These days the Post is not only reporting on the Department of Education’s Rubber Room, it’s sending people there! The tabloid says that after an incident last week, in which a Brooklyn gym instructor allegedly assaulted a 10th grade girl, officials barred her from teaching any more classes and gave her a seat in the long-term holding area for bad teachers. When asked if it was true that she had punched a 15-year-old, the teacher, 53-year-old Deborah Mortley, told a reporter to, “Go ask your mother.”
Kiera Richardson, a student at Life Academy HS for Film and Music in Bensonhurst, says that Mortley sent her to the office for not wearing the right shirt. When she refused to go, the gym teacher put her in a headlock. Then the two began fighting: Richardson claims “she hit me. She punched me in my forehead with her fist," leaving her no choice but to swing back. Witnesses alerted the police, and the student was suspended. But later in the week she was vindicated when teachers reported Mortley via an anonymous violence hotline.
