Arrested Teacher Offers His Side

Paul Vercillo wants people to know what happened when he tried to fend off a threatened attack by a student in and right outside Room 300 — before Vercillo was branded nationwide as a criminal.

Vercillo teaches social studies to seventh and eighth-graders at Truman School. Or did.

He is one of three New Haven public-school teachers arrested and put on leave this academic year after facing apparent attacks from students, amid a regional crisis of violent misbehavior in public schools. A surveillance video captured Vercillo appearing to push a student into a locker after an extended series of alleged threats and violent behavior.

Teachers and students have described ongoing violent misbehavior in schools throughout the city (and region) this academic year. Some examples: Ross-Woodward School’s principal received a concussion while trying to break up a fight, according to the district’s spokesperson. An attacked Cooperative High security guard was hospitalized. At Vercillo’s school, Truman, a music teacher had his nose fractured while he tried to break up a student fight.

The three arrested teachers have had their names and mug shots splashed on TV news, even in People magazine. Their side of the story hasn’t been told. The two other teachers arrested — respected educators portrayed by supporters as victims first of violent students, then of a broken school and criminal-justice system — declined to speak for this story; the advice to teachers in general has been to work quietly through the union to avoid attracting attention that would endanger their prospects of regaining their jobs.

Paul Vercillo wants to regain his job.

He also wants the public to know all the facts leading up to the video clip that sealed his fate — and to understand the dangers teachers face on the job. He wants them to receive more support rather than being scapegoated, criminalized, and professionally destroyed. He wants the system to change so it can do better by everyone — students, teachers, parents, administrators — struggling to offer education amid the psychological ​“social-emotional” challenges that have exploded during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Nationwide, 49 percent of teachers responding to one recent survey said they’re considering transferring or quitting because of violence and threats of violence.

“This volcano of out-of-control little stuff has bubbled to the surface. They want teachers to handle it. We’re not equipped to,” Vercillo, who is 49 and a 15-year teaching veteran, said during a two-hour interview at Pistachio Cafe, during which he struggled to hold back tears as he relived the events leading up to his Nov. 24 arrest and the harrowing repercussions on his personal and professional life.

“Teachers have been getting attacked physically. If anybody ever heard the way we’ve been motherfucked up and down, all the time, and physically threatened …”

Now you can hear Paul Vercillo’s story, at least. Not just the official version, that he committed three crimes — risk of injury to a minor (a felony) , third-degree assault, disorderly conduct — by allegedly attacking a student (detailed in a police report summarized later in this story). But his version, as well, which follows.

What Happened On Nov. 24

It was the day before Thanksgiving, a half day in public schools, and a special day each year for Vercillo. A ​“fun day.”

He came to Room 300, at the far end of the hall on Truman School’s third floor, wearing the outfit he reserves for this occasion: orange corduroy pants with orange striped sweater. He prepared to spend the truncated 20-minute periods with each of his five 25-member seventh and eighth-grade history classes, discussing what the Quinnipiack tribe ate on Thanksgiving — and what the students, 95 percent of whom are Hispanic, many of whom hail from Guatemala or Honduras or Ecuador, eat with their families at feast meals.

The first four classes went smoothly. Then came period five, eighth-grade Amercian history, Vercillo’s final class of the day. 

The kids were coming from recess. ​“They were amped up. They knew this is a day outside the normal regimen,” or as ​“normal” a regimen as possible amid the convulsions of the pandemic.

As he took attendance, Vercillo assigned the students a ​“do-now” — to write about their families’ festive meals. He put on a PBS video called The True Story of the First Thanksgiving.

One student hadn’t arrived yet. Vercillo and other teachers had been put on notice to watch out for this student’s behavior: He had two protective orders issued against him for allegedly sexually harassing other students, including a girl who at the moment was seated in Room 302, the math class connected by an interior door to Room 300. The word was that the boy had been ​“terrorizing” teachers and other students daily.

“We’re getting warned nonstop: The kid can’t go near the [two] students,” Vercillo recalled.

Truman’s security guard showed up with the late student in tow. The student entered the room. He ​“walked around the room, refusing to sit, and being disruptive to the learning process.”

The ​“last straw”: The student walked up to another student — and ripped that student’s eyeglasses off his face.

What to do now?

