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Home > Blogs > Get on the Bus > Archives > 2008 > January > 09
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
Goff to lose license, avoid jail
Roseda Goff
A stern Judge Tony Capizzi bluntly lectured former City Day Community School Superintendent Roseda Goff to take responsibility for her actions that endangered children at the school and said he would strongly consider sending her to jail if she failed to follow his sentencing orders.
Capizzi gave Goff six months probation, the maximum $500 fine and a 60-day suspended jail sentence for her conviction in December of attempted obstruction of official business for discouraging teachers from reporting child abuse. He also ordered her to surrender her teaching license or he would ask the Ohio Department of Education to revoke it and he required her to complete 120 hours of community service at Childrens’ Medical Center working with child abuse victims.
“In many ways you deserve to go to jail today,” Capizzi told Goff. “There is a very strong agrument to order you to spend time in the Montgomery County Jail. If I was using you as an example to other teachers and people in authority, that would be a strong reason to put you in jail.”
Capizzi said he was irked that Goff told a probation officer that she still believed she was not guilty and he said only her more than 30 years of service to the community as a teacher and a spotless criminal record saved Goff from going to jail.
“You have to be held accountable for what you did,” Capizzi said. “You sat through a trial and heard witnesses testify and didn’t listen to a word they said. You’ve gone home and spent the last month or so, again, in complete denial of what occured.”
At the trial, former City Day teachers testified that a girl at the school told them last April her mother had beaten her with a belt and an extension cord. Educators in Ohio are required by law to report to law enforcement any suspicion of child abuse, but the teachers said Goff told them that was her decision. They said Goff called the girl a liar and sent her home without taking action. Capizzi said the girl was beaten again that night.
“Teachers, principals and individuals with control over children’s lives can’t expect to do what you did and get away with it,” Capizzi said. “Somewhere along the way you lost your acceptance of responsiblity for your position. I’m not sure if was pressure of the job or because you wanted to absoultely control every person under your school system. But something happened.”
This was the end of one chapter of a nearly year-long saga involving Goff and City Day that began last February when the Dayton Daily News reported students at the school had practiced on actual test questions taken from the 2006 Ohio Achievement Test prior to taking the test that year. That launched investigations by the state and the school’s sponsor into possible cheating. The state investigation still is ongoing.
In May, with test proctors on site during the administration of the 2007 state exams, a teacher was caught taking notes on the test. That prompted the sponsor, Cincinnati-based Education Resource Consultants of Ohio, to demand that the school’s governing board fire Goff. When the board refused, ERCO fired the board.
A newly installed governing board fired Goff in July and later that month the criminal charge related to a child abuse case was filed in Capizzi’s court. The school’s test scores, released in August, showed a dramatic drop in performance from the prior year.
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