By Michael Bielawski
The principal of Burlington High School Debra Beaupre resigned from her position, effective Nov. 28, after only about a half year on the job.
Beaupre pulled a smoke alarm in an effort to stop a fight in school in mid-October. BHS has no onsite school resource officers (police), following a decision by the school board earlier this year to remove them from the premises. Pulling a fire alarm for any reason other than a response to a fire is a crime. However, Burlington police did not investigate and are not pursuing legal action, and even the Burlington fire chief said he didn’t have a problem with Beaupre’s actions.
At a November school board meeting following the Beaupre incident, the board discussed placing security guards at school exits.
“I decided to evacuate the building to ensure safety and provide emotional space to students and staff amid a heightened, atypical situation,” she wrote in a letter to her community.
She continued, “I realize that this alternative was stressful in the moment, as fire drills are surprising and signal an emergency. At the time of the evacuation, students exited the building as they had been taught and the situation was diffused. I regret if any student or staff member is experiencing any lingering unsettledness.”
In a letter to the community Superintendent Tom Flanagan noted that there is currently a pattern of principals coming and going and they need to settle on someone. Beaupre was the school’s fourth principal in just three years.
Flanagan wrote that they are working to “fill these positions quickly to ensure that we have a full leadership team in place at BHS.”
Critics point to a lack of School Resource Officer
Online there have been numerous comments on the matter, both in support and criticizing the now-former principal. Merri Paquin of Williamstown noted that the school recently voted away their school resource officer, someone who would have been responsible for defusing a fight.
She wrote, “It also forced the fire department to respond with trucks at speed causing public harm. It took an ambulance out of service and it caused chaos in the school as the whole building was evacuated. All because she couldn’t handle a fight because they dismissed the Resource Officer.”
Patty Jordan Galinus also touched on this matter. She wrote, “Should have called upon your school security rather than be so stupid us pull the fire alarm.”
Phil Pugliese of Rutland noted that pulling fire alarms is becoming a bit of a trend in the news.
“Pulled a fire alarm to stop a fight, a member of Congress pulled a fire alarm to stop a budget vote last week. Apparently it is not a crime anymore,” he wrote.
Christopher Hurley wrote, “If a student did this, they would be kicked out of school and quite possibly be charged. She’s pretty stupid. Bye!”
Supporters say she did the best she could
Not everyone is blaming the former principal for what she did. Kay Bailey on Facebook said, “She is a principal, not a behavioral interventionist. There is not enough support in our school systems for children with behavioral issues. There is no winning in a situation like this … there’s always going to be someone that isn’t happy with the choice that was made.”
Paul Clark of St. Albans, a former high school principal, also commented in support. He wrote, “If she defused the problem, mission accomplished. Sometimes as an administrator you need to make decisions in the moment, you simply don’t have time to run through a litany of politically correct possibilities.”
Rebecca Bessette wrote, “I would have done exactly the same thing. She had a situation and she acted, that’s what she’s supposed to do. Best judgment in the moment and safest way to clear the space! Who knows, she may have avoided something much worse. Hats off to her!”
The undecideds
Some folks online are just unsure whether the principal did the right thing or not. Jennifer Rand Thomas in Barre wrote, “Many are jumping to opinions without all the facts. Jumping to conclusions. Placed on paid leave of course pending further investigation. There’s no saying she did wrong or right. We can’t form an educated opinion without all the info. Many jumping to conclusions with Lil facts or a political view at that!”
Thomas was responding to Matt Anderson of Rutland who simply wrote, “I don’t have enough info to have an intelligent opinion on this situation.”
Alarm pulled at the U.S. Capital
Rep. Jamaal Bowman, D-NY, was under investigation after video footage of him pulling a fire alarm in a Capitol office building in September prompted Republicans to accuse him of violating laws that were also used to prosecute January 6 defendants.
“The incident, however, sparked serious backlash from prominent Republicans who demanded that he be criminally charged for his actions and compared his actions to the actions of some of those who were arrested for their participation during the January 6 riot,” the DailyWire.com report stated.