Physical intervention was not an option. That has been drilled into teachers.

He would need to try ​“persuasion,” followed by a call to one of the building’s two administrators if that failed.

“After 15 years, you become effective” at persuasion, Vercillo said. You learn that ​“being assertive doesn’t work. You cannot win that battle. You can’t force them to do anything. The only thing you can do is ask and ask nicely.”

“These are his prescription eyeglasses. They’re expensive. Please give them back to me,” Vercillo remembered saying.

The student did.

Vercillo contacted the security guard by cell phone, asked for help with the student, so he could remove the student from the classroom.

Three Bangs

Vercillo stood by the door, ​“straddling in and out of the classroom,” waiting for the security guard. He noticed a teacher on hallway duty. Turning toward the hallway, he asked the teacher for help watching the student out in the hall.

Behind him, inside the classroom, he heard two blasts. They sounded like gunshots.

He ran back in the room — and learned that the noises came from two students throwing heavy social studies textbooks at him in the doorway.

He picked up the textbooks, identified the throwers (with the help of a student who has autism, who asked one of the students why he had done that).

The security guard approached the class. Vercillo went out in the hallway to speak with her — and heard a ​“third bang” in the classroom. Then another.

He returned to find books thrown around and a trash can upended, spilling garbage onto the floor. 

Vercillo reviewed in his mind the training teachers receive in ​“restorative justice,” seeking solutions to misbehavior that help students admit errors and make amends rather than suspending them.

He shut off the movie. He sat on his desk. He asked for silence. The room fell silent.

Two of the textbook-throwers pulled out their cellphones. They started texting.

Technically students aren’t allowed to have cellphones in school. That rule is not enforced, Vercillo said. So he made a rule in his classes: Cellphones stay in book bags. If they come out, he places them in a container marked ​“cellphone jail” (described in pictured sign) until the period ends.

“I can understand” how important cell phones are to students, he said. In some cases, it’s their main fun possession. Some kids don’t have internet service at home, so they use the free wifi at school.

Cell phones also magnify the problems in public schools, he argued: The Tik Tok videos ​“challenging” kids to attack teachers or trash bathrooms. The videos of fights taken at one school, flying virally across other schools, heightening citywide feuds.

“Every problem that exists in society,” he observed, ​“plays out in middle school, through these cell phones — bullying, sexual harassment.”

He asked for the two students’ phones. They handed them over. Vercillo placed them in the bin.

The silence resumed. So much for the Thanksgiving lesson. He felt he had no other option to retain order for the remaining minutes, within limits placed on discipline.

He felt badly for the rest of the class. ​“I’m punishing theses students that are desperate to learn. I have honor roll students in this class. They are frozen by bad behavior. They are robbed of their education.”

He turned around to shut off his computer and prepare for the long weekend. The two textbook throwers, joined by a third student, began pelting him with pencils, pens, crayons, markers.

He began dismissing students one by one. ​“I’m sorry you had to sit through this,” he remembered telling them. ​“Please put up your chair and have a nice weekend.”

Restorative Bid

Vercillo kept the three disruptive students behind, to talk about what had happened, about how to resolve the issue. [Note: If you’re getting a bit confused at this point of this story, the first student who caused trouble in the classroom was no longer there and was not one of these three students.]

One of the textbook throwers reached for the container with his cell phone. Vercillo told him not to do that. Then Vercillo grabbed the two phones, put them in his pocket.

“What are you doing taking our phones?” one student asked.

The bell rang. Vercillo said he needed to talk to them. ​“Guys,” he remembered saying. ​“What’s going on with you today?”

He had their four chairs arranged in a circle, a ​“restorative” circle. Based on the restorative justice training, he said, he sought to ​“get them to understand what they did was wrong” and ​“amend” the behavior — with apologies, help with cleaning the room.

One of the book throwers turned his chair away from the circle. 

“You had the courage to throw things at me when I was in the doorway and when my back was turned,” Vercillo recalled telling him. ​“Now you can’t talk to me face to face?”

The student now pushed his chair back, flipped over his desk, stood above the seated teacher … and began yelling.

