A University of Chicago charter school is being sued after a video emerged showing a teacher mocking a special education student for crying and a classroom aide was convicted of misdemeanor battery for her role in the episode.
The incident, which was recorded on another student’s cellphone, took place at the UC Charter School’s Woodlawn campus in December 2022. The Tribune reviewed the minute-long video, which offered a troubling glimpse inside the publicly funded high school overseen by the prestigious university.
Warning: Expletives are included in the audio file below.
“The question, to me, is how seriously are they taking their responsibility to children?” the student’s attorney, Jordan Marsh, told the Tribune. “This is a kid who already has been identified as having challenges, and they’re his biggest tormentors. They’re supposed to protect him and they’re tormenting him.”
The version of the video reviewed by the Tribune begins in the middle of a conversation between special education teacher Aaron Pennix and a 15-year-old student who is seated slumped at his desk.
Pennix and aide Latilda Sight told administrators that the student had been agitated most of the day but became more aggressive after the student was chastised for showing up late to math class. The student began talking back to the teacher, which required the teacher to “do some redirection,” according to an email Sight wrote shortly after the encounter.
The so-described redirection is captured on the recording in which both adults yell at and belittle the student, who does not raise his voice above a mumble and remains seated at his desk until he is ordered to leave the classroom. The Tribune obtained a copy of the video but is not publishing it because it shows several special education students not directly involved in the incident. However, it is publishing the audio to help the public better understand the events as they unfolded, as well as excerpts from internal investigation reports written by school officials.
As the video begins, Pennix walks up to the teen, who is seated near a window. The teacher “bends over the desk, hovering, and puts his face in front of” the student’s face, according to an investigative report describing the recording.
Pennix stands over the boy and yells, “You not gonna do what?” according to the video. The teen mumbles a response, saying he did not want to talk.
The teacher then points at the student’s face, while the teen “is cowering in his seat,” the investigative report states. The girl sitting next to the student snickers and other kids start laughing too.
Though Sight initially cannot be seen in the recording, her voice can be clearly heard about 15 seconds into the video.
“Shut up! Shut up!” she yells, according to the video.
The student then appears to start crying at his desk.
“And now he starts to cry,” Pennix says in front of the class, according to an investigative transcript. “Let him cry. Let him cry.”
The teacher continues to raise his voice to the student on the video. The teen frequently talks back, but his mumbled responses are mostly inaudible.
After roughly 40 seconds of back-and-forth, the teacher turns to Sight and tells her the teen needs to be removed from the classroom. The aide can be heard using profanity in the recording as she orders the student to leave the classroom.
“Bitch, get out,” she says on the video. “If you don’t give a (expletive), get out!”
As the student gets up from his desk and heads toward the door, Sight “hurries toward him, almost running,” according to the investigative report. She appears to push his face with her fingers on the video, and a security guard can be seen stepping between them.
“Knock me out, folk. Knock me out, folk,” she shouts on the recording as the guard escorts the student from the classroom. Pennix also can be heard yelling as the teen leaves.
“You a dumbass little boy,” Sight shouts as he exits the room, according to the recording. The video ends with Sight picking up her phone and calling the student’s mother, the report states.
Sight later told school officials the teen screamed at her and yelled, “I’ll beat yo (expletive),” as she tried to summon a security guard, according to records obtained by the Tribune. That statement is not audible on the recording that was reviewed by the Tribune and does not appear in a transcript contained in the school’s investigative report.
“Because I felt so threatened by his presence and how he was already acting I had to descalate (sic) the situation,” she wrote. “In order to create some type of distance I placed my hand in front of my face … I’m honestly hurt and distraught about this situation because I care about (the student) but I just can’t stomach the fact that he did this to me.”
Sight shared a similar account with the boy’s mother, Stephanie Holmes, who worried her son would be charged with a crime and expelled from the school. Holmes said she had been thrilled when he enrolled in the UC charter school system because she believed it would offer him a safer, higher-quality education than the nearby public schools. She told the Tribune she feared the classroom altercation would derail his future and upend the stability he needs.
Holmes said she immediately punished her son based on Sight’s account and initially did not believe him when he insisted she didn’t know the truth. It wasn’t until her son’s classmate shared the video that she changed her mind.
“I was shocked that they had given me a distorted version of what happened,” Holmes said. “I send my child to school there so he will be safe and have people who look after him. I felt so let down.”
Holmes said she immediately sent the video to Sight, who she said apologized for the language she used.
Pennix also had sent an email to administrators overnight expressing his regrets about the incident, according to a copy obtained by the Tribune. Records show his apology was sent after Holmes shared the video with Sight.
“I want to take this time to apologize for both my involvement in this situation and allowing my emotions to get the best of me,” the teacher wrote. “Though my reaction was a result of consistent disrespect toward me, other staff, and classmates in that space it was not professional to engage with (the student) in the manner that I did. I am open to and invite necessary opportunities for reconciliation in regards to this matter.”
Holmes said she went to the school the next day to speak with administrators, who told her Sight already had resigned and Pennix had been placed on leave pending an internal investigation. They also lifted her son’s suspension after seeing the video and allowed him to return to class, according to school records.
Records show Holmes also contacted the U. of C. Police Department that day to file a complaint against Sight.
Sight was arrested in February, after the school security guard told police the aide made physical contact with the student during the incident. Sight pleaded guilty to misdemeanor battery in May, when she was sentenced to a year of supervision and ordered to attend anger management counseling, according to court documents.
Sight told the Tribune that she is no longer teaching and is trying to move on with her life.
“I loved (the student) and it was just a bad day,” she said. “The situation was bad and a 30-second video doesn’t reflect everything. His mother knows what was in my heart.”
The school fired Pennix in January 2023 after its internal investigation, records show. His termination letter, which the Tribune obtained through an open records request, states that he violated campus policies that required him to exercise “good judgment, honesty and integrity.”
“You repeatedly raised your voice to a student, invaded the student’s personal space more than momentarily, criticized the student for crying when the student began to cry, made a physical gesture that appeared threatening, failed to de-escalate your own behavior, failed to stop or de-escalate the behavior of the paraprofessional in the room over whom you had a supervisory role and, afterward, presented self-serving and changing reports on what occurred in the class,” the letter states.
Pennix could not be reached for comment. He is now listed as part of the special education team at another Chicago-area school.
Holmes filed a federal lawsuit against the school in December, accusing the University of Chicago’s charter system of negligent hiring, training, supervision and retention of employees. Sight, Pennix and the Chicago Board of Education, which provides funding to charter schools but does not oversee them, also are named as defendants.
The University of Chicago declined to comment.
Holmes said she hopes the lawsuit makes the school safer for other children, particularly those with special needs who often cannot advocate for themselves. Her son, who is still enrolled at the Woodlawn campus, has been seeing a counselor since the incident and continues to struggle. Holmes said she has been encouraging him to talk about his emotions and telling him that, regardless of what may have been said, he shouldn’t be ashamed to cry.
“When I saw the video, I felt powerless to protect my son,” she said. “But maybe speaking up will help someone else’s child.”
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