clean up feces on the bathroom floor [2] -- feces that, the custodian claimed, the boy had left there himself. Jalen ended up with his clothes smeared with excrement as a result of his obeying the custodian (he knelt on the floor to clean up the mess).
Ms. Tezino says that might have led to his contracting hepatitis or a staph infection. She's disgusted at what her son had to do. "It seems inhumane for a person, for another person to ask an eight-year-old kid to do something like that," she told Eyewitness News. She calls for the termination of the custodian's employment.
According to the Houston Independent School District, "the custodian in question has been reassigned to duties at the school when children are not present" and "appropriate disciplinary actions [will be taken] once the investigation is complete."
Like the school bus scenario, this is not clear-cut. If the boy didn't leave the feces on the floor, then the custodian acted in a completely inappropriate manner, and should be severely disciplined. The pupil suffered an injustice here, there's no doubt about that.
But even if the young lad did lay the cable in question, the custodian still had no legal right to make him clean the floor. According to the article, the school district says "it is inappropriate for any employee to make a student clean up human waste in a school bathroom." After all, isn't it part of a janitor's job description to deal with such mess?
Yet isn't it also a good idea to show kids that if they make a mess then it's their responsibility to clean it up? Harsh, maybe, but when it comes to turd terrorism, I think we should be nipping in the bud. The boy in the article is the same age as my stepson and his friends, and if I caught one of them in close proximity to a pile of poo on our bathroom floor, I would be tempted to make them get the mop and the bleach and get to it.
