Edwardsburg mother says teacher forced her son to sit in soiled pants

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CORRECTION: This story has been updated to reflect the child is part of the Tri-County Head Start program and is not a student of Eagle Lake Elementary. The teacher in the alleged incident worked for the Head Start program and not Edwardsburg Schools.

EDWARDSBURG, Mich. --- One Edwardsburg mother says she won’t be sending her son back to school after learning his teacher forced him to remain in soiled pants for almost thirty minutes. The mother claims the teacher is allegedly being investigated by CPS for the incident.

This incident happened during the child’s first week of school and his mother says she never imagined this would happen to her son because kids should be safe at school.

“He was extremely upset and like I guess traumatized cause he was hyperventilating and stuff when we went to pick him up," said Kyleigh Bergman, victim's mother.

Bergman is the mother of four-year-old Lincoln who just started school a few weeks ago at Tri-County Head Start. The program has space at Eagle Lake Elementary, but is not part of Edwardsburg Schools.

The young boy who was excited to go into the classroom for the first time ever now has a different outlook - after he was allegedly ridiculed by his teacher following an accident.

"She was shaming him in front of his classmates and stuff saying why did you ruin my rug and my chair and stuff and then he was put to sit in the bathroom for 30ish minutes in his soiled clothes until we got there," said Bergman.

Bergman who says she received a call from CPS earlier this week was told Lincoln's teacher is currently being investigated due to the incident.

She also learned that there are claims from other parents that Lincoln’s teacher was taking away food from students - not giving them enough time to eat. After learning about the investigation Bergman says she won’t be sending her son back to school for the time being.

“I definitely want to make sure that she’s not in any classroom again because this cannot happen again. This is traumatizing for my child and I don’t want this to happen to someone else," said Bergman.

While it’s uncertain at this time if any of the allegations against Lincoln’s teacher are true - Bergman says she and other parents are hoping school officials will consider implementing cameras in the classroom moving forward.

“It’s better for the well being of not only our children, but everyone else’s to be able to see what’s going on all the time and just know that your kids are safe," said Bergman.

Tri-County Head Start issued the following statement:

Nothing is more important to us than treating the children who we serve with compassion and professionalism. We never want a situation like this to happen, and we are deeply saddened by these events. We train our staff on child safety and positive classroom management, and we regularly observe and monitor our classrooms to make sure that staff are following those values.

We also train our staff to report any concerns, and they did just that in this case. Thanks to our internal reporting mechanisms, we were able to immediately remove the teacher from the classroom. We also followed our process of immediately reporting the allegations to both CPS and childcare licensing authorities to ensure that all appropriate remedial measures are taken. We want to be clear that the teacher no longer works for us. In addition, our staff will be reaching out to impacted families to provide additional support throughout this process.


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