At One Compton Unified Elementary School, Some Parents And Staff Allege Principal Mistreated Students

Some parents and staff at George Washington Carver Elementary near Compton have raised alarms about two incidents in which students and adult witnesses said they saw Principal Francisca Owoaje mistreating children at the school.

In one, witnesses report that Owoaje shoved an 8-year-old from behind in a hallway. In another, they said she seized a 6-year-old at a lunch table, pushing her down in a way that “shocked” a staff member who said they saw it happen. That child’s parent reported the incident to the sheriff’s department.

In statements at school board meetings, interviews, and letters to the school district, three parents and one staff member described the incidents with the two children. All together, 12 parents and staff members said in interviews that they feel Owoaje’s treatment of students has sometimes been inappropriate and that some kids are afraid of the principal.

Separately, in half a dozen letters to the district since the start of the school year, parents and staff raised other complaints. They said that Owoaje disparaged students for eating unhealthy food; barred parents from volunteering during most of the school day; and shortened the school lunch period from 30 minutes to 15 minutes. In interviews conducted after these letters were filed, two parents said some students struggled to get their food from the cafeteria and eat in the allowed time. According to the district, it has received at least six other letters of complaint; despite a public records request, it has not made them public.

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Owoaje, who has led Carver Elementary since May, has a doctoral degree in education, was a member of the California Bar, and previously led another school that won several education awards.

In a brief interview at her home, Owoaje declined to comment, saying she needed permission from the district. She did not respond to subsequent emails and voicemail messages. But she sent an email to the dean of the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, where this reporter is a graduate student, saying that attempts to reach her and a call to her husband amounted to harassment. She also said the reporter had “been contacting disgruntled parents and staff.”

A spokesperson for the district did not respond to detailed questions

Some staff support Owoaje. “I don’t see anything wrong,” said Vivian Padilla, a cafeteria worker at Carver. “If we could tell these kids what to do with authority, maybe they would be better. But she talks to them patiently. She’s a good principal.”

“I would never say anything untoward about parents,” adds Elisabeth Gregory-Obiamiwe, an eighth grade teacher at Carver who backs Owoaje, “but I’m not sure if they have the right information.”

The backstory

George Washington Carver Elementary is located in an unincorporated area near Compton.

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Jules Feeney

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The controversy at Carver Elementary, which is in an unincorporated area, comes at a time when public schools are struggling to emerge from the pandemic and when teachers feel pressure from parents and, in some districts, from the country’s deep divide over appropriate subjects and curriculum for students.

Teachers must adhere to strict rules on how they physically interact with students. California law states: “An educational provider may use seclusion or a behavioral restraint only to control behavior that poses a clear and present danger of serious physical harm to the pupil or others that cannot be immediately prevented by a response that is less restrictive.” Such tactics should be a “last resort,” according to the law, and should “never be used as punishment or discipline or for staff convenience.”

Compton Unified School District has roughly 18,000 students. About 4 in 5 are Latino, and almost 1 in 5 are Black. More than two-thirds of students in the school district receive free or reduced-price lunch.

Enrollment in public schools in Compton and throughout California has been steadily declining for years. But in one key measure, Compton schools have been on an upswing: Student results on statewide assessments have steadily increased, even through the COVID-19 pandemic when statewide scores backslid.

Owoaje earned a law degree from The Nigerian Law School in 1984 and a degree in comparative jurisprudence from the University of Texas at Austin, according to her LinkedIn profile. She was admitted to the California Bar in 1991.

In the early 2000s, Owoaje made a career pivot to teaching. Her LinkedIn page shows she received a master's in education in 2001 and then a doctorate five years later from the University of Southern California. That same year, 2006, she took over as the principal of Laurel Street Elementary in Compton after serving as that school’s resource teacher. While she was principal, Laurel won several awards including the Education Trust’s Dispelling the Myth Award and a Golden Bell Award from the California School Boards Association.

About the incidents: the lunch table

Witnesses have reported two alleged incidents of mistreatment of students by the Carver Elementary principal to school officials.

