The mother of 5-year-old Eric Lopez, who signed a paper attesting to the act of voluntarily ‘depantsing’ in his school playground, is now fighting authorities to remove the stain from her son’s permanent school record.
Accused of the ‘lewd act’, Eric Lopez did not ask that his
parents be present at the moment he was asked to sign the
incriminating document inside the assistant principal’s office.
The boy’s mother said her son had no idea he could make such a
request.
"He did not know that he could ask for me," the boy’s
mother, Erica Martinez, told azfamily.com. "He's five."
The boy also received a detention from school in addition to the
permanent sexual misconduct charge on his file.
Martinez, who says school officials failed to take her son's age
into account when they labeled his ‘depantsing’, has been locked
in a legal battle for two months to have the charge scratched
from her son's record, arguing that Eric's actions were simply
the innocent behavior of a child.
Thus far, however, the Dysart Unified School District in
Surprise, Arizona, has denied her appeal.
Assistant Superintendent Jim Dean said the actions taken by the
school district are “age appropriate.”
"Even though the discipline labels are consistently used and
the discipline form is consistent from grades K-12 to ensure all
legal mandates are met, the discussion the administrator has
about a situation and consequences are age appropriate,"
Dean said in a written statement. "The discussion with a
kindergarten student is focused on the specific action, not on
the label that is used for classifying the infraction."
Under Arizona State law, every school district is advised to
consider the age of a student before painting any actions on the
part of a child with the black brush of sexual misconduct.
Dean says Martinez has the right to include her objections to the
report in her son’s permanent file. The other option for Erica
Martinez is to move her son into a completely new school
district, where his file will then become a clean slate.