In many areas, schools welcome volunteers to come in to help out with routine tasks so that teachers can focus on teaching. Maybe parents should think about volunteering a few hours a week to a school of their choice to help with the education process of their and others offspring. Who knows, it could be a very educational experience as well as being self rewarding.

And along with her personal bullying of the child, she taught the rest of the students (except 2) that bullying others who are different is acceptable. Is this the lesson that’s OK to teach 6th graders but not kindergartners? Is that the message the school board is sending to parents, other teachers and students?

Or is it only OK to bully autistic and aspergers kids? Or just those who appear to be autistic or aspergers, but not those who are diagnosed?

I am a teacher. My family includes many teachers and administrators. I wholeheartedly support teachers in all that they do, and know how overworked we are. But this kind of behavior should NEVER be acceptable from a teacher.

If I had been Alex Barton’s mother, I would have been livid. If I had been the mother of another child in the class, I would have been livid. It is not the responsibility of the other students to be put in the position of disciplining their peer and if I had found out that my child had been made as a classroom exercise a party to the bullying and humiliation of another student, I would have instantly demanded that they been removed from that classroom. I do not send my children to school so that someone can teach them how to hurt others. Some have pointed out that the boy was behaviorally disruptive. While I can believe that (mother of a boy with autism, remember), I fail to see how it was that Ms. Portillo had not been trained to work with disruptive behaviors if she was a certified teacher. They teach classroom management in college. They do inservices as well. If she was having this many problems with this child, she should have been contacting the IEP team and finding out how to get a behavior intervention plan in place. She had options that she chose not to exercise. My personal opinion is that Ms. Portillo proved that day that she was not well-suited to teaching. I hope that the school district at least plans to closely monitor Ms. Portillo for a good long while in regards to her classroom management skills and her interactions with students.

I knew someone like those who attack her once, I tried to save her children from her by adopting them. Instead she refused and now the kids lives are chaotic, she would never stand up for them either.

You are a moron. First of all I resent your comment regarding “midgets”.

It is clear that you think that because you are not disabled you are some sort of superior breed. The only thing that you are that is superior is superior-ly stupid and arrogant.

To refer to the parents as bad parents because their child is disabled is not only low class but cowardly and to call the mother a gold digger is a lame excuse to the teacher.

Remember, if it werent for Wendy A Portillo there would be no story.

Go get em’ mom!

Also, often the parents enable this bad behavior by not teaching their children how to respect others or how to act in a public situation. I can see that we may have two or three of these type of parents writing of this site. Rude, disruptive behavior is often learned at home before it is taken to the school environment. While this child was eventually diagnosed with autism (presumably)I suspect that his Mom was already filing that lawsuit in her head. She sounds like a gold digger.

Bottom line, I’m glad that this teacher was reinstated and I think her punishment for this action was just way too extreme.