A Schenectady school aide has pleaded guilty to endangering the welfare of a child after video captured her mistreating a nonverbal autistic student, making her the third district employee this year to face professional or criminal consequences for mistreating a disabled student caught on camera. Two teachers have resigned over the last 10 months, and now a paraprofessional has also pleaded guilty to a crime.
Aide Admits Guilt in Classroom Incident
Eva Buchanan, a 47-year-old school aide from Schenectady, worked at Lincoln Elementary School, where police said she was recorded mistreating a nonverbal autistic child, according to the Times Union. The incidents happened on Sept. 30 and Oct. 3, 2025, and a police detective filed a complaint against Buchanan on Jan. 22. Detective A.J. Zampella said Buchanan acted in a manner likely injurious to the victim's physical and mental welfare, and said the child has autism and is nonverbal.
Buchanan pleaded guilty to endangering the welfare of a child. She told the paper she pleaded guilty to avoid jail and did not want to risk the outcome of a trial, while also saying she would never hurt a child. She declined to explain what happened on the dates cited in the complaint. Schenectady City Court Judge Carl Falotico said Buchanan may withdraw her plea and instead be convicted of a violation if she strictly follows probation restrictions for one year.
A Pattern at the Same Elementary School
Lincoln Elementary employed two of the three employees involved in the cases. A school librarian who worked at Lincoln Elementary alongside Buchanan resigned in January, after a paraprofessional photographed the librarian standing on a child with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder. The librarian's mother was not notified by the school about the incident and instead learned of it by seeing the photograph herself. Police said the child was not hurt in that case, and police did not press charges against the librarian.
The third case involves Patti Tashman, a 69-year-old special education kindergarten teacher at Van Corlaer Elementary School, who was recorded by school surveillance camera dragging a kindergartner with behavioral issues out of a classroom and stomping on him. Prosecutors said Tashman dragged the 6-year-old by the ankle from the classroom into an adjoining vestibule, and the dailygazette.com reports the security video appears to show her subduing the child and kicking or stomping him several times while he was on the floor, per the Daily Gazette.
Delayed Notifications Drew Judicial Criticism
In the Tashman case, school administrators became aware of the incident two days after it occurred and contacted the child's mother then, the Daily Gazette reported. The district contacted the kindergartner's mother on March 26, two days after the March 24 incident, and showed her the video on April 1. Tashman resigned from Van Corlaer Elementary after the district told her she was under investigation, and police charged her on April 24. She was convicted of endangering the welfare of a child and second-degree harassment, a violation, after a one-day bench trial, the Schenectady County government confirmed in a statement. She is scheduled to be sentenced Nov. 10 in Schenectady City Court and faces a maximum of 364 days in county jail for the misdemeanor charge.
Judge Falotico criticized the Schenectady school district for not quickly reporting a crime in the Tashman case, saying he was surprised school officials did not immediately contact police after viewing the security video. The Schenectady County District Attorney's Office has separately encouraged districts to report child abuse to police immediately, according to CBS6 Albany.
District Says It Has Adopted New Protocols
Schenectady City School District Superintendent Carlos Cotto Jr. said in January that he would work tirelessly to prevent a repeat of such incidents. Cotto said the district has reinforced and adopted new steps to strengthen protocols, including requiring immediate notification of the superintendent's office when an incident occurs and timely family communication as soon as situations are stabilized. The school district did not return a call seeking comment about delays in all three cases, per the original reporting.
The cases surface as New York has moved to tighten oversight of how schools handle physical interventions with students. Beginning with the 2024-25 school year, public school districts and other covered schools must submit annual reports to the state Education Department on the use of physical restraint, timeout, and substantiated or unsubstantiated allegations involving specified prohibited interventions, according to guidance from the New York State Education Department. Statewide data collected under that effort found more than 20,000 restraint and timeout incidents reported, the Times Union has separately reported.
