By admin 
A Richland 1 teacher allegedly left a young student on a field trip, according to a lawsuit filed Wednesday. The school district allegedly overcharged for public records related to the incident.
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According to the lawsuit, William Green’s son, a six-year-old student with special needs, was participating in a school-sponsored field trip to Cottle Farms. At the end of the trip, the school bus left the student behind at the farm.
It was not until the staff at Cottle Farms located the child and called the district that the school realized they had left him behind, the lawsuit said.
This failure “an unreasonable and foreseeable risk of physical harm, emotional distress, fear, trauma and psychological injury to the student,” the lawsuit said.
The district failed to perform a proper head count, roster check, roll call, bus check, or other reasonable student-accounting procedures before the school bus departed from Cottle Farms, according to the lawsuit.
Yshay Fuller was a supervising teacher on the trip. According to the lawsuit, Richland 1 knew that she was a “risk” due to other “unrelated, but substantially similar issues that she faced personally.”
The district neglected its duty of reasonable care for the child during a school-sponsored field trip when they failed to account for him before leaving Cottle Farms, the lawsuit said.
It caused both the student and his family emotional distress.
The State has reached out to the district for comment.
S.C. FOIA law claims
The family submitted a written public records request seeking “information, documents, emails, and video footage” regarding the incident at Cottle Farms, records that the lawsuit says are not exempt from disclosure.
Under the S.C. Freedom of Information Act, fees for search, retrieval or redaction of public records cannot exceed the prorated hourly salary of the lowest paid employee who can perform the request. Among other rules, records must be furnished at the lowest possible cost to the requester.
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According to the lawsuit, the district told attorneys that they could inspect video footage in public, but that “no documents or emails would be released by General Counsel for the District.”
The student’s parents signed a waiver allowing the records to be released.
The district then sent them a bill for nearly $3,000, according to the lawsuit.
- $945.30 for 30 hours of work by the district’s IT administrator
- $826.88 for 16 hours of work by the district’s HR coordinator
- $639.04 for eight hours of work by the district’s general counsel
The lawsuit claimed the charges went “far and above” the state’s stature for charging reasonable fees, and the time the district claimed it would take to complete the request are “beyond reason” and “so out of line” to “simply obtain information about how Plaintiff’s child went missing.”
The district’s conduct was a denial and obstruction to the family’s right to access public records, according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit is asking an injunction requiring the district to comply with FOIA law, recalculate the request’s costs and produce the records.
Teacher’s recent arrest
The plaintiff is asking for monetary damages to be determined and awarded at a jury trial, including medical and counseling expenses.
Fuller was arrested at Caughman Road Elementary on unrelated charges in earlier this year, which did not concern her job at the school, the Richland County Sheriff’s Department said.
Deputies responded to a call for service on May 10 regarding a runaway juvenile being held at Fuller’s residence, and she was “not forthcoming” about information she had about the juvenile and their whereabouts, officials said.
She was charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor, obstructing justice and neglect by a legal guardian on May 19, following an investigation. She was booked into the Alvin S. Glenn Detention Center and given bond.
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As of Thursday afternoon, Fuller’s case was set for a preliminary hearing.