Fort Worth ISD student at Eastern Hills Elementary was locked in classroom alone, mom says
A Fort Worth Independent School District parent says she found her 7-year-old son locked in an elementary classroom alone after dismissal last week.
Latissue Wallace posted on Facebook last Thursday that she was told her second-grade son had “ran off away from his classmates” when she went to pick him up from Eastern Hills Elementary School. Dismissal time for the school is 3:20 p.m., according to its website. After searching for him for about half an hour, she said, she found him locked in a classroom and she took a video of school staff unlocking the door. In a separate post she shared from the FWISD Watchdog Facebook page, a video recorded by Wallace shows her son, Gavaro Brown, lying on a chair with a hoodie covering his head after the door was unlocked and she entered the classroom.
“This is what Fort Worth ISD do to your class. Look at my child… Nobody else in here with them. Nobody else in here. The whole class is gone, teacher and everything. And she locked my baby in the class,” Wallace said in the video.
In Wallace’s Facebook post, she stated that “his teacher said it wasn’t her problem.”
“Today when I went to pick up my son from Eastern Hills elementary school I was told that my son had ran off away from his classmates. Only to find out he never left the classroom and the teacher had locked him in the classroom. It took about 30 minutes before finding him. His teacher said it wasn’t her problem. And not once did she help us look for him. I have a video of them unlocking the door,” Wallace wrote.
Fort Worth ISD officials gave a short statement on Thursday, stating the district “is aware of the video at issue and we are conducting a thorough investigation into this isolated incident.”
Questions sent by the Star-Telegram about the standard protocol for dismissal and whether the student’s teacher will be facing any disciplinary action or additional training for student dismissal were not addressed.
Wallace told the Star-Telegram on Thursday that her son missed school on Friday and Monday because he was afraid the same incident would happen again. On Thursday this week, a substitute teacher put him on a bus instead of sending him to the car pick-up area, but staff caught the mistake before the bus left the school, Wallace said.
She’s in the process of finding an attorney to represent herself and her son against the school district, she said.
“People got to take accountability for what’s going on,” Wallace said.
This story was originally published March 7, 2024 at 1:11 PM.