Bowman was eventually charged with a misdemeanor for the incident and he was required to offer a formal apology to Capital Police.
False fire alarms are costly. One report states, “Fire departments in the United States reported 896,500 false fire alarms in 1980. Since that time, the number has currently grown by more than 230 percent to an astonishing 2.12 mill [National Fire Protection Association [NFPA] of Quincy, Massachusetts].”
The author is a reporter for the Vermont Daily Chronicle
Discover more from Vermont Daily Chronicle
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Categories: Burlington, Education
Vermont is impossible to work in, that’s the problem.
Children are out of control
The rules are INSANE
Cancel culture keeps and sane discussion or actions from occurring
The Police are handcuffed
The teachers are handcuffed
If you say anything outside the Marxist dogma and are a state employee you will be cancelled.
We need a different course. Making everything cost too much, rampant drug use and a school system in utter chaos and disrepair is not a recipe for happy populace. (It is the dish served by “you will own nothing and be happy crowd.)
Here’s you sign…….Vermont has been cancelled.
Neil, we still live in a democracy. The core problem in Vermont is, those of superior judgement are not recruited to run for public office. Time for the good men and women of Vermont to exercise their civic duty to lead us out of this woke agenda.
No we do not! We live in what used to be a Federal Republic. We now live in an authoritarian nightmare. In the not too distant future we will be unrecognizable as a country. A country has boarders, we have no borders
We are definitely run like a democracy, THAT”S the problem. This is how cancel culture can rule, because there is no respect for the law and people can steal, kill, cancel the minority……..because they got 51% of the vote.
That is why our founding fathers abhorred a democracy, it’s not in ANY founding documents.
You can just Vote to fire a school principle,,,,,because…..you don’t like what they said. There is no freedom of speech. There is no rule of law.
Criminals run free and Costco takes over a decade to get gas pumps, because people vote against it.
You have no property rights. The state owns your children and can have them go through a sex change at 12, because they voted for it and you’ll be arrested if you try and stop them. How’s that for democracy?????
They vote to allow corporations and NGO’s to fund Super Pacs……so they can fund all the elections, all the advertising, so they can censor all the press and you get to donate $2300 max and they censor your comments , because they voted for it
How you liken’ democracy?????/
Tis why many of us fight for our republic.
Amazingly, even in Burlington Vermont, the impregnable shield of skin melanin cannot indemnify a public official from being held responsible for all acts of stupidity.
Apparently there are some limits to left wing lunacy. Maybe the next principal will be chosen on merit and personal integrity instead of the shallow, woke criteria that was used to pick the last few.
This is what happens when you have progressives in charge they hire because of ones
skin pigmentation, and not their abilities, this person was in charge of hundreds of Vermont’s kids and this was what she decided to do ………………….how pathetic !!
I guess Vermont has ” No ” qualified people to educate our kids or the ones we have
don’t fit the agenda criteria, it’s your tax dollars, are you getting your money’s worth, guess not………………….. wake up people, they don’t care.
The pressure and the fire lapping their heels is getting hard to withstand – the tide is indeed turning…the storm is here. Spoiler alert: God wins!
I am so sick of blacks coming to Vermont and as the old saying goes, “showing their a**” As a life long black Vermonter I am ashamed of them. The only thing worse is old rich white people who do the same thing like it is any better. When will it stop?
Shannon McLamb, Countless people are being brought into Vermont in order to sway local elections.
This awful situation seems to me the result, straightforwardly, of a slipshod principal search process.
Looking at the video of the person’s interview(s), you gotta ask: was there enough rigor in the scrutiny of the person’s qualifications, views, exploring the person’s thinking-in depth, etc.? The search committee chairs come across as professional, yet more focused on “upbeat p.r.” about the “search process”, and not nearly enough focused on developing a proper assessment of the candidate’s capabilities, experience, etc.
