ANTIOCH (KRON) — An Antioch special needs school that has been under investigation by the state and KRON for allegations of abuse is shutting down some of their campuses.
On Friday, KRON uncovered a newly-released public record that details what’s next for the embattled Tobinworld private school.
A video of a 9-year-old special needs student appears to show him being slapped and roughed up by a teacher’s aide. This incident happened back in January.
Two aides were fired as a result. The shocking tape also prompted criminal charges against those aides and launched an investigation by the California Department of Education.
It also got KRON to dig deeper.
KRON’s Maureen Kelly found several former aides willing to come forward, who had other tales to tell about staff members allegedly abusing their power over the special needs students under their care.
KRON just learned that two other Tobinworld aides KRON talked to were subpoenaed by the state Department of Justice after coming forward to KRON with their stories.
Cellphone video captured the boy allegedly being abused at Tobinworld 2. That school site is not shutting down.
But KRON got its hands on a recently released public record that shows how Tobinworld is pulling out of four school sites, three of which just opened up this most recent school year.
A letter from Judy Weber, the executive director of Tobinworld, was released, dated two months after the explosive cellphone video came to light and after KRON news had begun looking into their history.
It is addressed to Antioch Unified School District, letting them know the timeline of when they are shuttering those campuses.
Tobinworld 3, located at Fremont Elementary School, already shut down on June 2.
DVT Academy, located at Diablo Vista and A&T Preschool at Grant Elementary, are closing on Wednesday.
KT Academy on the Kimball Elementary Campus closes on Thursday.
Tobinworld said they can’t respond because of pending litigation prompted by the video. And the Antioch Unified offices were not open Friday, so we don’t know the exact reason why the campuses are shutting down.
A source familiar with special education in the district said two other private schools that work with special needs kids, Spectrum and Sierra, are in the process of taking over the programs.
One of the aides KRON spoke with said that is good news for Antioch parents.
A worker at Tobinworld 2 said she hasn’t heard of any plans to shut this campus down.
In fact, summer school starts on Monday.