The investigation of an incident last month at North Elementary that led to sanctions against the school’s principal and vice principal was completed last week, Monongalia Schools Superintendent Eddie Campbell Jr. said Wednesday.
“We should be coming to a close soon,” the superintendent said.
“We’re expecting the written report really, in the next day or so.”
That’s the report being drafted by Heather L. Hutchens, a Charleston attorney and former general counsel of the West Virginia Department of Education who finished up interviews with North staffers this past Friday.
“She’s independent from us, yet she knows how school systems work,” Campbell said.
All of the above stemmed from an “incident” – or perhaps a series of them – said to have occurred in a classroom housing five students on the autism spectrum.
In a Feb. 14 letter to the North community, Campbell said Natalie Webb and Carol Muniz, the school’s principal and vice principal, were being placed on administrative leave pending the investigation.
The Dominion Post obtained a copy of that letter three days after it was circulated.
In the days after the letter, a number of other employees of the school on Chestnut Ridge Road were also handed the same sanctions, while the attorney did her work.
Autumn Wise, spoke out about the situation during a meeting Feb. 28 of the Monongalia Board of Education.
Wise, whose 8-year-old son is one of the students in that classroom, chided Campbell and board members not being fully forthcoming in the immediate days following the event, or events at the school.
“What I have an issue with is the lack of transparency for parents,” she said then.
She began noticing marked changes in her son’s behavior in late January, when he became fretful and agitated, and didn’t want to go to school, she said.
“My child has not slept a full night since Jan. 26, before the letter came out,” she said then. “Before everything.”
She said during the meeting that she didn’t know if her son was victimized, or witnessed a classmate being victimized – and he is unable to tell her.
Wise didn’t return a social media message asking for comment in time for this report.
Wise was told she would able to review video surveillance footage from her classroom, a service offered to any Mon Schools parent, for any reason, at district’s central offices in Sabraton. Advance notice is necessary for the privacy of other students.
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