KY: Woman files discrimination lawsuit against Grant Co. schools

11/16/09

By Ashlee Clark - aclark@herald-leader.com

http://www.kentucky.com/latest_news/story/1022559.html

CORINTH — Melissa Altman says her 7-year-old son came home from school two years ago with black permanent marker smeared across his face and taped to his shirt was a piece of paper with an expletive written in pink cursive.

Altman, a Grant County native, said her son — along with his brother and sister who were all in elementary school — had become the target of his Grant County School District classmates because he is half-black.

The alleged harassment, which included name-calling and physical assaults, continued for two years. And Altman says teachers and administrators either took little or no action to stop the bullying, downplayed the incidents, or, in some cases, punished Altman's children for the harassment they received.

"They were wrong, and they need to address it and fix it," Altman said in an interview.

Altman filed a lawsuit this month in U.S. District Court in Lexington against Grant County schools for violating the Civil Rights Act because she says the alleged bullying interfered with her children's education. Grant County Superintendent Michael Hibbett and Lisa Hollandsworth, principal of Mason Corinth Elementary School, are also named in the lawsuit. Altman is seeking $500,000 in damages.

The district's attorney released a statement denying that school officials were responsible for injuries claimed in Altman's complaint. The statement says the school district and the Office for Civil Rights of the U.S. Department of Education had previously investigated Altman's allegations and concluded that school system personnel did not discriminate against Altman's children or allow other students to do so.

"The District intends to vigorously defend itself and its personnel in this lawsuit, and anticipates the same outcome in federal court that occurred as a result of the outside administrative investigation," the statement says.

Altman said she filed the lawsuit as a last resort. For two years, the single mother wrangled with teachers and administrators in meetings to protect her children from bullies, she said. She says they told her the alleged harassment would stop and the children responsible would be disciplined. But Altman said her children kept coming home with more stories of abuse.

The lawsuit says Altman's children were told that their skin was the color of excrement and, on Oct. 19, a student attacked one of her children on a school bus.

Altman says her children told her that the teachers sometimes blamed or punished them for being bullied. One teacher told one of Altman's sons that he deserved the harassment "for cutting in line for ice cream," according to the lawsuit.

Since the alleged incidents began, Altman's oldest son has stopped answering questions in class. He is so quiet that his teacher wasn't sure if his reading level was equal to that of his sixth-grade classmates, Altman said.

Altman said she wants school officials to write her children a letter of apology. She did not want her children to be identified because she is concerned about retaliation.

Altman said has had many difficult conversations with her children, and that has been tough on her.

"I'm trying to relate to them, but I can't because I've never gone through this," said Altman, who is white.

Reach Ashlee Clark at (859) 231-1443 or 1-800-950-6397, Ext. 1443.

FL: More allegations of abuse, beatings at state school for boys

Last Edited: Wednesday, 10 Dec 2008, 7:14 PM EST
Created: Wednesday, 10 Dec 2008, 7:10 PM EST

MARIANNA -- More and more men are coming out, talking about the abuse they endured a state-run reform school.

They are all former students of the Florida School for Boys in Marianna.

"That kind of fear, it lives in you forever, I guess," said Buddy Suggs.

Suggs, from Hudson, was just 12 when he went to Marianna. He's now 63, but the memories still haunt him.

He says he watched as boys, as young as 9 years old, were led to what they called "The White House." It was a two-room building where they were beaten. Suggs saw them walk into the building, not knowing who the boys were.

"Yeah, you didn't know them but you knew them. You knew the pain, the fear they had every day of their life," he recalls.

Suggs said he saw the proof of the beatings. Working in the laundry room, he had to clean the sheets from the cots, where the beatings took place.

"We got the bloody sheets in there. And we know someone had a beating."

He remembers not wanting to touch the sheets. But he had to clean them.

"It was full of blood, pillow cases. It was more red than white, I'll tell you. It gives you a feeling you never had," he says.

Suggs was never beaten at the school, and considers himself lucky.

But he wonders about the boys who were.

The state is now investigating the allegations of abuse.

