RANGELEY – A substitute teacher was charged with misdemeanor assault Tuesday after she slapped a student across the face, according to police.
The teacher said she considered the girl to be too loud in the school library.
The school has banned Heidi Sorensen from substituting or volunteering in the school, both police and Sorensen said Wednesday.
Sorensen of Rangeley was substituting as an art teacher on Dec. 2 and took her students down to the library.
The 14-year-old girl asked in a loud voice what the assignment was, Rangeley Police Chief Phil Weymouth said, and Sorensen slapped the girl in the face.
Weymouth said Sorensen said she meant it only to let the girl know not to talk so loud in the library.
Police received a call from the eighth-grader’s parent on Dec. 3 reporting the assault and officer Brian Hughes investigated, Weymouth said.
Witnesses confirmed the slap, he said, and Sorensen admitted that she snapped and slapped the girl.
Sorensen, who has substituted and volunteered at the Rangeley school for about five years, said the class was very disruptive that day and she had most of them quieted down when the girl spoke in a very loud voice.
“I open-handed slapped her, not hard,” Sorensen said. “I just wanted to wake her up to be quiet in the library.”
“I’m feeling appalled. I shouldn’t have done it. She shouldn’t have done it,” Sorensen said. “I have written the family and said I was sorry. I regret that it happened. I overreacted to her hollering.”
Sorensen said the whole thing has been blown out of proportion.
“I agreed I should not substitute,” she said.
She is not allowed to be in the school except to pick up her child or attend a basketball game, she said.
“Another thing that appalls me is I cannot volunteer any more at the school,” she said as she started to cry. “I’m a huge community-service person.”
She has been helping in her child’s elementary school class and now she cannot do it, she said.
“I’m heartbroken,” she said.
Sorensen said police told her they could recommend the case be filed and if nothing happens in six months, it could be dismissed.
She has a court date of Jan. 25 in 12th District Court in Farmington, Weymouth said.
Rangeley school Superintendent Phil Richardson and kindergarten through eighth-grade Principal Rich Curley declined comment.
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