According to local news sources, Sarah Beam is a 41-year-old teacher at Cypress Falls High School. She is charged with FELONY child endangerment for putting her thirteen-year-old son in the trunk of her car. She believed that the child had Covid, and she needed to get him tested without being exposed herself. If Beam were to be convicted of this charge, by definition, she would be a felon. She is as far from a felon as one could find in society.
It disgusts me that her bail was set at 15 times more than the typical Harris County bail of a hundred dollars for those who CHOOSE to drink and drive. The court believes that her offense is greater than that of those who get out on our roadways and risk the lives of innocent people.
I acknowledge that putting a child into a trunk is a serious error in judgement, but I am guessing that this is her first pandemic. She is doing the best that she can in unexpected circumstances, just like the rest of us. By avoiding exposure, she is able to continue to go to work in a society where so many are choosing to stay home and not work at all. There is a huge shortage of teachers and substitute teachers brought to us by this pandemic.
Beam made front cover news of the KHOU webpage on Friday. Today, she is nowhere to be found. If you search the KHOU site, you will find the original breaking story of her arrest. What you will not find, is today’s news. The news that students are rallying around her. I guess this is not the juicy, stone casting, cancel culture news that KHOU seeks.
ABC ran a story of students rallying around their teacher. They included a quote from one of her supporters, “To whom it may concern, the people who know Ms. Beam know the intentions in her heart and value her work and dedication in everything she does. I hope all these misunderstandings go away soon, and the truth comes out.”
My heart goes out to Ms. Beam. The media taught us to deeply fear the virus. The media taught us to get tested. The situation puts people that are committed to their jobs and trying to do the right thing in impossible circumstances. Instead of arresting her, and putting her picture all over the news, we should be looking at her circumstances. We should be figuring out how we can work together to better address situations like this. Charging someone with a felony and suspending her from her job is as far from the right answer as one can imagine.
I champion Ms. Beam. It would have been easy for her to sit at home with her son exposed to Covid. She could call in sick to work and collect a paycheck for doing nothing. Instead, she tried to avoid exposure so that she could continue to help her students and fulfill her teaching duties in a world that is experiencing a huge shortage of teachers. In doing so, she made a big mistake, but could we not as a society come together and seek to understand her predicament?
The same news affiliates running, “we are all in this together.” sound bites are the first to defame her in their headlines. This makes me angry.
To end on a note of levity, as this blog most often does, I want to emphasize that the son was not harmed in the event of his mother putting him in the trunk. To the son, “Hey, you have this in your back pocket for that moment when you take a wrong turn as a teenager and really upset Mom, which we all do. You also have the makings of a great college admissions essay. Most importantly, you have a mother that loves you, and she is doing her best in insane circumstances. You and your mother are in my prayers. I am saddened that the two of you are going through what you are going through right now. This too shall pass.“