And they are investigating a cemetery on the school site with 32 unmarked graves -- graves former students believe are those of young boys beaten to death.

Roger Kiser is a former student. He's leading the charge against the school, starting a group called "The White House Boys."

He said he's been trying to get attention to this for 20 years, but no one believed him.

Now that people are listening, he doesn't plan to give up the fight.

"I'm going to keep throwing gas on the fire. I'm sure they want us to go away," Kiser said.

WV: Former custodian sues Kanawha school board for racial abuse

http://www.wvrecord.com/news/216322-former-custodian-sues-kanawha-school-board-for-racial-abuse

12/10/2008 9:00 AM
By Cara Bailey -Kanawha Bureau

CHARLESTON - A Kanawha County man has filed a suit against the Kanawha County Board of Education, claiming he was racially abused after he was hired as a custodian.

Willis McLemore filed the suit Oct. 22 in Kanawha Circuit Court against the Kanawha County Board of Education and Kanawha County Schools, as well as school employees Clinton Giles and Frank Thompson.

According to the suit, McLemore claims he was discriminated against because of his race. He is African American.

McLemore interviewed for a custodial job for a position at Capitol High School in January 2007. According to the suit, Giles and Thompson told McLemore they did not want him working at Capitol and were holding the position for another employee.

However, McLemore was offered the job. And despite being told he was not wanted, he accepted the position because of his financial situation.

Upon starting work at the school, co-worker Larry Pennington showed McLemore around and assigned him to a particular area. According to the suit, Thompson then approached McLemore and told him the area to which he had been assigned was a "mess" and hadn't been cleaned in months, and would take some time to clean.

According to the suit, McLemore began to receive letters a few days after he started, informing him that certain tasks were not being completed even though Thompson had acknowledged that it would take some time to complete them.

McLemore continued to work and began to bond with other custodians. He claims he received several compliments about the cleanliness of his area from teachers and even Giles, who also is black.

However, according to the suit, Thompson continued "his constant barrage of attacks" of McLemore's performance. He also made racially motivated slurs toward McLemore.

At one point, Thompson told McLemore, "Why don't you just quit, I'm tired of us having to carry your load. People of your kind are so lazy, always having something given to you," the suit says.

Thompson's actions continued until April 10, 2008, when McLemore was no longer able to tolerate his conduct and resigned.

McLemore filed a grievance concerning the hostile working conditions he was forced to endure at Capitol High School, but the grievance was denied. McLemore then filed an appeal but the appeal was never scheduled.

According to the suit, McLemore suffered severe emotional and mental distress, humiliation, anxiety, embarrassment, depression, aggravation, annoyance and inconvenience.

In the eight-count suit, McLemore seeks compensatory and punitive damages.

Attorney Matthew S. Criswell is representing McLemore. The case has been assigned to Judge Paul Zakaib.

Kanawha Circuit Court case number 08-C-2064

NY: If the child goes home in tears, your lesson has failed

December 8, 2008
http://lohud.com/article/20081208/NEWS01/812080333/0/NEWS02

See Related: http://tcfpbis.blogspot.com/2008/12/ny-teacher-sorry-for-binding-girls-in.html

It's the sort of story that makes you cringe: A white teacher binds the hands and feet of two black girls and has them crawl under a desk to simulate traveling in the holds of slave ships.

Ouch, you think, when you read it, especially when the mother of one child says she later burst into tears.

This history lesson went too far.

The class took place last month at Haverstraw Middle School. The teacher, Eileen Bernstein, was discussing how Africans were transported to America in slave ships when she had the two girls demonstrate. One had volunteered. The other, 13-year-old Gabrielle Shand, had not.

Now, her mother said, the teenager is embarrassed.

The teacher, who was not available for interviews, is reportedly regretful. It was not her intention to make the child uncomfortable, the principal said, and why would it have been? It must be difficult to keep classes fresh and interesting, to keep your students engaged. Anyone can sympathize with a teacher trying to challenge her classroom.

But binding the hands and feet of anyone is a bad idea. The whole lesson went astray right there.
Crawling under the desk by itself might have been fine if the children wanted to do it, but not just black children. Black and white children.

