NEWPORT NEWS, Va. — The former assistant principal at Richneck Elementary, Dr. Ebony Parker, is facing child neglect charges connected to the day first-grade teacher Abby Zwerner was shot by a student, the commonwealth's attorney said.
As we continue to follow through on the Special Grand Jury Report released Wednesday about the day Zwerner was shot in January 2023, we're learning more about missing discipline records for the 6-year-old shooter.
According to the report, investigators claim some discipline records were missing and never properly reported.
Days after Zwerner's shooting, police executed two search warrants for the 6-year-old's school records and files.
Three disciplinary incidents were reported to the police in a school database called Synergy.
"Teachers access Synergy to enter attendance to look up student data, maybe to look up a phone number to make a phone call home and to also enter discipline infractions as well," said Mary Vause, with the Newport News Education Association.
One incident police noted was not on file was when the student allegedly choked his teacher the previous school year.
Police also requested the two physical files of the student, but they could not be found.
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One was later recovered in what is normally in the school's main office, but the other remained missing.
The report said during school year, there was a mini referral system used along with Synergy system to report student behavior.
Vause said that's not too uncommon, however the severity of an incident relies on administrators.
"It depends on the administrator whether that's handled well or not," Vause said. "The ability to identify what's a serious infraction versus what is not a serious infraction. I mean clearly at Richneck, the administrators there had issues with differentiating."
The report claimed this allowed staff to pick and choose what to report.
It goes on to say the purpose of the mini referral system was to keep minor incidents of a student on record.
Those mini referrals were allegedly not put into students' physical files.
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"I'm very disappointed, very concerned, and I just really hope that something good can come from this," Vause said.
The report said those mini referrals were unattainable and the system is no longer used at Richneck.
