Teacher Arrested After an Alleged Shoving Match With a Student

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The New York Sun

A Bronx middle school teacher was arrested yesterday after a dispute over a student’s hat.

Osmond DuPorte, 44, a 7th-grade teacher, was removed in handcuffs from M.S. 302, the Lusia Dessus Cruz school, at about 12:30 p.m. and charged with third-degree assault after his dispute with a 14-year-old student escalated into a pushing and shoving match, police said. The altercation occurred after the teacher asked the student to remove his hat during class. The student refused and a scuffle ensued, resulting in minor head injuries to the student, who was taken to Lincoln Hospital, police said.

The teachers union suggested the teacher might not be to blame. “The student attempted to strike the teacher and the teacher simply attempted to restrain the student,”a spokesman for the United Federation of Teachers, Rob Davis, said.

The union discourages teachers from physically restraining students, Mr. Davis said. “Whenever a student is touched, there is always potential for charges like this to be lodged against our educators. That’s why we advise them not to do it,” he said.

As of last night, police did not indicate who struck first, and the principal of the school could not be reached.

Still, other sources familiar with the incident corroborated the union spokesman’s account, and said the student began cursing at Mr. DuPorte when the teacher removed the teenager’s hat. When the student struck him, Mr. DuPorte, a five-year veteran math teacher, acted in self-defense and was attempting to put the student in a headlock to restrain him when the student fell and was injured, sources said.

A spokesman for the Department of Education, Keith Kalb, said last night he could not comment on the specifics of this case, but confirmed that wearing hats is against school rules.”Any non-religious headgear is prohibited from any New York City public school,” Mr. Kalb said. Mr. Kalb said the teacher had been reassigned pending the outcome of a corporal punishment investigation.

Mr. DuPorte yesterday accepted representation by a union attorney, Mr. Davis said.


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