Behavior, discipline and Harwood Union High School
April 9, 2022 | By Brigid Nease Editor’s note: The following is from Superintendent Brigid Nease’s written report to the HUUSD School Board ahead of its April 13 meeting this week.
I write to the full board and community after discussing with board leadership, the situation we find ourselves in following a serious incident of misconduct at Harwood Union High School. Given the ongoing public and social media attention the incident continues to bring, [board Chair] Kristen [Rodgers] and [Vice Chair] Kelley [Hackett] shared that they have heard from a few board members wanting to know more and felt it best for me to share what I can and to express my thoughts.
About “the bathroom incident”...It is public knowledge that a physical altercation occurred at our high school. Except for that, nothing else is public knowledge. Nonetheless, lots of accusations have and continue to be made. People are “shocked” “appalled” and “horrified.” Long screeds have been published about the incident that repeat as fact things that are simply not true, drawing inevitable conclusions that are equally untrue. As those untruths are repeated again and again, reposted, careers are potentially being ruined and reputations are being compromised. Those students involved are being harmed further by weeks of public and social media.
First, it is important to note that this serious and unfortunate matter among four 9th and 10th graders involves four of our students and four families in our community. They all deserve our support even in the most difficult of matters. All our extremely competent students, who are doing the right thing, who make us proud, who so admirably represent the black and gold are watching their role models – school leaders – and their school itself being trashed.
The fact is, except for the leaders who were responsible for investigating the incident who are trained and licensed, drawing conclusions and issuing consequences, no one – even those involved – knows the whole story. What has been shared publicly, even by those who were involved in some way, is from a limited perspective. Everything else that has been said is, at best, hearsay, at worst, intentional bending of the facts.
What is not being talked about is what is required of education leaders in Vermont when harmful, unfortunate situations with student behavior occur.
In Education Law, the protection of students is paramount. Leaders are required to protect not only the physical safety of the students in their charge, but the safety of their privacy, as well (the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act). That right to privacy applies to both the alleged victims and the alleged perpetrators. Adolescence brings with it a myriad of social challenges and conflicts. Sometimes, good kids make very bad choices – choices that create harm. In those incidents and under great confidentiality, thorough investigations occur, consequences are issued in accordance with the severity of the offense, but students in Vermont are not then discarded, removed from the system, or made an example of in the town square. They are all our children. They are not adults.
Haven’t you ever wondered why administrators don’t defend themselves and write rebuttals to these published attacks? Why do they respond with no further comment?
When misconduct, bullying, harassment or any other incident occurs that requires their intervention, education leaders are strictly forbidden - both legally and ethically - from sharing much of anything with the victim, his or her parents, the school board or the public about the investigative process: with whom did they talk? the State Police? The Vermont Department for Children and Families? the Attorney General? legal counsel? the perpetrators? their parents? witnesses? Nor can they share about referrals or consultations they might have made to DCF, mental health, law enforcement or legal counsel. Nor can they share about conclusions they reached about what led up to the incident, whether there were mitigating circumstances, who is lying, who is telling the truth, what motivated the incident or the history that led up to it. Nor can they discuss special plans implemented for students.
Education leaders who violate these standards that are in place to protect students can lose their license and their right to practice. This is equally true for teachers or coaches in our schools who choose to violate the standards of their profession by violating student privacy, behaving inappropriately, telling untruths, or cheating. That is as it should be.
Unfortunately, what this means for education leaders is that they are effectively forbidden from defending themselves. They can’t and won’t reveal the facts that would silence the critics. In this case there are many facts that would silence the critics. But to do so, would violate the rights of students,.and could cost administrators their livelihoods The challenge, of course, is that in the upside down and unjust world of social media, failure to defend yourself is interpreted as tacit admission that the false accusations are true. This means that those who are modeling the worst kind of online behaviors have the luxury of the last word. They are judge, jury and executioner. There is no due process, no weighing of facts in evidence.
At best, what is currently going on in our community since this serious bathroom event is the parable of the blind men and an elephant. People with very limited knowledge of the whole picture are drawing vastly inaccurate conclusions. And, like in some versions of the parable, some are coming to blows. .
It has to stop now because our students deserve better and it is our collective adult responsibility to teach them by being role models that use social media to debate and disagree constructively.