This is some of what Vercillo remembered him yelling:

“You’re a fucking virgin, you fucking virgin! You ain’t never got no pussy in your life! Fuck you with your gray fucking beard …”

Vercillo remained seated. The yelling student clenched his fist. Vercillo thought back to a music teacher at Truman whom a student punched in the face in September, breaking the nose. Now, he thought it was his turn.

So he got up, backpedaled toward the door. The student followed him, threatening, ​“Give me my fucking phone. I will fuck you up old man!”

Vercillo got outside, shut the door. The student ​“lunged at the door,” trying to open it. Then he punched the door. He pounded on the plexiglass, pushed to open it, while Vercillo wedged his sneaker against the bottom.

Terrified, he called 911.

“I’ve just been threatened with physical violence by one of my students. He flipped over everything in my room,” Vercillo told the dispatcher. ​“The situation is escalating …” He asked to have a police officer sent over; after a few questions, the dispatcher agreed to do that.

Inside the room, the student was upending furniture. Vercillo called to colleagues in the hallway to notify security and administrators; he told the students inside the room ​“to relax” until police or administrators arrived. One of his fellow teachers in the hallway, Andrew Schub, said he contacted the assistant principal, Paul Camarco, and the school’s security guard as he watched Vercillo seek to keep the door shut while the students inside banged on it.

“Are you OK?” another teacher in the hallway asked Vercillo, whose hands were shaking. He wasn’t OK. He was scared.

Handcuffs & Shoelaces

Waiting for help to arrive, Vercillo peered into the classroom. He saw the student have an ​“aha” moment: He could exit through the door connecting Rooms 300 and 302.

Fearful for the safety of the math class, Vercillo ran in the hallway to alert the teacher. Meanwhile, the student returned to Room 300 — and out through the now-unblocked door into the hallway.

He approached Vercillo, who had returned. He circled Vercillo. Got closer. Touched Vercillo’s arm.

Vercillo said he put his arms up in surrender. He yelled: ​“Don’t touch me! Don’t hit me!”

Enraged, the student ​“rolled up his sleeve” and ​“came toward me aggressively.”

With ​“two open hands,” Vercillo said, he pushed the student toward lockers in the hallway. ​“He grabbed my arm. We’re entangled against the lockers.” Schub and Assistant Principal Camarco, who had arrived on the scene, tried to grab the student, according to Vercillo, as he and the student fell. 

Schub told the Independent he was able to gently hold back the student while the assistant principal held onto Vercillo. Schub said he held the student ​“by his upper arms” and guided him to Vercillo’s classroom to calm down. 

Camarco ushered Vercillo to another classroom, told him to write down his version. (Camarco did not return a call for comment for this story.) Vercillo contacted a union rep, who told him to hold off for a while. 

The police arrived, asked him what happened. He told his story. ​“I’m thinking the cops are there for me, because I called.” One of the lawyers he would later need to hire told him that was a mistake.

The teachers union steward in the building escorted Vercillo out to his car. En route to his home, he received a call from the union vice-president: The police want you to return to school. They watched the surveillance tape from the hallway. They want to arrest you.

Arrest?

Vercillo asked to be able to turn himself in at the police station. The police refused. So he stopped at home, asked his wife to drive him back to Truman, where ​“They had to cuff me and stuff me into a police car, drive me through the metal gate at the police station, strip me down,. They took my shoelaces. They took away my dignity. They put me in a cell.”

In the lock-up he ran into an officer whom he knew from their days working together at Riverside Academy, Vercillo as a teacher, the cop as a school resource officer. The cop visited Vercillo’s cell, calmed his nerves.

Vercillo was released three hours later, on $50,000 bond. The next day, Thanksgiving, instead of making ​“my famous chestnut stuffing,” he spent writing up his version of the incident. And awaiting his fate. A city press release, meanwhile, said the student sustained ​“minor injuries” and was released to parents.

The Student And Police Versions

The student’s side of the story — and the basis of the arrest — can be found in the police report of the incident, written by Officer Christopher Lawrence.

Lawrence was one of two officers dispatched to the scene. The beginning of his report states Vercillo’s side, an account that matches the version Vercillo later wrote up as well as the one he told the Independent about the events leading up to the altercation in the hall.

The report then focuses on the altercation captured on video. (Note: the video has been removed from the story at the request of the student’s attorney.)

