LIVE OAK, Fla. — There will be no charges filed against the Suwannee Elementary School teacher accused of child neglect in August.

After the State Attorney’s Office investigated the incident, Jeff Siegmeister, the State Attorney for the Third Circuit, announced Friday his office declined seeking prosecution in the case involving Veronica Daquila.

According to Siegmeister’s memo, a teacher leaving a child unattended for short periods of time is not neglect and that does not change even if a child is possibly injured.

“But to be clear, in conclusion, this is not criminal, even ‘worst case,’” Siegmeister wrote in the memo.

The accusations stemmed from an Aug. 22 incident at the school in which Beth Butler said her son’s teacher refused to allow him to use the restroom.

Daquila was placed on paid administrative leave Aug. 24 but returned to work Sept. 20 — following a school district investigation — as a reading resource teacher, a position she had held previously during her 30-year tenure with Suwannee County Schools.

“We conducted our own internal investigation and came to the same conclusion,” Superintendent Ted Roush said Friday after the State Attorney’s Office announced its decision. “Knowing they conducted a very thorough investigation to reach that outcome and we certainly appreciate their diligence in working to arrive at an accurate conclusion.”

The undisputed facts in the case, according to the state attorney’s investigation, are Daquila had a class rule that does not allow students to use the restroom during any subject’s instruction period. The child asked twice during a period of approximately one hour and 15 minutes. During that span, the child urinated in his clothes.

After Daquila took her class to recess, after first asking another teacher to take them, she returned to the class after approximately 10 minutes to take the child to the nurse’s office to get a change of clothes and brought him lunch to eat.

Daquila then returned to the room to clean up the urine from the accident and even later instructed class members she heard discussing the child not to do so and not to tease him.

The student returned to the class after changing clothes and eating lunch, saying he later was picked on by others on the bus, which embarrassed him and made him cry at home.

“It is obvious … that any ‘harm’ caused by this was due to fellow students teasing him and causing him embarrassment,” Siegmeister wrote. “These actions are sad and unfortunate but not the casual responsibility of actions or inactions of the teacher. This is particularly true because it is almost certain every student teasing (the child) has or will embarrass themselves during childhood.

“Finally, and importantly, it is the author’s experienced opinion that if telling a child two times in 75 minutes they could not use the bathroom was a crime, the court system, depositions, trial and publicity would do a greater injustice and harm to this child than any possible positive result for the child, if any.”

Siegmeister went on to compare the incident at school to a parent not stopping at a rest stop during a car trip.

“This office could not justify a felony neglect charge against such a parent and therefore could not legally do so against a caregiver in loco parentis,” he concluded.