No one wants to feel they have been singled out, especially at that age and especially not over such a serious issue as slavery.

You would not want Jewish children demonstrating the Nazi concentration camps, Irish-American children pretending to starve, those of Armenian or Rwandan heritage facing extermination.

Haverstraw school officials said they did not know whether the exercise had been done before but promised it would not be repeated. That's a good decision. If the child was upset, the lesson failed.

Schools are always trying to get the attention of students. And Haverstraw has no monopoly on bad judgment.

During the summer, officials in Southern California landed in the news when they tried to shock students out of drinking and driving.

They had the best of goals, but that was no excuse.

Highway patrol officers visited classrooms at El Camino High School in Oceanside to announce that several students had been killed in a drunken-driving accident over the weekend.

Classmates wept, The Associated Press reported. Some became hysterical.

And later angry when they learned the whole thing was a hoax.

School officials defended themselves.

"They were traumatized, but we wanted them to be traumatized," a guidance counselor, Lori Tauber, told the AP. "That's how they get the message."

Others were less forgiving. One parent, in an interview with ABC News, called the deception outrageous.

At school assemblies, the AP reported, some students held up posters that read: "Death is real. Don't play with our emotions."

They showed more maturity than the adults. Lying to students was a terrible idea, terrible and insensitive. Drunken driving is a problem, but this was a horrible way to try to counter it.

No one lied in Haverstraw. The teacher did not orchestrate a hoax. She just went too far in trying to teach.

As Gabrielle's mother, Christine Shand, said: "If you're going to demonstrate slavery, or what black people experienced ... there's other ways to do it than to grab two black kids."

Or as the students in California said: Don't play with emotions.

Noreen O'Donnell

Journal News columnist

Reach Noreen O'Donnell at nodonnel@lohud.com or 914-694-5017. Read her at www.lohud.com/odonnell.

NY: Teacher sorry for binding girls in slavery lesson

White teacher taped hands and feet of two black girls to enliven discussion
Associated Press, updated 6:36 p.m. ET, Fri., Dec. 5, 2008
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28075402

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. - A white social studies teacher attempted to enliven a seventh-grade discussion of slavery by binding the hands and feet of two black girls, prompting outrage from one girl's mother and the local chapter of the NAACP.

After the mother complained to Haverstraw Middle School, the superintendent said he was having "conversations with our staff on how to deliver effective lessons."

"If a student was upset, then it was a bad idea," said Superintendent Brian Monahan of the North Rockland School District in New York City's northern suburbs.

The teacher apologized to the mother who complained and her 13-year-old daughter during a meeting Thursday that also included a representative of the local NAACP. But the mother, Christine Shand of Haverstraw, said Friday she thinks the teacher should be removed from the class.

"I think the teacher should have gotten some discipline," Shand said. "I know if that was me, I would be uncomfortable going back to that class. Why should my daughter have to switch?"

Monahan refused to say what, if any, measures were taken against the teacher, Eileen Bernstein, who was still working on Friday. The school district said she was not available for comment.

"We encourage our teachers to deliver the curriculum in a variety of ways, to go beyond just reading the textbook," the superintendent said. "We don't want to discourage creativity. But this obviously went wrong because the student was upset."

On Nov. 18, Bernstein was discussing the conditions under which African captives were taken to America in slave ships. She bound the two students' hands and feet with tape and had them crawl under a desk to simulate the experience, Monahan and Shand said. Monahan said the girls were not the only blacks in the class.

Gabrielle Shand burst into tears at home, her mother said.

"There are other ways to demonstrate slavery," Christine Shand said Friday. "It doesn't matter the color of the kids, it's just not right to tie them up. My daughter is still upset, still embarrassed. She didn't go to school today."

Wilbur Aldridge, director of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said the history demonstration, first reported in The Journal News, "went wrong when she started to do that binding."

"I don't care what color, no one should be put in the position of having their hands and feet bound," he said.

Aldridge said he feared that the teacher still "didn't get it" after their meeting. He said the teacher apologized "because Gabrielle was upset, not because she admitted she did something wrong."

Shand said she had not decided whether to take any further action, including filing a lawsuit.

