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Battered Baltimore City teacher out of school; accused attackers allowed to return to take tests
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Frank Principato, a new teacher at William C. March Middle School, had his cheekbone shattered in three places and his right eye damaged when a student threw a metal chair at his head in March. – Kelsey Volkmann/ Examiner
BALTIMORE (Map, News) - A metal plate holds together Frank Principato’s face. A student threw a chair at his head and shattered his cheekbone in three places.
The teacher’s spine is swollen and his right eye pushed back into his skull.
And he can’t move his right arm up or back without feeling intense pain from a sprained rotator cuff.
He’s had plastic surgery on his face and will need more.
“I could have died,” he said. “I could have been blinded.”
Principato, 60, a soft-spoken man from Gwynn Oak, started teaching at William C. March Middle School in February. Two seventh-graders attacked him March 11, and he now collects worker’s compensation as he recuperates.
A girl punched him 20 times in the face and neck. A boy threw a 25-pound metal desk, which flew over another teacher’s head before striking Principato in the head, breaking his nose and fracturing his cheekbone and eye socket. Blood gushed down his face, covering his shirt.
The school nurse called Principato’s wife, asking her to take him to the hospital, saying the school didn’t want to call an ambulance, he said.
His wife pleaded with the nurse to call an ambulance. Principato spent the next four days at Johns Hopkins Hospital, where he still goes for doctor appointments. He pressed assault charges against the two students, who go on trial this month.
“I have now been out of work for longer than my teaching career,” he said. But the students were allowed to return to school to take the state exams.
Before teaching, Principato ran two Baltimore drug-treatment and mental-health programs for homeless people. In decades of working with potentially dangerous clients, he was never assaulted, he said.
He noticed many of the addicts he treated were young and had little education. He thought maybe he could help them earlier in their lives by teaching.
“It would be difficult to find a middle school teacher who has not been assaulted or is close to a teacher who was assaulted,” said Principato, who also had a student threaten to shoot him. “Teachers are so undervalued.”
kvolkmann@baltimoreexaminer.com
Comments from Examiner Readers
12:13 PM MST on Fri., Aug. 8, 2008 re: "Battered Baltimore City teacher out of school; accused attackers allowed to return to take tests"
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Tiffani said:
This is a sad story, and he is telling the truth that teachers are undervalued. The children of this city are ignorant and disobedient, but I guess this is what you get when your parents are junkies and really don't care about you. There are few parents in the "inner-city" that actually care enough to teach their children to be good citizens. I think enough is enough when 7th graders are beating up teachers, and what message do the schools send when these kids are not punished.
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