Virginia charges school district did little to stop bullying of disabled students

From the Vienna Connection in Virginia:

On the first day of his senior year at South County Secondary School, Cory Nelson introduced himself to a fourth-period automotive technology class. Almost immediately, another student blurted out "retard," prompting the rest of the room to break out in snickers.

This was the inauspicious beginning to the 2008 school year. It was only the afternoon of Sept. 2 and Cory was already dealing with a room full of students laughing at him, he thought at the time.

Cory, 18, was all too familiar with teasing and school bullies.

At the end of the previous academic year, Cory’s parents had pulled him out of school two weeks early because of harassment from other students.

A handful of boys, some now in Cory’s senior year auto class, had been threatening to beat up Cory. One had even posted a comment on the social networking site MySpace about hiding out in the school bathroom, waiting to ambush Cory with a group of people.

"Cory was so afraid of being jumped, that when he had a final exam outside in the trailers, he asked that we pull our car as close as possible to the trailer to ensure that he got in safely," wrote Alberta Nelson, Cory’s mother, in a statement to state education officials this year.

Alberta and her husband Bernard Nelson, a homicide detective in Prince George’s County, Md., had hoped the bullying situation would improve during Cory’s senior year. But their son’s problems ended up going from bad to worse during his final year of high school, which the Nelsons blame on South County administrators and teachers.

The family said the school staff did not take their son’s harassment seriously, sometimes implying Cory’s parents were overreacting or that their son wasn’t being truthful.

"The system has definitely failed our son, and it failed us as parents," wrote Alberta and Bernard in a letter about Fairfax County Public Schools to the Virginia Department of Education.

In July, the state education department took the unusual step of siding with the Nelsons and blaming FCPS for Cory’s predicament. Typically, parents and students find it very difficult to prove that school staff has not done enough to curtail harassment and officials usually rule in favor of the accused school district, said Lisa Fagan, an attorney who worked on behalf of the Nelson family.

But in the case of Cory and South County, the agency reprimanded Fairfax County Public Schools for violating state and federal regulations.

They said Fairfax schools failed to provide Cory with a "free and appropriate education," largely because South County staff did not do enough to investigate Cory’s claims of harassment or put an end to the intimidation.

FCPS tried to reverse the decision, but also lost an appeal of the case.

"I was told by the Virginia Department of Education that it was really hard to win a disability harassment case so we are very, very pleased," said Alberta.

Students with disabilities are particularly vulnerable to harassment, according to the school system’s own advisory committee on students with disabilities. In the advisory committee’s 2009 report listed "bullying of children with disabilities" as one of the most prevalent and pervasive issues the group’s members encounter.

"In many cases, these problems have occurred with alarming frequency in both elementary and secondary schools. The committee is very concerned that the rights of students with disabilities are being violated … and their access to the education available to their non-disabled peers compromised," the advisory members wrote in the report.

"That is a nationwide problem. … Kids need to be taught that [bullying of students with disabilities] is not an acceptable behavior," said School Board member Tessie Wilson (Braddock).

According to Wilson, FCPS has implemented at least two programs to address the problem of bullying, including bullying of students with disabilities. She said the programs have yielded some improvements in student interactions, particularly at the elementary school level.

The South County staff at best, seemed to ignore the harassment and also accused Corey of lying about the situation or his parents of overreacting, said Fagan.

"The adults involved have just refused to do anything about it. I think the whole thing could have been resolved if they had just looked into it. To the extent that they paid attention, they just blamed Cory for everything," said Fagan, a Herndon resident who is also a member of the Fairfax County School Board’s advisory committee on students with disabilities.

Both the Virginia officials who made the initial ruling in Cory’s favor and the legal expert in charge of reviewing Fairfax’s appeal, Krysia Nelson of Charlottesville, also sided with Cory and his family against the school system.

"FCPS simply glosses over the fact that the student completed his senior year on homebound – the most restrictive placement there is and one that physically removes the student from the school building, [as a result of the harassment]" wrote Krysia Nelson in her ruling.

EVEN BEFORE the end of the first semester in 2008, other students in Cory’s auto technology class had made him so uncomfortable that he dropped the course altogether, despite wanting a career as an auto mechanic.

A few months later, South County agreed to let Cory finish his last few months of high school at home, after his doctor became concerned about the amount of stress and anxiety attending South County was putting on the teenager.

"I could no longer attend school, and in order for me to go to my graduation rehearsal and to the senior field trip, one of my parents had to make sure that I was safe. Being 18 years old, it is very embarrassing to have your parent go to your graduation rehearsal," said Cory.

The teenager has been diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome, Tourette’s Syndrome, Attention Deficit Disorder, anxiety and a learning disability. He can be gullible and naive, sometimes even childlike, because of his conditions, said his mother.

"Corey has classmates at South County Secondary School, not friends. The students took advantage of Cory’s kindness and disability. They wanted Cory to believe they were his friends, in reality they were not," wrote Alberta in a letter to the state education department.