Our administrators have conducted thorough investigations. It is my professional opinion based on the information before me that they have followed Vermont and federal law, board policy, and best practices. They have implemented strict and necessary consequences. The fact of the matter is that the only known fact is the number of days any student is suspended because they obviously are not at school. Safety plans, schedule changes, monitoring, restorative practices, probation(s), counseling and outside agency support(s) are private information. Period. By law. So, no person can judge without that full scope of knowledge if what was issued is “enough” or the “right punishment.” It is not unusual that different parents involved can and do make demands
regarding discipline they believe should be issued, oftentimes to other students. It isn’t unusual that administrators need to deny those requests. Some examples are installing metal detectors at the entrance, hiring a police officer full time on campus, expelling students, putting cameras in bathrooms, removing students from athletic teams or extra curricular events, hiring 1-1 adult supports, denying bus transportation permanently, etc.
In addition to the individual student discipline and ongoing individual student restorative work that was issued after this incident the following has been put into place:
● Another hall monitor has been hired who will be stationed at and monitor the back south entrance to the building. We are experiencing an increase in students blocking those doors open, leaving the building to either go into the woods or leave campus without permission, especially during lunch blocks when attendance cannot be taken.
● Attendance procedures have been changed to require attendance taking at the beginning of each class block, with stronger follow-up procedures and greater enforcement for students skipping class.
● Bathroom sign-outs are required in classrooms.
● One of the biggest problems we face is the inappropriate use of cell phones at school. Some students are using them to plan meetups, to coordinate leaving the building, and other “capers.” All building procedures around cell phones are being reviewed to determine better enforcement of the rules as to when students can use cell phones at school, better enforcement and discipline for misuse without creating an unfair “group punishment” for those students using the technology appropriately.
Respectfully, I write this piece of my report to provide more and maybe new information, also in support of our administrators, but mostly because my responsibility to care for our students compels me to. After reading this section of this board report, I respectfully ask each reader to carefully reflect on what you have learned about matters of serious student discipline and then ask yourself:
Have you considered that some of what you are reading is simply untrue, cherry picked partial information, and could be considered adult cyber bullying?
Have you considered that calling administrators names, (psychopaths, pathetic, incompetent, liars etc), assigning false motivations and minimizing the decisions they make publicly without all the facts is harassment and damaging to our Harwood name?
Have you considered that some adults in our community continue to model harassment and cyber bullying of others - the very harmful behaviors we seek to eradicate in our student body?
Have you consider that piling on comments about extremely dangerous topics like suicide and bringing guns to school is scary and damaging to our students?
The public scrutiny and attack on our Harwood administration is grossly unfair. Please do not confuse the good work generated by students and supported by staff and administration to use their student voice and dialog to improve safety and climate at Harwood with the complicated implementation of investigations and behavioral consequences issued to students. To suggest that Principal Megan McDonough expects the students to fix the problem or that she has shirked her responsibility for maintaining a safe school environment is patently false.
Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty, assuming good will, treating others the way you wish to be treated, keeping disagreements and debates to the topic rather than attacking the individual?
I have been asked what the board’s role is in determining if the administration did what they should have, investigated thoroughly, and issued the appropriate discipline. The truth is the board does not have a legal role in student discipline. They do not, as volunteers, have “the need to know and the right to “ (language directly from the law) the specific details of what each student does at school. Their role is carefully stated in Vermont and federal statute. They provide for the general supervision of all schools in the district. VSA T. 16 563 speaks to the Duties of a School Board. VSA T. 16 242 speaks to the Duties of the Superintendent. Essential Work of Boards. Pg. 9-10, 51, 106-107. The role of the school board is to:
1. Develop and Adopt a Budget
2. Set Policy for the district
3. Hire and evaluate the superintendent.
4. Create and monitor a vision for the district.
5. Act in a quasi-judicial role according to statute and policy. This applies to an appeal through a formal process established by law and/or policy.
6. In complaint disputes, the board’s role is to determine if policy has been violated - not to determine a different outcome.
The school board does not have a role in student discipline except to act as a judicial hearing body for those matters specified in law. They do not have the need and right to know under FERPA the individual facts of student discipline, or investigations into hazing, harassment, or bullying. I strongly recommend that the board sponsor training for the board and community where back and forth dialog can occur and questions can be answered by the district’s legal counsel.
In conclusion, Harwood Union has experienced some challenging and harmful behaviors by a small number of students. Those incidents are taken seriously and dealt with swiftly, appropriately, and confidentially with the students involved and their families. No one is minimizing the seriousness of these unfortunate, harmful incidents, least of all the administration. The discipline issued and the manner in which a harmful incident is dealt with in a public school can vary greatly from what parents may choose to do in their own family. Notwithstanding these challenges, overall our Harwood Union High School is safe…and we will continue to strive to improve climate and culture in all HUUSD schools.
Brigid Nease is superintendent of the Harwood Unified Union School District. Her full report to the school board for this week’s meeting is online at HUUSD.org under the Board heading in meeting packet information.