Jeffrey Paffumi Palm Coast teacher charged with battery after physically throwing student out of class. A history of repeat behavior.
A Florida middle school teacher had been arrested after being captured on video (see below) physically removing a student from class.
The teacher, 47-year-old Jeffrey A. Paffumi, approached the student in the Buddy Taylor Middle School classroom on Tuesday, grabbed him from his desk and carried him to the door, video recorded by another student shows.
Paffumi then tossed the student into the hallway and shoved him, the video shows.
The incident follows the 14 year old Palm Coast middle school student purportedly refusing to stop playing music on his computer, Flagler County sheriff’s officials said according to a released statement.
The Daytona Beach News-Journal reported the student telling investigators the teacher muted the music who in turn unmuted it.
The student used an expletive, telling the teacher to put down his computer. They went back and forth two times before the teacher took the computer.
‘Put my (expletive) down cracka,’ the student at one point was recorded saying.
‘I am not a cracka,’ Paffumi responds.
‘You is a cracka,’ the student adamantly retorts.
The student claimed being put in a choke hold, but his airway was never restricted. The student had no marks or bruises on his body, the report states.
An arrest affidavit listed Paffaumi as 6-foot-2 and 243 pounds.
The student told his parents about the alleged abuse, who in turn called cops on Wednesday following the incident which occurred Tuesday morning at 9 a.m.
Paffumi was arrested and charged with a simple battery, a misdemeanor.
‘He traumatized my son. He should not be teaching.’
‘The actions of this teacher are not consistent with how we expect our educators to act and behave and it will not be tolerated,’ Flagler Schools Superintendent James Tager said in a statement.
‘We immediately removed Mr. Paffumi from the classroom following the incident and placed him on leave pending an investigation.’
The incident also left the boy’s father outraged.
Responded the student’s father, Keiondrae Woodside via Wesh: ‘I was infuriated. As a parent when you send your kid to school, you expect for them to get an education at a safe, sound environment and then I saw the video and that really took me over the edge.’
Woodside said his son should not have behaved disobediently, but he’s also concerned his child could have seriously been hurt.
‘He traumatized him mentally and emotionally and not just him but the other kids that had to witness that,’ Woodside said.
A history of repeat behavior:
Unclear is why the educator as an authority figure declined to exercise less combative responses during classroom lapses- and to what extent such overt responses may be symptomatic at school.
Paffumi was hired by the school district in 2005 and has two previous arrests in Flagler County from 2012.
Paffumi has a battery conviction involving another adult for which he got probation and a criminal mischief charge that was dismissed.
Of disconcert, Superintendent Tager said Paffumi had a handful of incidents during his career with the school that required suspensions and some counseling.
Upon being booked on Wednesday, the middle school teacher was released on a $500 bond.