Yet Fairfax County schools, including several South County staff members, spent much of their written defense characterizing Cory as a normal, slightly immature, high school student with overprotective, reactionary parents.

"Staff interviewed consistently described Corey’s overall participation in the South County Secondary School community as that of a typical adolescent," noted Fairfax schools in the system’s rebuttal.

Cory’s "normal behavior" caused several South County staff members to question whether Cory was really being bullied to the extent his parents claimed. South County staff members often observed Cory in a good mood and socializing with other students. Contrary to what Cory’s mother said, some South County staff members claimed Cory had "lots of friends."

"When interviewed, staff consistently described Cory’s demeanor across all settings within the school, including hallways, cafeteria and classrooms, as that of a happy teenager, comfortable in his environment," wrote Kim Dockery, assistant superintendent for Fairfax schools in the system’s defense.

The school system also said it seemed odd that Cory would choose to participate in senior class activities like prom, his class trip and graduation if he was under as much emotional stress as his parents claimed. But Alberta points out that his father accompanied him to these activities, to make sure Cory wasn’t harassed.

State education officials countered that Cory and his parents had made some rather extreme decisions if the bullying, indeed, was not having a significant impact on the student’s well being.

In addition to dropping out of Auto technology class, previously his favorite subject, and opting to finish high school at home, doctors increased one of Cory’s anti-anxiety medications.

Cory’s mother said her son was tardy or missed class — more than 50 times — on purpose to avoid his bullies and to attend additional doctors appointments that he needed as a result of increased stress.

"[T]he record supports that the peer-to-peer harassment continued and was pervasive enough to have impacted on Cory’s ability to attend classes and receive his special education and related services," wrote officials in the Virginia education department official findings.

In particular, the Virginia education department decided that South County staff had not done enough to keep Cory in his auto mechanic class.

Cory’s "individual education plan" — a blueprint of specific, individualized education goals drawn up for each student with disabilities — called for him to receive auto technology certification by his high school graduation, since he was interested in being a professional auto mechanic.

Now, as part of a compromise between the Nelsons and the school system, Fairfax will have to cover the cost an alternative path to auto technology certification, such as a class at Northern Virginia Community College or another high school.

"Instead of working at Giant [Food], he could be an automotive engineer and make a lot more money," said Alberta.

"I am still very interested in working with cars," said Cory, who currently works at a grocery store and had a difficult time finding a job.

The Virginis education department is also requiring Fairfax County Public Schools to provide more training to South County teachers and administrators on how to identify disability harassment and what its implications might be.

In the state’s written explanation of the ruling, education officials repeatedly found the Nelson’s perspective of specific events more reasonable than that offered by South County staff, particularly when it came to assertions of Cory’s well being or the validity of the Nelson’s concerns.

On several occasions, South County staff members, in sworn statements to the education department, stated that they could not verify whether Cory’s stories about being bullied were true, since the accused students often told staff members the exact opposite, that Cory was threatening them.

Cory’s mother, Alberta, responded that common sense would cause most people to question why her son, at 5-foot-7 and 120 pounds, would have been threatening to beat up five to six much larger students as one teacher claimed, especially since Cory had a nearly spotless disciplinary record during his previous six years at the school.

"The Virginia Department of Education’s point … is that Fairfax County Public Schools is under an obligation to respond to the student – his perceptions and feelings – rather than dismissing the student’s perceptions and feelings as inaccurate, misplaced or unjustified. Fairfax County Public Schools perception of the situation is simply irrelevant," wrote Krysia Nelson in her legal opinion of the case.

Fagan said South County administrators concerns that the extra training with Fairfax’s anti-bullying team would tarnish South County’s reputation were absurd, since most, if not all, schools have some element of bullying taking place in them.

"This is an example of what really goes on in schools. Why in the world would the school system have a whole bullying prevention team if it wasn’t needed?" said Fagan.

"When this whole thing started, we asked them to bring in the bullying prevention team. The fact that they wouldn’t work with [the bullying prevention team] and wouldn’t do anything was the real problem. You have a whole department in the school system that is dedicated to doing this but you won’t access it?" she added.

Many high schools and secondary schools bring in the bullying prevention team too train their staff on a regular basis, so their administrators and faculty can be up-to-date on anti-bullying strategies, said Clarence Jones, coordinator of the school system’s student safety and wellness office, which runs the program.

"The majority of schools will bring us in as a preventative measure. If a school asks us to come in and do some training, we see it as a proactive measure," said Jones.

Like most, if not all, schools districts in the United States, Fairfax County struggles with bullying, said Jones, adding that there are probably incidents of bullying that occur on every one of the county’s campuses.

"Does bullying occur in our schools? Yes it does. Bullying has been around for thousands of years and I think it is going to be around for 1,000 more years. But it is definitely improving and we are starting to see more of a decrease now that people are educated themselves about it," said Jones.