RETREAT ESTATE--Prins Willem Alexander School principal Marva Brooks-Brill calls allegations that she brawled with a parent Thursday false.
"I'm very hurt by these reports," Brooks-Brill told The Daily Herald last night.
This newspaper had also heard allegations that she had struck a pupil and fought with the pupil's parents in school Thursday.
The police did not have a report on the incident at the school. Reports said she had lashed the girl with a stick, then punched her in the stomach, and in response the pupil's mother had hit her with the same stick.
Brooks-Brill said those statements were untrue. Her version of what transpired is that the girl was misbehaving and she hit her with a stick three times on her rear. "That's it," she explained.
She said there had been no fight with the parent. "That's totally false," Brooks-Brill said. "I don't know where they got that."
It is true that the parent came to the school, but the woman merely screamed and complained. "She only listened to the version from the children and didn't hear what we had to say," Brooks-Brill said.
Another teacher confirmed that the two had only exchanged words. "She did not fight with the parent," the teacher said.
Police spokesman Inspector Ricardo Henson said last night that he had not heard of any incident at the school that day.
Brooks-Brill said the child was normally unruly and had been behaving worse than usual that day. She said she preferred to talk children through bad behaviour rather than hitting them. "Licks," a colloquialism for disciplinary lashes, are a last resort. "I discipline the students the way I discipline my children – with motherly love," Brooks-Brill said.
