A 39-year-old Omaha teacher has been suspended by the district and cited by police, accused of taking two teen students from his classroom and encouraging them to resolve their dispute outside during a nearly 20-minute brawl. Hit the jump to read the rest of the story.
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Patrick Kocsis faces two counts of misdemeanor child neglect for an incident that occurred Monday at McMillan Magnet Center middle school in northeast Omaha.
District spokeswoman Luanne Nelson said Wednesday that she didn’t know what started the disagreement that began in an eighth-grade science classroom and included slaps, pushing and shoving.
Nelson said typically a teacher would have referred the boys to an administrator.
But Felisa Evans, mother of 14-year-old Micah, said Kocsis instead led the boys out of the class and down hallways, past the office. Evans said her son told her that he and the other boy asked Kocsis whether they were being taken to the principal, but he said no.
According to Evans, Kocsis told the boys that they were going to settle their dispute his way.
Once the three of them got outside, Evans said, Kocsis turned to the boys and said he was going to have the two of them “slap it out.”
They asked him twice whether he was serious, Evans said, and he assured them he was. So, the boys then flailed away and grappled for about 20 minutes.
The fight was broken up when the principal and a security officer came to investigate a report about a fight.