Ousting autistic Scout seems hasty

Posted: Nov. 21, 2008
By Laurel Walker
http://www.jsonline.com/news/waukesha/34916909.html

Michele and Kevin Klages think the Girl Scouts ought to practice what they preach.

The Girl Scouts' Web site says the organization has "a long history of adapting activities to girls who have disabilities, special needs and chronic illnesses."

Tell that to Magi, their 8-year-old daughter, who has autism. When her parents brought her to a Girl Scout Brownie troop for girls with special needs in Oconomowoc last week - thinking it would be a good fit - the leaders told them not to bring her back after the first visit.

They were stunned, disappointed, frustrated. Now they're looking for answers from local and national headquarters. They'd like an apology, for starters.

Magi is no stranger to Girl Scouts. She was a Daisy - a beginner - with others at Park Lawn Elementary School two years ago. She graduated into the Brownie troop under the same leader last year.

Dina Johnston, her troop leader both years, said the other girls would initially stare and show concern when Magi acted out.

"After a couple of meetings they knew, oh, that's just Magi," Johnston said. "They were very comfortable with her." And Magi, who communicates primarily with sign language, grew comfortable with them.

"I think it was good to have her," Johnston said.

But when the troop grew to 22 girls, her parents, one or both of whom stay beside Magi at every meeting, decided the group was too large and moving too fast for her. She was overwhelmed.

"She asked for Brownies, and she doesn't ask for much," Michele said. "That's the reason I tried to keep her in."

The couple were told about a special needs troop in Oconomowoc, where they live, with just four girls - all with physical disabilities and two of whom she knew. Magi couldn't wait.

"When we told her the day before we were going to a new Brownie troop, she asked to go to Brownies a hundred times," said her father. "She was so excited."

Children in the confounding world of autism are wired differently. Adjusting to new and different situations can be rough, but I know from past reporting that amazing things are possible. Four years ago, I wrote about Andy Telford, a 17-year-old boy with autism who, with the incredible dedication of both parents and Scout leaders, attained the Eagle rank - something done by just 4% of all Boy Scouts.

Magi's first time at the new Brownie troop was predictably difficult, her mother said.

In the new group, with her dad beside her and her mother behind, Magi didn't like sitting in "circle time" and sharing, Michele explained. When she bit herself, her parents spoke to her. When she threw a fit, her mother pulled her off by herself. When they worked on a mat-weaving project, she did fine. At one point she got up and ran, but her dad caught up.

"That was the extent of what she did," Michele said. "It was a new experience for her. With any child with autism, it takes a few times. Routine is important."

So when a troop co-leader called them Monday and told them not to bring Magi back because of her behavior and their concern for the safety of the other girls, the Klageses were upset.

"I never expected my child to be discriminated against," Michele said. "Never in a million years." Especially, she said, from a troop leader who had a child with special needs herself.

"The Girl Scouts are not above discrimination, " she's concluded.

My attempts to reach the Brownie troop leaders failed. Molly Fuller, the CEO for the Girl Scouts of Wisconsin Southeast, said confidentiality requirements prevented her from talking about individuals, even though the Klageses were more than willing to talk about it.

"We want to serve all interested girls," said Fuller, repeating the Girl Scout mantra of inclusiveness.

Without some effort to resolve this sensibly, though, it has a hollow ring.

The Klageses spent the week trying to communicate with both local and national headquarters without satisfaction. Michele said they were told the Girl Scouts would try to find another troop for Magi, but they do not want to transport Magi distances beyond her own community for the activity and away from girls she knows. I can't say I blame them.

Michele wants the leaders removed, which sounds harsh for probably well-intentioned volunteers in a tough job, but who may have handled this situation badly. She wishes they had talked to the Klageses before making their decision and had given her daughter time to get acclimated, which sounds reasonable.

It would have been a good chance for the Klageses to educate the leaders and the other Brownies about autism, she said, while at the same time getting educated themselves about the special needs of the other troop members.

Maybe it's not too late to start again.

Call Laurel Walker at (262) 650-3183 or e-mail lwalker@journalsent inel.com