A former Andrews Elementary School teacher recently pleaded guilty to assaulting disabled students when her case went to trial in Alamance County district court.
Dorothy Jessica Edwards, 28, white, female, of 185 Granite Mill Drive in Graham, had been charged with four counts of misdemeanor assault on an individual with disabilities in November 2024.
The assaults involved two students, including pinching, kicking, and, in one case, biting a disabled student on the arm, according to arrest warrants filed in 2024 by the Burlington police department.
She pleaded guilty to the charges in Alamance County district court on May 5. Two charges appeared to have been dismissed, based on her court file.
Alamance County chief district court Kathryn (“Katie”) Overby issued an intermediate split sentence requiring Edwards to serve 15 days in the Alamance County jail and 24 months of probation. Edwards had no prior criminal convictions, according to Overby’s sentencing order.
Edwards is not currently licensed to teach in North Carolina. The terms of her sentence require her to complete two years’ probation before she’ll be eligible to reapply for a state teaching license.
Edwards was also ordered to: pay $273 in court costs and a fine of $250; have no contact with anyone under the age of 18, unless related by blood or marriage, or if she supervises them at her place of employment; continue counseling and grief counseling; and have no contact with the victims or their family members.
She has also been ordered to read a book, The Reason I Jump by Naoki Higashida, and provide a one-page summary to her probation officer, according to the sentencing order that Overby signed earlier this month.
Edwards had been employed with the Alamance-Burlington school system as a Exceptional Children’s teacher since August 2020, based on information that ABSS furnished at the time in response to a public records request by The Alamance News.
Though she had later been given a four-year teaching contract that was scheduled to run through 2027, Edwards resigned from ABSS, effective December 9, 2024, school officials confirmed for the newspaper Wednesday.
