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Special ed teacher in Rochester resigns after controversy over his work history

A special education teacher reportedly convicted for hitting a child in Las Vegas has resigned from the Rochester City School District.

It happened after theDemocrat and Chronicle reported that James Doran was convicted of battery for striking children at a previous teaching job in Nevada. He worked at Dr. Charles T. Lunsford School #19 school in Rochester.

According to a Las Vegas newspaper,The Las Vegas Review-Journal, James Doran was convicted of a count of misdemeanor battery on a student, and some students involved in the incident are described as being nonverbal.  

Harry Kennedy, the Rochester disrict’s director of human resources is, says new hires at the district go through a nationwide fingerprint database. He says he does not know what that database checks.

“This a process that not only the Rochester City School District follows but most of the districts in New York state follow as well,” said Kennedy. “We vet any new applicant through that system; it’s a national system for fingerprint clearance.”

Doran was hired by the Rochester district in September 2018 after being certified to teach by New York state.

TheLas Vegas Review-Journal says the school district in that city settled a lawsuit in the case for $1.2 million this past January.

The Rochester district issued a statement saying that, “The district is not at liberty to comment further as this is a personnel matter. The district takes the employment of all its teachers very seriously. As always, the safety and well-being of our students is our top priority."

James Brown is a reporter with WXXI News. James previously spent a decade in marketing communications, while freelance writing for CITY Newspaper. While at CITY, his reporting focused primarily on arts and entertainment.