A B.C. principal has been suspended after giving permission to a school employee to restrain a student with duct tape.
Renee Dawn MacCormack was an elementary school principal in the southeast Kootenay school district in the 2023-24 school year when she gave another school staffer permission to duct tape a student to their seat in an attempt to get the student focus on their work, says a consent resolution agreement dated Jan. 3.
The agreement, which was posted online Tuesday, did not name the school but district documents identified MacCormack as principal of Frank J. Mitchell Elementary in Sparwood at the beginning of the 2023-24 school year.
It said MacCormack also put duct tape on the student and came back after some time and took a picture of the student’s work, helped remove the duct tape, and gave the student a prize for completing their work.
On June 18, the district suspended MacCormack without pay for 20 days and reassigned her to another school. It also notified the B.C. commissioner for teacher regulation about the duct-taping incident.
The commissioner issued a five-day suspension of MacCormack’s teaching certificate and ordered her to take a course on creating a positive learning environment by March 31, said the agreement.
MacCormack accepted the consequences and admitted her actions constituted professional misconduct.
In explaining the decision, the commissioner noted MacCormack “did not act with integrity” when she failed to disclose her participation in the incident “in a timely manner.”
“MacCormack did not act in the student’s best interests nor treat the student with dignity and respect,” the agreement noted, adding because MacCormack was a principal and had a leadership role in the school, she ought to have known duct-taping a student to a chair was “inappropriate.”