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Jules Feeney

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for LAist

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On Aug. 29, about two weeks after the start of classes, first and second graders gathered around a series of picnic tables amid Carver’s teal-painted, single-story buildings. According to a staff person who was present, a 6-year-old girl and a friend sat together, chatting as they ate.

The girl stood up and started to share some food with her friend, according to the staff member who said they saw the event and who asked that their name not be used because they fear reprisal. Owoaje told the girl not to share food, this person said, but the girl didn’t seem to hear. The principal came up from behind and “pushed her down and put [her hands] on the table,” the staff member recalled. “I was shocked,” the staffer said. “I’ve never seen a principal ever do that. Normally, they just walk over and say, ‘Don’t.’”

The girl’s mother, Mallerli Escamilla, said she picked up her daughter that afternoon. “The minute I saw her, I knew something was wrong,” she wrote in a letter to the district. “Then when she told me that the principal had put hands on her I was like wait. Why and how?” In an interview, she said the principal had “slammed” her daughter’s hands on the lunch table. In a meeting the next day, she said, Owoaje told her she had touched the girl’s shoulder and gently placed her wrists on the table.

In an interview, Escamilla said: “Education is my number one priority when it comes to my kids. And right now I don't feel my kids being safe at the school.”

Escamilla said she filed a police report with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, in which she and her daughter gave statements to a deputy and were given an incident tag. She said a deputy told her the department probably couldn’t do much to help, because there was no bruising or other physical evidence. When a reporter visited the sheriff’s office with Escamilla, a lieutenant confirmed there was an open investigation and that documentation of her complaint was in their system.

A night-shift custodial worker at a Los Angeles Unified School District high school, Escamilla still makes time to volunteer at the parents’ center. But since the incident, Escamilla says, her daughter has become anxious about going to school on days she doesn’t volunteer.

In an interview at her home in Compton with her parents, the girl said that she doesn’t like going to school anymore: “I’m scared because I’ve never done nothing to my principal, and she’s been doing stuff to me.”

About the incidents: in the hallway

Several weeks after that incident, according to witnesses and complaints to the school district, Owoaje was walking through a hallway past a group of third grade students, one of whom was an 8-year-old girl. As the principal passed them, she pushed the girl from behind, according to Leticia Macias, who at the time was Carver’s community relations specialist, and Yvonne Garcia, a volunteer at the school. Both women said they saw the event.

“I witnessed principal Dr. Francisca Owoaje forcefully push a student” in her lower back “because she was in her way,” Macias wrote in an email to the district’s head of human resources. The student did not fall to the ground, Macias and Garcia said in interviews, but the shove was hard and inappropriate.

The 8-year-old’s mother, Sarah Machai, also wrote to the district’s director of human resources, saying that the incident made her daughter “feel unsafe.”

In interviews and letters to the district, Macias and Machai both said they went to the principal’s office to meet with Owoaje to discuss. During the meeting, they said Owoaje told them she did not recall the incident. But they both recall the principal saying if she had pushed the student, she was sorry.

In October, Macias was transferred from Carver to another Compton school but is currently on medical leave. She said she plans on pursuing a different career path.

The response

After Machai filed her complaint with the district, she says the district’s executive director of human resources, William Gideon, called to assure her that the district would do a thorough investigation and notify her of the findings. A little over two weeks later, Machai emailed Gideon to find out what had happened with her complaint. In response, Machai said she received a phone call from Yolanda Mendoza, the district’s senior director of human resources. During that phone call, Machai said Mendoza told her Macias had withdrawn her witness statement and that without any physical evidence or witness statements the investigation was closed.

In a text message to Garcia, her friend and a volunteer at Carver, Machai relayed what she’d just heard from Mendoza.

“They aren’t doing anything about it because Ms. Macias retracted her story and said she didn’t witness what happened with the principal and” her daughter, Machai wrote.

In an interview, Macias said she did not withdraw her complaint and that she emailed her union representative to notify her of what she’d heard from parents.

Gideon and Mendoza declined to comment citing Owoaje’s privacy.

Machai said she’s currently seeking schools for her kids outside Compton Unified. “My daughter now goes to school afraid of Principal Owoaje,” Machai told Mendoza in an email “And is scared to speak up because apparently nothing gets done anyway.”

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