Monday, January 17, 2011

Our Recent School Drama Continued!

Ok, so I know I have been terribly inconsistent and slow at keeping this blog up to date and for that I am sorry, but hey, atleast I get to it at some point, right? lol. So let me share with you all what happened with Domenic's School a couple of months ago.......


Domenic was in class and he drew a picture of two people with word bubbles. The one person was calling the other a name, and the other was saying "I'm going to kill you. That may not have been very appropriate to draw in school, but it was just typical boy behavior. Now, at this point in the story, we recieved two different accounts of what took place. One account from Domenic's teacher, who was there at the time, and another account from the school psychologist. The teacher said that another student and Domenic came up to his desk and that the one student told on Domenic that he had written bad words. According to the teacher, he took the paper and gave it to the assistant principle as was procedure for anything "violent" or questionable. and that was the end of it as far as what he dealt with. So the story continues......


Later that day, Domenic was called out of art class and taken down to the psychologist's office and was questioned by the psychologist and the social worker without our knowledge or consent!!! They basically did a psych evaluation on him. They asked him questions about every area of his life and even asked him, "do both your parents live with you?" and "do you sleep in the same bed with your brother?" as well as, "What happens when you get into trouble at home"

I only learned of this later that day when I got a call from the school. I think it was the assistant to the principle that called. She informed me of the drawing and said that he was talked to about it and that he didn't give them much information, but he did say that he was sad because his father was gone. BRYAN WAS IN NYC FOR 2 DAYS!!! Not gone like they were obviously thinking! It was very obvious to me that they were asking him leading questions and infact doing a psych eval on him. Domenic gave us a list a page long of questions that were asked him.

So, Bryan, having a law degree was not happy! According to the constitution of the United States of America you cannot interview or question a minor without his or her parent's consent. There are reasons for this. For those of you who have children, you especially know that a child will oftentimes say things they don't mean, mix up definitions of what they do mean, and may not always recall things accuratly. But the school district thinks they can do whatever they want. After meeting with the principle and social worker and expressing our concern for the handling of the situation this is what we got....

Basically, if your child is deemed a possible threat to another student or staff the school has the right to question your child without your knowledge or consent. Ok, soooooooooooooo they determined my child was a possible threat......because of a drawing. Ok, so they can basically say that anything is a threat. There are no guidelines. One question, if they thought my child was a possible threat, why did they let him continue on with his day to later take him out of art class? If a child is a possible threat to someone shouldn't they immediatly be removed from the classroom and sent to the principle office? I sure wouldn't want my child in a room with another child that could possibly be a "threat"! The corrent handling of the situation would have been to send Domenic to the principles office. contact us, and then deal with the situation with us involved. They took a simple thing, a drawing from a good boy who is exactly that, a BOY and turned it into this big fiasco! This whole thing could have been avoided by a simple phone call. But no, the school thinks they can do whatever they want, even usurp our children's constitutional rights!

But wait, it's not over yet! There is still more to this story. Stay tuned!

-Shannon