A meeting to discuss accusations that a teacher used corporal punishment at a Brooklyn school turned violent when the principal began kicking and beating the school’s union rep, authorities said.
The principal, Sean Keaton, who’s so reviled that angry parents at PS 20 have compared him to Hitler, confronted Robert Segerra, 49, and said, “I’m tired of you,” before assaulting him, the United Federation of Teachers said on its Web site.
The attack came a day after a Bedford-Stuyvesant high-school teacher was busted for allegedly spraying a student’s face with Lysol in an attack that could leave him partially blind.
In yesterday’s incident, Segerra, a kindergarten teacher who has taught for 24 years, was at the meeting in Keaton’s office along with an assistant principal and the special-education teacher accused of administering corporal punishment.
The violence came after Segerra disputed the charges.
“I’m on the ground. He’s kicking me. He’s beating me,” Segerra told WABC/Channel 7.
“Every time I said, ‘I’m not hitting you,’ I got another hit in the head.”
In recent years, parents have complained that Keaton had repeatedly yelled at students and instigated “mass punishments” that led some families to take their kids out of the school.
On April 20, Keaton replied in an open letter, saying he had been slammed by “local blogs” that compared him to Hitler and Zimbabwean tyrant Robert Mugabe. A Department of Education spokeswoman said Keaton was arrested for assault and was released without bail, adding that the principal has been reassigned .
UFT head Randi Weingarten said, “This is beyond the pale to have a principal assault a teacher.”
Meanwhile, at ACORN HS at 1396 Broadway, art teacher Maria Pascual, 42, was arrested in the Lysol incident.
Police sources said she was breaking up a fight when she sprayed Ka-Quan Williams, 15.
But Williams’ mom — who works there as a school aide — claimed Pascual fired off the spray because she was frustrated with kids loitering outside her classroom. Jacqueline Coates, took her son to Woodhull Hospital. She said she was told he suffered chemical damage and could lose sight in his left eye.
Additional reporting by Yoav Gonen