It’s hard to believe that it’s only been 10 years since I spoke during public comments at the January 15, 2013 BOE meeting and told Fox C-6 administrators and Fox's BOE:
“It is my hope that you respect others in our community that may speak at this evening’s school board meeting and that the individuals in our school community refrain from making defamatory comments in online forums in the coming days as has been done to me after I have spoken at previous school board meetings.
Those who are making the defamatory comments have no business teaching our children, running our school, etc. if they are employees of our school district. I believe that they are, because no one other than those present in this room at those past board meetings had knowledge of who was present and what was said. They are simply playground bullies.
Our district has a no bullying policy but it appears that it does not apply to school officials.”
I pointed this out to Fox’s BOE in 2013 because this type of behavior had been going on since December 2010 when I made my first Public Comment at a Fox C-6 BOE meeting.
There were only 7 visitors in attendance at the Fox's December 2010 BOE meeting.
Online harassment began prior to my speaking at the December 2010 BOE meeting. It began in August 2010, when Fox issued a “press release” in the St. Louis Post Dispatch with the help of Fox’s law firm as noted in Fox’s legal bills that I obtained in 2014 via a Sunshine Law request.
And, the Post Dispatch editor refused to remove those threatening comments that were posted on the “press release” article because of freedom of speech. The threatening comments and other nasty comments were made because we had filed complaints against Fox with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights.
In May 2014, it became public knowledge from a lawsuit that the defamatory comments posted online in 2012 and 2013 had been traced to the homes of Fox C-6 administrators and a retired assistant principal who was an assistant soccer coach when I played on the Fox High soccer team.
The online comments should have raised red flags for the Kansas City ED OCR attorneys who were conducting a District Wide Compliance Review investigation of Fox to determine whether or not Fox was providing Individualized Health Care Plans (IHPs) to students with disabilities instead of Section 504 Accommodation Plans.
Retaliation or harassment against anyone who files a complaint with ED OCR is a violation of Section 504 law. It’s posted in the Resolution Agreement.
All told, it took the KC ED OCR office 8 years to conduct an investigation to find out if Fox was providing IHPs instead of 504 Accommodation Plans. KC ED OCR already knew they were doing so when they removed our daughter's 504 Accommodation Plan in September 2008 and provided an IHP instead.
As a comparison to the KC ED OCR investigation, it only took the Atlanta ED OCR office 2 years to conduct the exact same investigation of the Memphis City School District which had 107,000 students in March 2010 when that investigation was opened.
Since the KC ED OCR office decided to ignore how Fox was handling Section 504 in the district prior to 2015, it was easy to see why Fox C-6 administrators weren’t held accountable for the actions and why it wasn’t documented in OCR’s March 2018 Resolution Agreement and Letter to Fox. Therefore giving a false impression that Fox was properly following the law.
The KC ED OCR supervisory attorney who reopened the investigation in the spring of 2015 which was originally opened in March 2010, told me during our 2020 phone conversation that ED OCR ignored what had happened at Fox prior to 2015 because “people had moved on” and “it was before my time”. It gives the appearance that school districts are above the law according to the KC ED OCR office because they just look the other way.
Fox is the perfect example of how difficult it can be to get your school district to change and do things like they do in other school districts like post bill payments and board meeting packets online or audio and/or video recording BOE meetings and posting them online for the community. Of course Fox does that sort of thing now, but it took years of requesting them to do so before it actually occurred. It did not happen while Dianne was superintendent. Or, at least not until the very end of her tenure. When I asked for copies of the credit card statements, it led to the very quick departure of Fox's CFO at the time.
I ended up making 22 public comments at Fox C-6 BOE meetings between December 2010 and June 2016.
Sometimes requests for change aren't well received by administrators and/or school board members when things are going on in your school district that they don’t want you to know about or when your BOE is doing a poor job of oversight.
It's a lot easier for the community to help oversee the district and ask questions when information is available to the public.
I also have to point out how disappointed I was when I watched the video after last year's graduation when I saw a Fox C-6 BOE member make a celebratory gesture after switching places with Fox's BOE president, so she could hand our son his diploma.
Hopefully this type of behavior won't happen again at this year’s graduation. Other people noticed it too when I pointed it out to them on the Family Arena video of the graduation ceremony. Perhaps someday, Fox will live up to being a National District of Character.