A California principal has been charged with child abuse and endangerment after a video surfaced showing him pushing a special needs student to the cafeteria floor at the end of the previous school year. The educator who once pledged to “erase the distance in learning by extending grace, compassion and support” to his students, is now no longer employed at the school.
On Tuesday, June 7, Brian Vollhardt, the former principal at Wolters Elementary School in Fresno, California, was captured on camera assaulting an 11-year-old autistic boy, Law & Crime reports, and later charged with willful cruelty to a minor.
The school district said in a statement, on that morning, Vollhardt “joined a small group of students having their breakfast.”
Surveillance footage from a camera located inside the school’s cafeteria from that day was shared with the public on Thursday, Sept. 8. It showed Vollhardt with the student and two other staffers and his response to the special-needs child.
While no video can be heard, viewers can see the educators conferring and the boy going back and forth with Vollhardt.
The situation seemed to be defused, with the staffers walking away from the principal. However, the boy doubles back, returning to say something to the principal, who is several times bigger and stronger than he is. Unhappy with whatever is said, he pushes the boy with maximum force and propels him across the room and onto the floor.
The female staff member immediately turns to attend to the boy, but Vollhardt’s rage is not tempered, and he moves in with his finger pointing in a threatening manner.
The district said, “The former principal and a couple of staff members were working with an upset student. Instead of de-escalating the situation, the former principal chose to aggressively shove the student down.”
Originally, when the principal called the student’s guardian, Ann Frank, he told her the boy assaulted him, rushing her to come and pick him up.
Once she arrived at the school, the student told Frank what had happened to him and she contacted the authorities to look into the criminal offense.
Within one day of the assault, Vollhardt was placed on administrative leave by the Fresno Unified District. The district said on Thursday, June 9, they reported the incident to the police and Child Protective Services.
The former administrator’s lawyer, Roger Wilson, believes his client is being vilified based on a 30-second clip, with a consideration that the autistic child is known for “acting out all the time.”
“He [Vollhardt] is a well-regarded educator and this is completely out of character,” Wilson told The Washington Post,
According to the Daily Mail, a police investigation was launched over the summer, prompting Vollhardt, who has a specialized certification for handling students with autism, to resign.
He was not out of work long. He was hired as the vice principal at Tranquility High School in the Golden Plains Unified. That district was notified about the incident on Wednesday, Sept. 7, and saw the video on the same day as the rest of the community. Vollhardt has been placed on administrative leave.
According to ABC 30, Frank, who considers the student her son, is frustrated at how quickly Vollhardt was able to get hired by another district — even if he was in a demoted position.
“He doesn’t deserve to work in anybody else’s school if he’s working in one,” Frank fumed. “He doesn’t need to handle anybody else’s kids. Who’s to say how many other kids he’s done this to?”
Three months after the incident, the Fresno Unified District released the video. It was the first time Frank had seen what happened to her child.
Frank said, “You cannot put force to these kids like that. My son is autistic. Any parents seeing this video, they know what I’m feeling right now. My son was pushed with force by this principal who was supposed to protect him.”
Superintendent Bob Nelson called the former principal’s behavior “repugnant,” and said this is sure to evoke a response from the Black community the video is seen.
“While there’s been zero information to lead us to believe this was a racially motivated altercation, we are not blind to the fact that racial dynamics are always present,” Nelson stated.
Frank has not blamed the incident on race but believes her child had been being bullied by the school official and the incident was an explosion of built-up hostility brewing for some time.
The district is offering the community resources to help cope with the troublesome video and has reported the behavior to the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing (CTC) to see if there is a cause to stop him from teaching anywhere.
“We don’t believe any K-12 district should tolerate this type of behavior,” FUSD spokeswoman Nikki Henry said. “However, we don’t make that decision for other districts. The state does.”
Despite the district’s almost immediate efforts, Frank has secured a lawyer to represent her child’s interests.
Jason Bell of Baradat & Paboojian is representing Frank and the minor and says, “Anybody looking at that video, they don’t need three months to come to community and disclose what went on at this school.”
He plans to file a government claim against Fresco Unified this week. This claim will open the door for a sure-to-come lawsuit.
Frank had to complain at the beginning of September to the Fresno Police Department to have them take action on the case. It had lingered because the district had not automatically shared the video footage with the authorities.
Chief Paco Balderrama said he only saw the video days before the charges went out.
However, he now knows the police report was received by a trainee and a corporal on Monday, June 13. The video was entered in with the report, but a “system failure” stalled the progress of the case, calling it “an unnecessary and unacceptable delay in our process.”
“We cannot change the fact that our process failed to properly categorize the incident as an ‘active case’ and there was an unnecessary and unacceptable delay in our process,” Balderrama wrote in an emailed statement. “I should have been made aware of the incident much sooner.”
He has vowed to implement changes in their process so that even misdemeanor violence is reviewed by a supervisor and is not lost.
He also apologized to Frank for the hiccup.
“My standards and expectations for the Fresno Police Department are much higher than what was revealed last week,” the chief said. “We must and will do better, because our community’s children need us.”
An arrest warrant affidavit took months to be formed and states the student was yelling and getting in the face of the principal. According to Vollhardt, at one point, the boy formed his hand into a fist and pressed it against him.
Vollhardt is scheduled in court for arraignment on Monday, Sept. 26.
