She reported alleged student strip searches. Now teacher says she faces retaliation
Update: On Friday, the teacher was placed on leave. Read more here.
A Las Vegas junior high school teacher says she’s being retaliated against after reporting concerns in February about students allegedly being strip-searched.
Shushan Sadjadi, who teaches math at Garside Junior High School, told the Review-Journal that both male and female students voluntarily told her about uncomfortable searches by administrators and staff members after suspicions of marijuana use.
Students reported having to expose parts of their bodies, sometimes to staff members of the opposite sex, she said.
“I felt that this was a major problem,” Sadjadi said. “Students shouldn’t have to be scared to go to school, or scared to go to the bathroom, for fear of being strip-searched.”
Her claims have not been substantiated by the school, according to Tod Story, the Clark County School District’s top spokesperson.
“They did an investigation and were unable to verify what the teacher was alleging,” he said. “My understanding is that there were no strip searches.”
School district regulations say strip searches can only be conducted in “extraordinary circumstances when necessary to avoid an immediate threat or danger to safety, welfare or health and less intrusive means are not practical.”
Sadjadi is now facing discipline by Garside administrators for a variety of alleged teaching offenses, including being late for work, giving out her personal phone number to students and not following proper policies with her student entrepreneur club’s banking funds, according to documents provided to the Review-Journal.
Sadjadi said she reported the strip search concerns to Garside administrators the morning of Feb. 11 after students first told her about the searches the previous day. She claims Principal Marbella Alfonzo and Vice Principal Matthew Spurk were initially slow to respond to her concerns.
Alfonzo responded that day that all administrators were on vacation and were not available to meet, Sadjadi said. The teacher said she reached Spurk after classes ended and he agreed the allegations were “alarming and a major concern.” But Spurk told Sadjadi to stop pursuing the matter on her own and that Alfonzo would deal with it.
Alfonzo and Spurk did not respond to requests for comment.
But after this Review-Journal report was posted online Thursday, Alfonzo sent an email to parents of Garside students.
“You may see media reports regarding allegations being made against school staff,” she wrote. “Please know we take all allegations seriously and conduct thorough investigations. At this point, the allegations are unsubstantiated.”
Alfonzo also said the school “follows all district policies and procedures regarding student searches.”
Sadjadi has worked at Garside since October as a seventh- and eighth-grade teacher and has previously taught math in New York City, Miami and the San Francisco Bay Area. She also has a law degree but is not licensed to practice as an attorney in Nevada.
Reporting allegations
Her lawyer, Brian Berman, described her treatment by Garside administrators as a case of a whistleblower facing punishment for doing the right thing.
“There is every indication that prior to her reporting of the alleged incidents, Ms. Sadjadi was viewed as a model teacher who went the extra mile for her students,” he said. “As soon as she reported these extremely disturbing allegations, everything changed. It appears the administration is retaliating against her for bringing her concerns to light.”
Story declined to address the retaliation allegations, saying he can’t comment on personnel issues.
In a 20-page outline detailing her efforts to report the allegations to her bosses, Clark County Child Protective Services and the police, Sadjadi said about 18 of her 150 students shared stories of strip searches with her on Feb. 10 and Feb. 11. Some of the stories were firsthand accounts, and others were from students who said they had heard about the searches from other students.
Some boys described being asked to pull their pants half down and their shirts half up and then ordered to roll down the top of their underwear, Sadjadi said. Girls were asked to pull their shirts up around their neck like a cape and pull their bras away from their bodies, she told the Review-Journal.
Sadjadi told school officials that she would not provide the names of the students who knew about the searches because they wanted to remain anonymous. But she said she forwarded “alarming emails” she received from students to an associate superintendent who went to Garside to talk to the students.
Story said Garside administrators have not found anyone to corroborate the strip search allegations, and he provided a copy of an email CPS sent to Alfonzo indicating the agency was unable to substantiate a claim of abuse against one Garside student. The student’s name was redacted by the school district in the email, stating that case was closed on March 1.
Berman said Sadjadi gave CPS more than one name.
“We understand the students were required to fill out incident reports, and we understand that the incident reports confirm that the students were strip-searched,” he said. “So we are puzzled why the administration claims the allegations are unsubstantiated.”
A second eighth-grade teacher reported to Alfonzo on Feb. 11 that a student was searched at the beginning of that school day, according to an email obtained through a school district request.
“He said that he was made to take off his shirt and it made him uncomfortable,” the email said. “Since he is new, he didn’t know who it was who searched him and he also didn’t really want to talk about it.”
Berman suggested the administrators had no choice but to deny that the searches occurred.
“They can’t possibly admit it because they would be admitting to liability,” he said. “If they did their own investigation prior to talking to Child Protective Services, they likely violated the state statute. They have 24 hours to report it. They can’t sit on the information, do their own investigation and then report it.”
Searches reported in bathroom, classroom
The strip searches were allegedly conducted in at least one bathroom and a classroom reserved for Garside’s Scholar Success Office, according to Sadjadi.
Though the office has a positive title, it is dedicated to dealing with disciplinary matters and in-house detention of students, Sadjadi said.
A Garside “guiding document” for teachers says students can be referred to the office for such things as truancy, fighting, abusive language, dress code violations, bullying and vandalism.
Sadjadi said she also reported what she heard to the Metropolitan Police Department but was referred to school district police. She said she reported the allegations to school police and called a CPS hotline, but did not hear back from the agencies.
A spokesman for school district police did not respond to a request for comment.
But on Friday, the day after this story appeared online, police told Sadjadi they were investigating the allegations, and they went to Garside to interview her, Berman said.
Clark County spokesman Dan Kulin said he could not confirm whether CPS investigated any claims but added that school officials are obligated to report cases of sex abuse.
Sadjadi said she stepped forward publicly because she thought nothing was being done about the allegations.
“I know that a lot of teachers wouldn’t necessarily be willing to risk their job and risk everything for this to become public,” she said. “And I am willing to do that because I think that this is an important cause that needs to be addressed. And that if CCSD is systematically doing something wrong, then it needs to be addressed and needs to be addressed soon.”
Sadjadi said the retaliation against her has been unrelenting.
She was served with a disciplinary notice March 15, signed by Alfonzo, admonishing her for a long list of alleged “unprofessional conduct” and “neglect of duty.”
Guarded with names
The misconduct included interviewing students about the strip search allegations before talking to Garside administrators. The notice refers to the searches as “safety searches” and criticizes Sadjadi for not giving the names of the students to administrators.
Sadjadi told administrators that she wanted to obtain permission from the students before providing their names, according to the two-page document.
She was ordered in the notice to stop interviewing students and conducting investigations on her own beyond the scope of her teaching duties.
The ACLU of Nevada, a nonprofit organization that defends the individual liberties of citizens, is concerned about whether the Fourth Amendment constitutional rights of Garside students were violated in the alleged strip searches.
“From our perspective, these are serious allegations,” said Chris Peterson, the group’s legal director. “There are limitations to what a school can do when it comes to searching students. We can hold accountable people who are undermining the educational environment.”
Peterson urged any students who have been strip-searched without cause to contact the ACLU.
Sadjadi, meanwhile, remains defiant.
“The students are waiting to hear if their very serious concerns are going to be acknowledged and addressed, but one way or another, make no mistake about it, this is an important teaching moment for all of us,” she said.
“Students and their families are going to see firsthand how the Clark County School District responds to these types of serious allegations.”
Contact Jeff German at jgerman@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-4564. Julie Wootton-Greener is on leave. Her email is jgreener@reviewjournal.com. Follow @JGermanRJ on Twitter. Follow @julieswootton on Twitter.
