School Board Meeting Highlights Lack of Transparency, Bullying Issues at MVSD

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Parents relayed their frustration with school administrators at a school board meeting last week about their communication to parents following a threat of a school shooting just days earlier.

The MVE library was standing room only for parents and community members, even as the school board moved their meeting from the district module to the library, which seats more people.

Prior to the public comment period, Superintendent Tom Venable outlined the district’s protocols for school threats by reading a modified version of a statement posted on the school’s website. Venable provided few details about the shooting threat.

Winthrop Marshal Ty Sheehan offered to answer questions in the gymnasium next to the library, which many parents accepted. More details came out in a police report by the Winthrop Marshal’s office on Tuesday, after the school board meeting.

Venable said he would use the feedback to improve processes, such as creating a FAQ section on the school’s website to explain how the district responds to serious incidents and what parents can expect in emergency situations. He thanked LBHS Principal Elyse Darwood, LBHS Assistant Principal Michael Wilbur, the administrative team, law enforcement and staff in the district for their handling of the situation.

School board chair Dana Stromberger limited each person’s comments to three minutes and forbade use of any student’s name. She also said the board would not respond to public comments.

“The board will listen carefully to you. We make take notes, but you will receive no verbal response from us during this meeting. If you have specific questions, you can put those in writing, direct those to the district office, and you will receive a response,” said Stromberger.

“The questions we receive tonight and via emails that may come in… we’re going to use to get better, to create a frequently asked questions section on our website to make you better aware of how we respond to difficult situations. So you can look forward to that in the near future,” she added.

Then, it was the parents’ turn. Parents politely but forcefully relayed to the school board their sense of a lack of transparency, information, and ongoing issues with bullying in the school district. Every person who spoke received applause from attendees.

Geva McAdow, parent of two elementary school children and who was the first to speak, chided the administration for lack of transparency.

“You continue to generally refuse to provide information, even the most basic facts and protocols around school threats or bullying, and we are told that this is because of student confidentiality, because violating the perpetrator’s privacy [sic],” said McAdow, as she named her sons in the school. “Does their safety come second to the privacy of the perpetrator?”

“I am not alone in believing the events of the last week call for a community meeting, not an FAQ,” McAdow concluded.

Another parent, who said she got an email from the LBHS principal at 8:17 am about the safety threat just as she was dropping her child off at school, said, “It’s not okay to be notified about a threat to the school, one that could have great impact, minutes before the start of the school day, especially when you could have notified us earlier. These decisions are too important to us as parents. We’re not willing to turn this decision over to the school alone.”

“I think the FAQs sort of exemplify this top down leadership,” she added. “I want to be in community and in discussion with all of this, not being told ‘These are the answers to the questions’ and no forum, no space to ask further questions.”

The void in communication by the school district led parents to pass information among themselves, with several presenting to the school board what they had heard about the student and similar incidents from other parents.

Several parents noted a culture of bullying in the school district.

“Kids do get bullied really bad here and my heart goes out to this kid who made this threat. God knows what’s going on in his house, in his family life that he feels so bad that he has to come to school and threaten to take another life,” said Elijah Johnson, who has a child in elementary and a child in high school.

Anne Young, who was a nationally board certified elementary school teacher for 10 years before moving to the valley five years ago with her two children, said her son experienced a culture clash when he began second grade in MVSD.

“It was a really jarring experience for him. It’s rougher. It’s tougher than where we had moved from, and the bullying and the way that the kids are treated has been concerning for me,” said Young, adding that her son felt safe during the threat situation.

Young encouraged re-adoption of curriculums to improve school culture.

Donna Plowman, whose child was threatened twice on a school bus by the student that made the shooting threats, said she felt “depleted” by top school administrators who did not respond to emails or disclose information about when the student would return.

For other parents, it was the first time they experienced fear about their child’s safety.

“What I think is happening collectively in this room is that there are a lot of people who are afraid. We love our babies more than any other humans on earth, and when I am receiving information from the school that is not detailed and comprehensive, that does not allay my fear,” said Kendal Lam, who has a child in kindergarten.

She called out administrators for not informing parents, in a short email that went out last Tuesday as school was starting, that the threat included a gun.

“It’s untenable to me that I be put in a position where I potentially indefinitely remove my daughter from school because the school is not willing to indefinitely remove a child who is a serious threat to her safety,” said Lam.

Scott Perryman, who has two children at LBHS, asked for drills in the school for these types of situations.

“As an adult, I wouldn’t know what to do right now,” he said. “If I was walking down a classroom or walking down the aisle as a kid at 13 years old and all this is going on, what am I gonna think about?”

Korrie Bourn, who has two children in elementary school, asked administrators to share the name of the student with teachers who, according to parents’ reports, were unaware of the situation.

“We don’t want to make our kids grow up that fast, but to deny that this is the reality we live in is to be ill-prepared for what happened,” she said.

Annie Carlton, who has elementary and middle school students in the district, said her son received more communication about the incident than she did. Carlton said her son’s teacher and Wilbur spoke to his class, but her son had difficulty relaying information that had been shared at school.

“I didn’t know how to talk to him because I didn’t know what was already shared with him,” said Carlton. “The email that came to the parents and the communication that was happening at school needs to be the same communication.”

“He knew it was a shooting threat before I knew,” said Carlton.

Another community member, who is an Educational Service District contractor with the school district, said she learned about the threat from Little Star School, where her children attend.

“As a support staff, I had no idea. I got an email from Little Star saying there was a threat,” she said.

Several parents said there was confusion about two emails that were received within 12 hours of each other that were actually separate incidents. One involved a threat made by an LBHS student toward protesters in Twisp and another was made toward the school by another student.

Steph Bennett, a parent of two children, said she was at a loss about what happened due to the vague email.

“I honestly thought we were talking about the same incident, about what happened during midwinter break, and that was really concerning to me when I dropped my son off on Tuesday and I see a sheriff car driving in, and then I start getting emails and text messages from other members of the community, and I don’t like playing the telephone game with people,” she said. “I want to be able to hear it from all of you. I want to trust you and I want to trust that my kids are safe.”

“I do want my son and my daughter to keep coming to school here and it was really sh*** for the first time in my life to actually think about pulling my kids out of public school,” she said.

“It was hard initially to decipher that it was two different situations,” said York Marble, a parent of two students in the district. She also inquired about reintegration protocol for the alleged perpetrator if he returns to MVSD.

There were few praises for the district’s handling of the situation, but school board director Jennifer Zbyzsewski told Darwood after the public comment period, “You did it perfectly.”

School Board Director Frank Kline also praised the administration’s handling of the situation.

“You guys were burning it at both ends,” he said.

Venable said neither school administrators nor the school board currently have any plans for a community forum or a two-way conversation between themselves and the community. Venable’s full statement to MVE is as follows:

“At present, our focus remains on ensuring the safety and security of our students and staff. We continue to work in collaboration with law enforcement and within the structure of the judicial system. As we move forward through the process, step by step, including a comprehensive debrief process, we’ll give consideration to the feedback we’ve received, and communicate the next steps, including opportunities for parent involvement.”