Not exactly a way for San Francisco Unified School District to earn trust: After angry parents learned that the district shuffled a teacher with a checkered past to Sherman Elementary, they stormed the school board, and the teacher has now been yanked out of the classroom. SF Weekly first wrote about the teacher, Deborah Fergin-Mavaega, 51, two weeks ago. She was accused of slamming a child’s head into a desk at Bret Harte Elementary (and, the girl’s mom says, stealing her Twinkies) back in 2009, but avoided prosecution by entering a pretrial diversion program. The district shelled out $30,000 to settle a civil claim. Then, a similar incident involving another Bret Harte student occurred last year—no criminal charges, but a civil claim pending.
And this week what happens? The SFUSD brain-trust quietly shuffles Fergin-Mavaega over to Sherman Elementary to teach fifth grade . . . until parents got wind of it. Here’s SF Weekly’s folo. And here’s the Chronicle’s story.
Education
