A teacher drunk on a field trip Thursday morning with a large number of fourth graders from Washington Elementary School in Janesville, Wisconsin reportedly started drinking at 6 am and passed out around noon with a 0.27 blood alcohol reading in her system — more than three times the legal limit for driving.
According to local media sources, 50-year-old Maria Caya was one of eight school district employees who took the children to a local bowling alley to celebrate the last day of school .
Sounds like a situation that would drive a lot of people to drink.
Her husband picked her up from the bowling alley and took her to a hospital for treatment — and a hospital social worker then filed a police report.
So much for the privacy of your medical records. The police opened an investigation and then forwarded their report both to Child Protective Services and the Janesville School District.
On Monday, the Chief Deputy John Olsen held a press conference to explain why the police didn’t arrest Caya:
“There’s nothing to indicate that she caused any type of disturbance or anything like that that would raise it to disorderly conduct or anything like that…We have nothing to indicate that the children were ever at risk or ever in danger.”
The group had a bus driver, so there was never a chance that Maria Caya would take the wheel. No one at the event realized she was drunk . They thought she had passed out because of a medical problem.
However, as a result of the police report that seemed to prove she was drinking on the job, she may face anything from suspension to termination after the school district completes its own investigation.
Yet the legal issue isn’t as cut and dried as you might think. Being a quiet drunk at a bowling alley is not exactly the crime of century.
What do you think should happen to a teacher drunk on a field trip?
[bowling alley photo by Grasycho via Shutterstock ]
