“Several individuals” have been placed on leave at North Elementary School, while the investigation that has already led to the suspensions of the principal and vice principal continues, the district said Wednesday.
“We are deep in the midst of looking into the situation at North,” Monongalia Schools Superintendent Eddie Campbell Jr. said.
“And we’ve seen some things that we needed to take action on — at least during the course of the investigation.”
That’s while the board announced Feb. 14 in a letter to North’s community that Principal Natalie Webb and Carol Muniz, assistant principal, were being temporarily relieved of their duties following “an incident” there.
Said incident may have occurred some days before, in a classroom housing five students on the autism spectrum.
Autumn Wise, whose 8-year-old son is one of those students, took to the public comment portion of Mon’s Board of Education meeting Tuesday night to chide Campbell for what she said was an unwillingness to be fully forthcoming.
That incident — and maybe a series of incidents, she said — caused the marked change in her son’s behavior in late January, she told the board.
“My child hasn’t slept a full night since Jan. 26, before the letter came out,” Wise said.
During one stretch he was awake for 29 hours straight, she said, and now he’s fearful and doesn’t want to go to school.
On Feb. 17, as she pulled into the parking lot of the school on Chestnut Ridge Road, he drew himself into a fetal position and wouldn’t get out the car, she said.
She doesn’t know if he was victimized, or if he witnessed a classmate being victimized, she said, and he lacks the cognitive capacity to tell her.
“He’s basically nonverbal,” she said.
She’s waiting to view security camera footage, but she doesn’t know what it will yield, given an arcane policy, she said in a hallway, after addressing Campbell and the board.
“There is audio and video surveillance in autism classrooms,” Wise said.
However, there’s also a bureaucratic-tech caveat attached.
“Per state regulations, if the camera was installed or did not have any upgrade prior to April 1, 2022, they are only required to retain footage for 90 days,” she said.
“Someone has to watch that footage for a whopping 15 minutes every 90 days,” she continued.
“These cameras do no one any good if there is no one there to watch them, as these are children who do not have a voice.”
Campbell said he instructed North’s interim principal Corey DeHaas to reach out to her and the other parents of the students in that classroom, to reassure them.
“First and foremost, we wanted to let them know that their kids are safe,” the superintendent said.
“This is something we do any time there’s a personnel change in a classroom,” he said.
“That gets more critical when it’s a parent whose child has a higher level of need.”
Wise, meanwhile, wasn’t the only North parent who spoke at the meeting.
Jolene Downs praised the school for its diverse student population, and its lessons of tolerance and empathy that go with that, she said.
North, more often than not, becomes the academic home for the children of international families who come here from across the globe for jobs at WVU and NIOSH, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.
More than 50 native languages are spoken at North, which employs two faculty members certified to teach English as a Second Language.
Such diversity, Downs said, in a place not necessarily known for it, can only make for a rich experience.
“My son’s friends don’t look like him,” Downs said.
“Since he was young, he’s known what a hijab is, and how important it is to be respectful of that.”
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