that. If you want to pull on a shirt, pull on your shirt,\u201d said Daisy Pena.<\/p>\n
Donovan is a nonverbal autistic child. His parents said pulling on his shirt is one way he communicates, and they don\u2019t understand why it became a complaint. They also said four incidents were recorded and that other staff members were in the room but did not report what happened.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe even saw another ALE teacher in the video just standing across the room, laughing and complaining,\u201d said Daisy Pena.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnother staff member was telling her, \u2018Let me text you next time I\u2019m dealing with Donovan so you can scream at him,\u2019\u201d said Daisy Pena.<\/p>\n
According to the Penas, the principal selected the teacher to work with Donovan. They said the principal told them she had no idea this was happening, even though she heard high-pitched screams coming from Donovan. The parents say the principal told them the situation was the norm.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou didn\u2019t think to get up to go and take a look at my son and make sure everything was OK?\u201d said Daisy Pena.<\/p>\n
Daisy Pena and her husband pulled Donovan from the school. His parents want the footage released, and the teacher fired. The teacher remains on staff as San Antonio Police investigate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The photo above shows 13-year-old Donovan Pena with bruising across his face after he injured himself at Zachry…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":475041,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[82,84,83],"class_list":["post-475040","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-antonio","tag-san-antonio","tag-san-antonio-headlines","tag-san-antonio-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475040","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=475040"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475040\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/475041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=475040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=475040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=475040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}