The Boston faculty committee on Thursday voted 5-0, with one abstention, to shut the Mission Hill K-8 School in Jamaica Plain, the place youngsters as younger as 5 allegedly have been victims of bullying and bodily and sexual abuse by different college students.
“I believe this decision, as painful as it is, puts our district on a path toward healing,” stated faculty committee chair Jeri Robinson. “The safety, health and well-being of our students must remain our top priority. We have a lot of work to do to rebuild trust with our families, and together, we can emerge from this a stronger district.”
Superintendent Brenda Cassellius had advisable that the varsity be shuttered in June after she employed the Boston regulation agency Hinkley Allen final fall to analyze the allegations.
In a lately launched, 189-page report, investigators concluded Mission Hill was “a failed school, one that largely hid behind its autonomous status and the philosophical ideals of (two administrators), often to the detriment of the Boston Public School students it served.”
“Far too many children were harmed…despite new school leadership,” Casselllius stated.
But Edith Bazile, founder and government director of Black Advocates for Educational Excellence, stated Cassellius was not with out blame as a result of she was superintendent for 3 of the roughly seven years the abuse allegedly went on.
“As mandated reporters of suspected child abuse and neglect, she and her administration should immediately have intervened,” Bazile stated. “Instead, while the law firm was investigating, the abuse was still continuing.”
Hinkley Allen’s report cited one youngster – recognized solely as Mission Hill, or MH, Student 1 – who repeatedly sexually abused different college students in a one-person lavatory and elsewhere within the faculty. Rather than instantly reporting the incidents to the state Department of Children and Families, as required by regulation, workers initially urged placing bells on the toilet door, stationing an intern outdoors the toilet or having two adults accompany Student 1 always.
These actions led to “troubling patterns of unsafe sexual behavior, bullying and physical violence to continue unabated,” the report stated.
Staff who tried to intervene and report the suspected abuse have been met with retaliation by faculty directors, the report stated.
Investigators additionally discovered that the varsity operated its personal electronic mail server, and firstly of the investigation, the emails of the varsity chief and different workers members have been deleted.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”