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Retired educator says lunch monitors— behavior amounted to "verbal abuse"; board told district acknowledges the problem
Summary
A retired educator who volunteered as a lunch monitor described frequent yelling and punitive treatment of students in school cafeterias, and said district administrators acknowledged the problem when she raised it.
At the public-comment portion of the April 1 Mount Vernon City School District Board of Education meeting, retired educator Linda Castro described repeated misconduct by lunch monitors that prompted her recent resignation.
Castro said she began serving as a lunch monitor at Honor Academy in February 2019 and resigned after becoming "very distressed and frequently unable to sleep" because of what she described as constant yelling and punitive treatment of students. She gave specific examples: students being shouted at for eating too slowly, punished without explanation, threatened with telling families, and subject to derogatory language. She also said movie screenings used as a fallback activity "have little or no learning value." Castro said she alerted school and district administrators, who acknowledged to her that the problem exists across the district.
Why it matters: Castro characterized the cumulative effect of repeated verbal mistreatment as harmful to children—s emotional and social development, and she cited medical and psychological organizations on the documented consequences of traumatic or punitive adult treatment.
Board President and staff allowed Castro an extra minute of public-comment time to finish her remarks. The board did not take action during the meeting; Castro said she raised the issue to the board "because our children deserve better."