When the student came into the hallway, the report quotes Vercillo as stating, the student ​“takes off his backpack, and starts yelling, ​‘Give me my mother fucking cell phone.’ Mr. Vercillo also states [student] begins to come at him. Mr. Vercillo stated that he told [student] not to come at him and not to touch him, and [student] came at him anyways. Mr. Vercillo admits to pushing [student] back, and then his story started to become a little vague. He stated that the two of them became embroiled. He stated it was not intentional but somehow he got [student] in a fish hook, and was trying to take him to the ground against the locker, and then stated that was it.”

The report states that Officer Lawrence then met in the principal’s office with the student and his parents. He took a statement from the student.

The student ​“stated that he had been on his phone when he wasn’t supposed to. Mr. Vercillo asked for his cell phone and he gave it to him. [Student] stated that he went toward the bin where his phone was asking for his phone back so he doesn’t forget it as class was almost over. [Student] stated that Mr. Vercillo told him he was going to give his phone to administration. [Student] stated he told Mr. Vercillo that if he does that he was going to fight him. Mr. Vercillo then let the rest of the class go and asked him and two other kids to stay behind and talk with him,” the report states.

“[Student] asked Mr. Vercillo for his phone again stating if you give it to me I’ll sit down. Mr. Vercillo then got up and left the class locking him and the other two students in the room. [Student] stated while they were in the classroom Mr. Vercillo was calling him a pussy and ​‘B word,’ and that’s when the argument started and the two of them were getting mad.

“[Student] stated that he then cut through the math door after he heard Mr. Vercillo was going to call the police. [Student] stated once he was able to get in the hallway with Mr. Vercillo he approached him again asking for his phone. [Student] stated, ​‘Give me my phone back and I’ll leave.’ [Student] then stated he then felt Mr. Vercillo’s hand right in his throat.”

Officer Lawrence then watched the video from the hallway, and describes it in the report.

“You can see [Student] say something to Mr. Vercillo while walking toward him. There was another teacher standing by [Student] who had put his arm out to try and keep [Student] where he was. This was when Mr. Vercillo went at [Student] and his left hand grabbed [Student] by the throat and pushed him back halfway across the hall until [Student]’s back went up against the lockers,” until other teachers and the security guard separated them.

“Due to the angle and the other people I do not believe that Mr. Vercillo swung at [Student] at all, but you do see [Student] fall to the ground on his side and Mr. Vercillo went down with him. It took several people to get Mr. Vercillo off of [Student]. Mr. Vercillo was then escorted by staff out of the hallway.”

Lawrence’s report states that the student showed him ​“his neck and there was a red mark to the left side of his neck. There were also two long scratches to the left rear side of his neck which looked like they were from fingernails. [Student] also had some redness below his left eye.”

Vercillo denied that he called the student a pussy or the ​“B word.”

What Happened Next

Since then, the school system placed Vercillo on leave. He had to return to court four times before a judge granted him accelerated rehabilitation (AR), preventing him from teaching for a year until he could clear his record. (The prosecutor had sought two years.) Vercillo wanted to fight the charges, but his lawyer informed him it would cost $12,000 to $20,000.

The student’s family hired a lawyer, David Leff, who did not object to the accelerated rehabilitation deal. Leff said the parents did not object to the AR deal and putting the incident behind everybody.

Leff said they thought the arrest was appropriate. The student ​“is a young 14, slight,” and was shaken by the incident.

Meanwhile, the state Department of Children and Families was called in. An investigator asked to interview Vercillo. He asked to review the full video of the incident first; the authorities were refusing to release anything beyond the confrontation in the hallway, offering the explanation that they wanted to protect the privacy of the minor. On Jan. 10, DCF investigator Velee’ Lindsay issued her findings: She claimed to have ​“substantiated” allegations against Vercillo of ​“physical neglect” and ​“physical abuse.”

She marked a box reading: ​“DCF finds that you pose a risk to the health, safety or well-being of children and is recommending that you be placed on the Child Abuse and Neglect Central Registry.”

Based on that recommendation, the state Board of Education is moving to revoke Vercillo’s certificates to teach or serve as an administrator. Anywhere in Connecticut.

What Happens Now?

So now Vercillo is appealing the DCF finding. He’s trying to get the full video showing what happened in the classroom; so far a Freedom of Information Act request he filed with the city has not produced results.