Looking at the person’s slender resume and media reports of her causing a school bus incident in one of her former jobs, you gotta ask…was she properly vetted by the search committee and superintendent? That incident might be indicative of a relatively thin experience, even of a concern for the person’s decision-making and judgment.
It is all-too-expedient to just sack the principal and chalk this up to…whatever. The Burlington School District administration needs to be held accountable for putting an
under-skilled person in the job, thereby harming the school and also seriously damaging the legitimate and important need to effectively improve diversity in hiring.
I’d like to see people hired due to their qualifications and experience and not their race or gender identity. Nowadays I tend to assume that blacks or alternative gender people in high level jobs got them due to their race or gender identity. I will have to observe them for some time and see serious indications of high qualifications before I can conclude they were actually hired for being the best candidates for that job. I think this is truly unfortunate but this is what we have become.
These “qualifications” are the very reason Burlington has had such a turnover of principals and superintendents…
When I was being groomed by Marina Brown, one aspect of the tactics which was drummed into me, unsuccessfully, was that police should be separated from schools. No matter what serious problem may be occurring. The real purpose is to disrupt society in order to bring about revolution.
There is nothing “atypical “ about a fight at this school. The place is a cesspool. I think they’ve had seven principals in 7 years. No administrator with a brain wants that job and herein lies part of the problem. The other part are the BLM progressives running the show there. Zero concern about achievement and everything going towards equity, lgbt, blm, muslims, and every other “marginalized” group above traditional white students . The crazy part is the lefty parents seemingly support this garbage. RIP Seahorses
Letting Ms Beaupre resign is too good for her. It allows her to make up dubious tales about the imagined mistreatment, abuse, injustices and slights she received as a minority and that she resigned because those conditions had become unbearable.
Bull!
She should have been fired because she acted criminally, broke the law, and the reasons appended to her school employment record.
Two Chittenden County school districts gave clean resumes to teachers who were forced out for sexual improprieties a while back. These public-sector entities have their own “code of ethics”.
The local Catholic Diocese has never enjoyed those same benefits, being sued into near bankruptcy for relocating sexual offenders. Like the rest of our political landscape, there is a well-established double-standard.
Shooting the kids also would have diffused the situation… but mission accomplished???
She should be arrested and charged with a crime, and the police officer should be brought back.
If a student had pulled the alarm, what would have happened? Just curious, asking for a nephew.
See this is yet again how democracy fails, they vote it’s ok for this person, never mind the law…..we voted, it’s ok. But they might not do the same for Joey.
BHS Principal Deb Beaupre soiled her own cause: She lied and told authorities that a student pulled the fire alarm. The problem was a school video camera showed Beaupre walking to the fire alarm box and pulling it. Whoops!
Seems like a possible domestic terrorist to me.
As a teacher of over 45 years of service, I can testify that the best principals we had were those who were schooled in Vermont, taught or administered in Vermont schools, and had a total Vermont experience. The worst and most ineffective ones were those who were selected in a ‘nation wide search’ for so called educators with a portfolio of Masters and Ph.D degrees which amounted to nothing but incompetence. Of course they were out of state and had no experience in the classrooms but sure had degrees in their back pockets. Couple that with the current hiring of minorities based on race and crazed genders and we have absolute chaos resulting in schools. Pure and simple…I have witnessed it all. Paper degrees produce Paper Tigers and Paper Pussycats, for want of a better word.
Wouldn’t a simple censure of #blackgirlmagic be sufficient as it was for Jamaal?
KIDDING ….
False fire alarms are costly.
False alarms can cost lives.
Fire departments in the United States reported 896,500 false fire alarms in 1980. Since that time, the number has currently grown by more than 230 percent to an astonishing 2.12 million!
[National Fire Protection Association [NFPA] of Quincy, Massachusetts].”
My dad was a fireman who was involved in an accident when responding to a false alarm. He was thrown from the fire truck and his scull cracked open on the concrete, it was miracle he lived. The accident left my dad disabled and never able to work again. That false alarm changed our family forever.