If this boy’s mother has not hired an attorney yet, I hope someone convinces her to do so.
Speaking as a former school board member, I promise you the first call the superintendent made was to the attorney for this school district. Within an hour, all employees and school board members had been ordered not to speak to anyone regarding this incident. When the school district begins insisting, they have to consider what is best for ALL students, remember what they really mean, is that they are protecting administrators who are responsible for discipline and the price their failure will cost the district.
Please know, that school board members have the right to speak to anyone they damned well please. They can speak at school board meetings. They can speak in public. They can speak anywhere, anytime they damned well please. They can speak to the press, parents, the police and the people who elected them. Never let school board members stay silent while a board president and superintendent speaks for them.
I say this in memory of a 14-year-old boy who committed suicide while I was on our school board. To my dismay, this boy had been bullied mercilessly by kids who decided he was gay.
Discovering the junior high principal knew this child was being bullied and had done nothing to stop it, was bad enough. But discovering in a closed-session board meeting that two of our school board members – including the boy’s own grandmother who was on the board – had also known he was being bullied infuriated me.
When we returned to open session, I demanded the floor. Our board president refused my request, but I kept talking. Suddenly, our board president was pounding her stupid gavel over and over again, telling me to be quiet, Bang, then telling me to shut up, bang, then yelling the board will come to order – bang, bang, bang went her gavel. “Fuck order and fuck your gavel” I yelled right back and pounded my hand on the table – bang, bang, bang. It got loud. It got ugly. The board president stood up, then ran out of the room, in tears, at which point I proceeded to detail my understanding of events for the press, parents, teachers and community members in attendance that awful night. People finally had the information they needed to act on their own and act they did. The people in the room that night, changed the laws in our state - they literally changed the laws.
Sometimes, democracy works.
