Foul mouthed parents charged in Shiver incident

Two days after Superintendent Lee M. Bailey told the Grady County Board of Education about his plan to protect school personnel from verbally abusive parents or guardians, a local couple was taken into custody for using offensive language at a county school.
Ironically, at the same time the couple was allegedly being verbally abusive to Shiver School personnel, Shiver Principal Patsy Clark and other school administrators were in a meeting at the VanLandingham Center going over the new procedure regarding profanity.
There were four employees at Shiver School who gave statements to a deputy with the Grady County Sheriff’s Office regarding the incident, which involved a 46-year-old Cairo woman and a 34-year-old Cairo man. The two reside at the same address on Pleasant Grove Road.
On Nov. 13, they were called to the school to get the woman’s child, but witnesses said they were angry and interrupted school operations. In statements to the deputy on Nov. 14, the couple admitted to yelling and cursing at the school staff in the front office.
Each was then arrested and charged with misdemeanor counts of disorderly conduct and disrupting public school. When they took the man into custody, deputies also discovered he was wanted on a bench warrant for failure to appear for a previous theft by deception charge.
At its regular meeting last week, the Grady County Board of Education heard from Superintendent Bailey who reported several incidents this year where parents or guardians had used profanity against school personnel. Bailey told the board that Georgia law provides protection for school personnel, and pointed out that using profanity toward a school representative is an arrestable offense. He stated then that moving forward, the school system would charge anyone who uses profanity toward staff members of any school here.
According to Superintendent Bailey, the county’s school principals are “very supportive” of the new procedure.
“I’ve also heard from many adults, parents, teachers and community members who have had something positive to say. I’ve only heard from a couple of people who questioned their freedom of speech rights. Some folks are wanting to exercise their freedom of speech when they should be exercising their freedom to remain silent. The law is very clear,” Superintendent Bailey said.