Meanwhile, his incident was just one more adding to the apprehension teachers are feeling this school year, his colleague Schub said.

“It’s total bullshit,” Schub said of Vercillo’s arrest. ​“If any grownup touches a kid, they get arrested, no questions asked.

“The kids are out of control. Every teacher I’ve talked to has said this has been the worst year behavior-wise. Ever since the school shutdown, kids forgot how to behave. They forgot about boundaries. It sucks to know the administration doesn’t have our backs if anything happens.”

Schub noted that the school district reassigned the security guard to another school after Vercillo’s arrest; the district has wrestled with a staff shortage. In recent weeks, after a petition from Truman teachers, a new security guard has been hired on site.

“There was a recent reshuffling of security officers to try to make sure the schools with the greatest number of calls are covered effectively,” schools spokesperson Justin Harmon told the Independent.

Harmon was asked how the district advises teachers to handle violence and threats of violence from students.

“If a staff member is threatened with physical harm, it is reported to the principal, who then administers disciplinary measures,” he responded.

“If a student hits a staff member, which usually is during a fight etc., it is reported to the principal, and depending on the nature of the incident and age of the student, it could become a police matter. Teachers, if hurt, report to occupational health and depending on the nature of injury, receive workman compensation during their absence. Students are put on 10 day suspension pending an expulsion hearing. A hearing officer decides if the case merits expulsion.”

Harmon said the school district could not comment on Vercillo’s case because it is a personnel matter involving a minor.

New Haven teachers’ union President Leslie Blatteau said she can’t comment on the three open cases, either. But she can comment on the broader problem — which she said needs immediate attention.

She noted that 55 percent of schoolchildren nationwide have experienced emotional abuse at home during the pandemic, according to a new federal Centers for Disease Control study. Meanwhile, New Haven schools are struggling to fill substitute teacher and security guard slots, meaning it’s not always as simple as calling for help when a teacher gets attacked. So there won’t necessarily be someone around to help in time.

“We’re told to avoid physical contact as much as possible,” but ​“we need more clarity on teacher’s rights, responsibilities, and protections if they are attacked,” Blatteau said. ​“We need to open our eyes to what people are experiencing, in the name of both prevention and accountability.”

“We need more support. We need more human beings in our buildings. We need to open our eyes to what people are experiencing,” said Blatteau, whose local last week held a workshop led by a union lawyer on how to handle cases involving violence or potential violence.

The school district has tried to address the roots of misbehavior through, among other efforts, instituting a ​“code of conduct” setting expectations for how students should behave in school, and helping them meet those expectations, in part through restorative justice practices.

As for cases that turn into criminal justice cases, Vercillo has received the same legal advice given to the other two teachers arrested and publicly trashed in recent months: Clam up, rather than make it worse.

He’s not clamming up. He’s not giving up. He wants to return to teaching, he said.

As he has wrestled with the daily torment of the aftermath of the pre-Thanksgiving Day blow-up at Truman, he has had lots of time to think. About what happened. About why it happened. About how no one, not teachers, not students, is benefiting from criminalizing teachers who get physically attacked in school.

He offered some of those thoughts about remedies:

• Separate middle schools from elementary schools. Adolescents and little kids are too dangerous a mix in the same building.

• ​“Revisit” changes brought by the No Child Left Behind Act that mainstreamed the most ​“out of control” kids into classrooms without providing teachers the means to deal with disruptions that prevent everyone else from learning.

• Craft a ​“meaningful and workable” cellphone policy.

• Enforce disciplinary rules.

• Don’t look to teachers to carry out needed ​“social-emotional” learning. They weren’t trained for that, he said. Bring in people who are.

Vercillo said there’s one person he’s not mad at: The student who attacked him.

Until Nov. 24., Vercillo said, he hadn’t had trouble with this student. ​“He’s a great athlete. He’s a good kid.”

The student had begun the year in Vercillo’s homeroom class. Then in November, after the student had caused problems in other classrooms, he was assigned to Vercillo’s fifth-period class, after recess. This was his third day in Room 300 fifth period.

And he lost it.

Kids lose it sometimes. They’re losing it a lot these days in the schools. So are adults, in and out of the schools.

The adults, Vercillo argued, need to find a better way to deal with it.