ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, April 13, 1996 TAG: 9604150038
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
As principal of a special school for Roanoke's most troubled and disruptive students, Michael McIntosh has to break up as many as four fights a day.
But McIntosh fought back tears Friday when he was confronted with allegations that he slapped a 15-year-old student in the head during a classroom disturbance at the Noel C. Taylor Learning Academy.
"I did not smack the kid," he testified in Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court. "If I'd done it - and I'm a Christian - I'd 'fess up."
Even though McIntosh's denial was contradicted by the victim, two other students and a teacher who witnessed the incident, Judge John Ferguson dismissed an assault and battery charge against the principal.
Ferguson said he was not convinced of McIntosh's guilt after hearing several hours of testimony that portrayed the learning academy as a place where, as one School Board member put it, "total chaos" reigns.
"Michael McIntosh probably has the toughest job in education in the Roanoke Valley," said his attorney, John Fishwick Jr.
Considering that the academy, formerly known as the alternative education center, is the last chance for students who have been kicked out of other schools, Fishwick said it was not surprising that its principal might face such an allegation.
The 15-year-old boy, who is not being identified because of his age, testified that he was in a computer class Oct. 26 when he spotted McIntosh in the hallway. After rolling his wheeled chair to the door to speak to McIntosh, the 15-year-old said, the principal instructed him to open the door and then struck him on the left side of the head with an open hand.
"I was just stunned," the 15-year-old said. McIntosh then escorted the boy from the classroom and suspended him for five days, the boy said.
Two other students testified that they saw the same thing. So did Robert Steinmetz, a teacher who was in the classroom at the time.
Although the student at first held the door shut as McIntosh tried to enter the room, Steinmetz said he did nothing to deserve being hit in the head. After striking the boy, Steinmetz said, McIntosh held up his fists and challenged the boy to fight with him.
"Never in my wildest dreams did I think anything like this would happen in my classroom," Steinmetz said.
The 27-year teaching veteran also testified that McIntosh once told teachers at a faculty meeting that if they were confronted with unruly students, they could "deck them and do them in, and he would back us up."
Fishwick, however, suggested that Steinmetz had an ax to grind.
Brenda Tudor, a teacher at the academy, testified that Steinmetz told her shortly after the October incident that he had not fared well on a job evaluation. "He said [McIntosh] was messing with the wrong person, and that he would get him in the end," Tudor said.
As for the 15-year-old's intentions, Fishwick pointed to the youngster's long record of disciplinary problems and a comment he made to the academy's assistant principal last month, after his latest outburst in class.
The assistant principal testified that after he told the student he would be suspended again, the 15-year-old replied that "He was going to get me fired like he got Mr. McIntosh fired." McIntosh was suspended without pay after he was charged in March, following a lengthy investigation by child-protective workers and police.
Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Ann Gardner discounted McIntosh's suggestion that Steinmetz and his students were out to get him.
"It's just incredible to believe that a 27-year veteran teacher and three students are going to come in here and conspire to lie," Gardner said. Acquitting McIntosh of assault would send a message to him and other teachers that it is permissible to manhandle alternative education students because of their troubled backgrounds, she said.
But McIntosh, who said he hopes school administrators will let him return to work as early as next week, said he was the one who has been punished. He recalled the humiliation of being booked in the Roanoke City Jail and seeing several former students whom he had lectured about staying out of trouble.
McIntosh, a 35-year-old doctoral candidate who said he has devoted his entire career to helping at-risk children, has received praise for his leadership in upgrading the academy's programs during his two-year tenure.
After the charge was dismissed, he said he was grateful that the hearing had "brought out the truth. And the truth is that I don't hit kids."
LENGTH: Medium: 81 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: Michael McIntosh\Learning Academy principal. color.by CNB