At the August 23, 2012 REACH Open House at Clyde Hamrick, I had a discussion with one of Fox’s former administrators about some of the issues going on in our district.
Our discussion occurred just days after I had received a cease and desist letter from Fox's law firm threatening me with legal action if I didn’t stop talking to administrators and former administrators as well as school board members at Fox about Section 504 issues and other issues such as in person and online bullying.
The former administrator's response really hit a nerve. Especially since I had just received the cease and desist letter days before which I mentioned during our discussion as well.
The discussion also inspired me to write an article about a Dear Colleague letter on Retaliation Law issued by the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights in 2013.
The former administrator told me:
"You should pick your battles and I don't think this is one of them you should fight. You've got to think about your parents. This is your home. You don't need to be doing battle here. You should let someone else do it. It's because of who you are and who your family is as to why you shouldn't fight this battle."
I took that as a challenge. The cease and desist letter also fueled my efforts to bring about change in our school district. And, it reminded me of when our former superintendent, Dianne Brown (Critchlow) called my dad into her office to talk about our complaint.
Bullying In the St. Louis Post Dispatch
I was already determined to bring about changes at Fox after Fox and their law firm had an article published in the Post Dispatch in August 2010.
The article's intent was to bully us for filing a complaint with ED OCR. The online title of the article was not the same as the print article. The online article title referenced the 504 Plan as a "Special Status".
The article incited online comments directed at me and my family, including death threats which the Post Dispatch refused to remove from their website. I forwarded the comments to ED OCR and USDA OCR since they were clearly harassing and retaliation for filing complaints with ED OCR and USDA OCR.
The article mentioned the cost of legal fees. The article failed to mention the fact that when the district removes a 504 Plan, your only options, if you disagree with the school's decision are to file for Due Process, file a civil suit against the district in a court of law or file a complaint with the Office for Civil Rights. The article also failed to mention the fact that we were going to withdraw from the Due Process Hearing so Fox's attorneys decided to file Due Process against us so Fox could settle the disagreement.
PD Article Failed To Document District Wide Compliance Review Investigation
The 2010 Post Dispatch article failed to note important information that they showed us during our interview such as their discovery of the March 2010 District Wide Compliance Review investigation of Fox.
Then there was the privacy issue with Missouri DESE
When I was first contacted by the Post Dispatch to interview me for an article, I asked the reporter how she had gotten my name. It immediately threw up red flags considering we were preparing for a Due Process Hearing with Fox. The timing was not a coincidence.
The reporter explained to me that the Post Dispatch made a Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) request with ED OCR to see if there had been any complaints filed against any school districts in our state for students with life threatening food allergies. I'm sure that's something that reporters do all the time. She told me that our complaint was the only one. First, I told the reporter that any complaint filed by a parent or advocate with ED OCR is redacted and would not have identified us.
I also told the reporter that there were other complaints filed against other districts in our state filed with ED OCR by families with life threatening food allergies. Our complaint was not the only one as the reporter had claimed.
Post Dispatch Sunshine Request Leads To Contact Information
The Post Dispatch reporter went on to explain that they found our name after they made a Sunshine Request with Missouri DESE to find out if there were any emails related to the complaint. The reporter explained that our names were contained in emails between Missouri DESE and Fox but that our daughter’s name had been redacted out of the emails.
Missouri DESE failed to protect our identity. Or, maybe it was just really good investigative reporting by the Post Dispatch. It could also be that this was the fight that I shouldn't fight and that was the reason why.
Fox's Legal Bills Documented the Post Dispatch Article as a "press release"
So when I finally received copies of legal bills from the district in 2014 and I saw the bill from 2010 from the law firm that referenced the “press release”, it confirmed how and why the article was written.
I found other articles over the years about parents who had filed complaints filed with ED OCR in other school districts. The same tactic was used against them by the same law firm in order to bully and retaliate against them as well.
The following article from 2013, was written prior to the tracing of IP addresses to Fox C-6 administrator's homes and cell phones. It covers the Dear Colleague Letter sent out to all school districts in the U.S. in 2013.
For some reason, the Kansas City U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights has had a lot of trouble recognizing retaliation against parents in our region. It makes a person wonder just how much documentation is needed before it's considered retaliation. Perhaps online defamatory comments traced to administrator homes and cease and desist letters by the school district's law firm isn't enough documentation.
Or, perhaps the KC ED OCR office just didn't have time to read the Dear Colleague Letter regarding harassment and retaliation due to the backlog of complaints in their office.