Metro

Teacher says ‘paper gun’ tot needs to be in school

The 8-year-old boy tossed from his Manhattan special-needs school for threatening other students with a paper “gun” belongs in the classroom, one of his teachers insists.

As The Post reported Monday, The Lang School Principal Micaela Bracamonte banned Asher Palmer from attending classes next fall for using “pretend guns on fellow students” and saying he would “kill” a girl with whom he had argued, according to complaints.

Asher suffers from ADHD and a communications disorder.

But one of his teachers, Abigail Coatney, said Asher can function in the classroom with other kids with proper support — as he did for much of this year.

“I would definitely say, the more social relations Asher has, the better,” Coatney said. “The school setting is the best setting — for Asher in particular.”

Asher was in a class with eight other students and three teachers, including Coatney or another teacher who was assigned to work solely with him. Segregating Asher from other students through home schooling will not help-address his social deficits, Coatney said.

“The benefit for him being around other children is that he learns to work with others and respects opinions that differ from his own,” she said. “He’s definitely best served in a school setting.”

Coatney — who is not employed by Lang, but who worked for a placement agency and was brought in to teach Asher
— admitted that the boy had some “bad” days behaviorally, but said he made progress and showed he could function in class.

On Monday, Bracamonte defended her decision to oust Asher, claiming his mom, Melina Spadone, cherry-picked her facts.

“It’s important for parents of a special-needs child to come to terms with the child’s challenges and not blame those challenges on anyone,” Bracamonte said outside the Financial District school.

Bracamonte also said that Asher wasn’t expelled from school for the last weeks of this semester, but that his mom pulled him out after getting notice that he was not welcome back in September.