This article by Aaron Calvin first appeared in the News & Citizen on Nov. 30.
Following accounts from a parent that her child was allegedly stabbed during high school at Peoples Academy and a contentious Thanksgiving week school board meeting, Lamoille South Supervisory Union superintendent Ryan Heraty and the Elmore-Morristown school board have pushed back on the narrative that the incident was dealt with inappropriately and schools are unsafe.
In early November, Peoples Academy High School parent Mindy Marshall, an Elmore resident, shared accusations of what she characterized as a mishandling and a lack of transparency by school officials after she said her son was stabbed by another student at the school.
Marshall acknowledged that the incident was “not completely intentional,” but was adamant that the student who possessed the knife at school has a history of violence.
Last Tuesday, following a contentious Elmore-Morristown school board meeting, superintendent Ryan Heraty and board chair David Bickford published an open letter to the community alleging that Marshall’s account in a newspaper article contained a “great deal of misinformation that should be corrected and clarified.”
That article mostly detailed Marshall’s account of the incident that resulted in her son’s injury and what she called the Elmore-Morristown Unified Union school board’s “nonchalance” in dealing with it. In the same story, Heraty, who requested that questions be sent via email, responded with a paragraph-long statement.
While the district said details have been withheld out of respect for the privacy laws of students, it decided to attempt to correct the record “due to the harm being caused by social media and the recent news article.”
Heraty and Bickford pushed back on Marshall’s contention that her son had been stabbed. They acknowledged that a student brought a knife to the school, saying that is “never acceptable,” but contended that the knife wielder simply took it out of his bag to show it to other students when Marshall’s son inadvertently threw his arms back, resulting in the knife going through his hand.
“The board unanimously agreed this was not an intentional act which multiple witnesses confirmed. The police also determined there was no malicious intent and it was not a criminal act,” Heraty and Bickford wrote. “This was an unfortunate situation and most definitely a result of a very poor decision.
Morristown Police Department chief Jason Luneau previously confirmed that the department responded to the incident and that the Lamoille County State’s Attorney’s office declined to pursue criminal charges.
School officials also called disciplinary action against the student “significant,” including a month-long suspension from school.
After the letter was sent out to the school community, Marshall contended the district left out significant information concerning previous threats she alleged the student made against her son, including holding the knife to his throat.
Heraty also shared results of a student safety survey that has been conducted since 2017. The number of students reporting they felt “rarely/never” safe at school from 2017 through 2019 never rose higher than 7 percent. In the pandemic-addled 2020 year, when students were rarely at school, the number fell to nearly 3 percent, before going up to 5 percent in 2021 and rising in 2022 to nearly 10 percent.
According to the same survey, the number of students who felt physically unsafe in the district’s schools fell again to just over 3 percent in 2023.
Raucous reaction
Heraty and Bickford acknowledge that their letter is a direct response to the newspaper article and Marshall’s account of the incident on social media, but also the raucous and rowdy public comment period of the Nov. 20 Elmore-Morristown school board meeting.
At the meeting, a small group of parents — including Marshall, her husband Eric Marshall, who is a volunteer firefighter with the Morristown Fire Department, and several other people who can be identified as volunteers for the department and neighboring departments — dressed the board down regarding the stabbing incident and other alleged incidents of bullying and violence at Peoples Academy High School and Middle Level.
While Marshall reiterated many of her concerns at the meeting about the school district’s response to the severity of her son’s injury and a lack of communication about the incident, others personally berated school officials and used expletive-laden speech.
One parent suggested that his child should bring a gun to school to ensure their safety. Another complained of students being told to “kill themselves” and bullied with an allegedly inadequate response from the school.
“There are times when decisions are made with information that we have that people do not agree with,” Bickford said at the meeting. “Oftentimes, when they do not have that information, they do not make the same decision that we make, and we make decisions that are in the best interest of all kids, and that’s how we operate.”
In one moment that illustrated the tension between the public and school officials, Heraty was accused of smirking during one parent’s account of alleged violence at his schools.
When Heraty addressed the accusation that he didn’t take issue of school violence seriously, calling it potentially damaging to his reputation, a member of the crowd jeered at him.
Other parents called for the expulsion of the student who brought the knife to school, which Bickford and Heraty responded to in their public statement.
“After several meetings and reviewing a great deal of information, the board did not feel that was an appropriate response and other measures were put in place the board felt were more supportive for both students involved. Expulsions do not always make a school safer and have shown very detrimental long-term effects,” the officials wrote.
While Marshall said she has not lobbied directly to expel the senior-level student who injured her son, she said perhaps “a public school wasn’t the best one for a kid who, at that age, thinks it’s acceptable to bring a knife” to school.
Communication issues
Marshall acknowledged that the discussion at the school board meeting — her first — was not a particularly productive one. Heraty agreed.
“The format and strict procedures that are required (per law) in a school board meeting are not conducive to open dialogue and discussion,” he said. “Federal law also prevents us from releasing consequences and sharing information that helps provide context into how a decision was made. This all can be extremely frustrating for those in attendance that are concerned with how a disciplinary incident was handled.”
A constructive community dialogue, in Heraty’s mind, would not focus on one incident but on “how to keep everyone safe” and “involve students, local mental health providers, law enforcement, business owners (and) educators.”
Marshall suggested that community anger likely comes from a lack of communication to parents involving incidents where a weapon is brought into the school.
“I think that was the biggest issue that most parents are having is that they didn’t know that this situation was going on, it was all hearsay from the hallways and kids coming home and talking about it,” Marshall said. “They just feel like it’s their right to know what’s going on inside of school, especially when it comes to weapons.”
Another aspect of the incident that went unaddressed, according to Marshall, was what she understood as the knife-owning student’s track record of alleged aggression against her son and other students and being treated differently because one of his parents is a longtime Peoples Academy teacher.
Heraty disagreed, saying, “I do not believe the decision made by the board was at all influenced by a parent being a school employee.”
At the end of the meeting, Bickford mused that a community forum centered around safety and disciplinary policies might be appropriate.
