By Fallan Patterson
Staff Writer

The Osceola County School Board Tuesday unanimously agreed to terminate a special needs teacher who had doused crayons in hot sauce in an attempt to get an autistic boy to stop eating them.

Lillian Gomez was fighting for her job at the special board meeting Tuesday after being terminated from her position in February.

The Osceola County School District spent $50,000 on an administrative law judge, who found Gomez did not intend malicious harm and recommended a one-year suspension and probation for the act.

The School Board disagreed with the judge’s recommendation and upheld Gomez’s termination after a 28-minute hearing.

Board Member Jay Wheeler was concerned about Gomez being back in the classroom with children.

“I think that this is unsafe and not safe for the child and I think it borders on child abuse, personally,” Wheeler said.

Board Member Tom Long said Gomez had no way of knowing whether the boy was allergic to the hot sauce or would suffer some other reaction to the spicy condiment.

“This district nowhere has ever tried to do an aversion technique that could possibly harm a student,” Long said.

Gomez, a 12-year employee of the district, was a special needs teacher at Sunrise Elementary School near Kissimmee when she covered jumbo-sized crayons with hot sauce and allowed the boy to put them in his mouth.

The district was notified of the incident in October 2011, spokeswoman Dana Schafer said.

The boy, whose name was not released, was known to have a “eating disorder” that caused him to eat non-food items including crayons, dirt, laundry detergent and rocks, a condition the district was aware of for more than a year before the incident occurred.

Gomez’s supporters wondered how the story was released to the media, suggesting media reports were the reason Gomez was terminated, and defended the teacher’s actions.

Osceola County Education Association Director Michelle Vanderley said Gomez was “persecuted” by the media and had lost her house and filed for bankruptcy since being terminated in February.

“Ms. Gomez should be guilty of nothing more than doing something that wasn’t district policy,” she said. “Her intent was to make sure a child wasn’t harmed (by eating crayons).”

Her attorney, Thomas Egan, explained Gomez’s action, stating she had the support of the boy’s father to use the method of hot sauce to keep the child from eating potentially toxic crayons.

“She did not put hot sauce in this boy’s mouth or try to discipline him or punish him for anything,” Egan said, calling Gomez’s termination “extreme and arbitrary.”

He also questioned the district’s lack of policy to determine whether a teacher’s actions qualifies for a three-day suspension or termination.

According to Schafer, the School District reviews each incident involving an employee on a case-by-case basis, including consideration of the employee’s personal file, before determining discipline.

“We take every case individually and look into the employee’s background,” she said. “We don’t have a master list.”