Front Page  »  

Arroyo Grande teacher accused of assaulting a student

April 26, 2023

By KAREN VELIE

An Arroyo Grande middle school teacher landed in jail after a 13-year-old student accused her of assault on Tuesday afternoon.

Sarah Watts, a 42-year-old teacher at Mesa Middle School, allegedly pulled a hairbrush out of the teen’s hand leaving visible injuries. A few minutes later, Watts reportedly began throwing papers at students causing a cut to the same teen’s temple.

San Luis Obispo County deputies arrested Watts on a charge of child abuse and booked her in SLO County Jail. She is no longer in custody.


Loading...
Subjects:     
Related:


8 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

I smarted off to my Dad at 12 years old. Had a baked Potato thrown at me, hit me right in the face! Did I deserve it? Absolutely! Didn’t even think to consider it “Child abuse”, IT was a good lesson to NOT disrespect my elders.

I sure hope reason will overwhelm the Judge in this case, to drop all charges.

I can just see the picture of the paper cut now…an entire 1 mm? You Poor Poor Girl! Obviously the teacher was just a bit more than just frustrated. But snarky teenagers pushing buttons need to have consequences too. It would be a shame for her to get away with none. HER lesson in this is important to her development. Otherwise, who would ever want to hire her as an adult? She will be calling “Daddy come rescue me” for many years to come!


18

Using violence to control children is never a good idea.


-6

There is more to this story than meets the eye. This student was the daughter of a sheriff’s deputy. The information they released in the sheriff’s statement was completely one sided. The school’s process for dealing with such an incident was subverted and sheriff’s deputies came directly to the classroom and arrested the teacher in front of students.


28

Unfortunately, weaponization of law enforcement agencies is an everyday occurrence. The primary enabling legal concept is “qualified immunity”. It nearly always protects LE from any legal action. Even if one had the money and time to wait for the complicit unjustice system to act, it is very unlikely this clear over-reaction by LE will never be seen by a jury. This situation gives LE license to do whatever they want, whenever they want, to whomever they want, all with impunity. LE’s few weeks of extensive training is far, far too inadequate to teach them much about law or investigative procedures. I’m certain they are taught all about how to use force and how to write self-beneficial reports. I find it hard to believe LE can legally arrest a teacher in her classroom based entirely upon only the word of a 13-year-old girl without having seen the event themselves or without some sort of warrant or other unjudicial directive. If they can, parents need to look out. Every child will have the ability to report their parents for any sort of perceived slight, and cause their parents to be arrested. Colorado recently eliminated qualified immunity, but so recently that there has not been sufficient time to see how it recovers from our current police state.


13

Haven’t you heard of assault by taking a kids hairbrush? Life without possibility of parole. I wish they would have arrested all of my teachers when I was a kid. No teachers, no school!


4

The thought of teaching teenage kids, just shoot me. I once had a smart aleck teen girl. She crossed the line one time and got her phone tossed into the pool. She’s got four kids of her own now and we are together multiple times a week. We still laugh about it since deep pockets dad ended up buying her another phone. Her oldest is a full fledged teen boy and not prone to the emotional outbursts. Next up, a 12 year old girl….


18

Anyone out there that has had a 13 year old daughter sometimes wanna do a lot more than pull a hairbrush out of their hand!


63

Put a camera in every school bus, cafeteria and classroom.


I’d like to see the footage of what happened prior to this incident. Teachers usually just don’t “snap” like that.


78