Eileen Moore, Prince's aunt, told the South Hadley School Committee she has been paying Caldieri's insurance premiums since her money ran out. Watch video
South Hadley High School Latin teacher Debra Caldieri addresses the South Hadley School Committee on Wednesday evening. Calderieri is on unpaid medical leave and is looking to get some of her benefits back.SOUTH HADLEY – The School Committee listened in silence Wednesday as a teacher out of work with a disability pleaded for help and her former students sang her praises.
Debra Caldieri, the high school's Latin teacher, has been on unpaid medical leave with multiple sclerosis since December. Approaching the microphone in the wheelchair she must now use constantly, Caldieri told the committee her health spiraled downward after the death of her student Phoebe Prince, leaving her jobless and destitute.
"I don't know what to do or where to go from here," she said. "Do you have answers or do I just remain a non-person to you?"
Caldieri, 48, was teaching in Vernon, Conn., when South Hadley hired her to teach Latin in 2005. She told the committee that her condition took a turn for the worse after Prince, a freshman, hanged herself in January of 2010. Investigators said Prince's suicide followed a period of intense bullying at school. Her death sparked an international move to combat bullying. Six former South Hadley High School students were charged with felonies in connection with her treatment.
View full sizeEileen Moore, the aunt of Phoebe Prince, stands in support of Debra Caldieri.Caldieri told the committee that the high school was in a state of chaos on the day after Prince's suicide, affecting the normal protocol. As she explained the sequence of events in an earlier interview, Caldieri was disciplined by high school Principal Dan Smith after she drove four students off school grounds to the home of a male student during school hours. The boy had been dating Prince but broke up with her prior to her death, Caldieri said, and the girls were distraught because in consoling the boy about the breakup they feared they had bad-mouthed Prince.
According to Caldieri, one of the girls was 18 and authorized to sign herself out. The others needed the assent of their parents. Caldieri mistakenly thought they had obtained that consent when she left with them. On the drive back to school from the boy's house, she received a call from Smith telling her to come to his office. There, Smith chastized her and suspended Caldieri immediately.
"To him it was 'the stupidiest thing' I had ever done," she told the committee.
She added that she was heartbroken when she learned that Smith had made the "executive decision" not to inform her about Prince's funeral, which she missed.
Eileen Moore, Prince's aunt, told the committee that she has been paying Caldieri's insurance premiums since her money ran out. She asked the schools to help out as well.
"You can do better," she said. "Please lend a hand."
Several of Caldieri's former students added their voices to the mix, saying she repeatedly went beyond the call of duty for them.
"No other teacher expressed so much investment in my and my classmates' work," said Abbe Hamilton.
Josh Lopez said Caldieri knows him better than his own mother. "I can honestly say no other teacher cares more about her students than Miss Caldieri," he said. "To treat her like this is just not right."
Caldieri had a disciplinary hearing a week after she was suspended and was allowed back into her classroom, but was put on probation for a year. In the ensuing weeks, she was frequently monitored. Caldieri maintains that stress from the heavy oversight exacerbated her condition, causing her seizures to become more frequent and leading to her medical leave.
Although Caldieri says her doctors attribute her decline to the stress she endured in the workplace, the schools say her multiple sclerosis was a pre-existing condition and maintain they are not obligated to pay her while she's out. Superintendent Gus Sayer said a meeting on Caldieri's situation is scheduled for Monday. Committee Chairman Dale Carey thanked the public for their comments but said he did not have enough information to respond.
