If you have children in the American public school system, it’s time to take them out.
Regular readers of The Western Journal are already well aware of that truth, given our repeated coverage of the systemic problems endemic to public schooling and the complete lack of interest on the part of government officials to address them.
But if you’re new to the subject, a lawsuit filed on Dec. 15 in Suffolk Superior Court against Boston Public Schools and other defendants serves as a pretty good exemplar.
“This action arises from a series of sexual assaults upon then nine-year-old Child Doe while on her privately operated public-school bus,” the first line of the complaint and demand for jury trial reads.
According to the suit, Child Doe was repeatedly assaulted over the course of seven months by a student who was only two years older.
Where were the adults charged with preventing this kind of thing from happening, you might naturally ask.
“The sexual assaults took place just a few feet from the bus monitor and the bus driver on the way home after school from the Match Charter Public School,” the suit alleges.
That driver and monitor are both named defendants in the suit, as are Boston Public Schools, The Match Foundation, the City of Boston, and Transdev Services, which contracted with the city to provide transportation for students, according to the suit.
The driver’s and monitor’s names were known to the plaintiff — Jane Doe, on behalf of her child — but were withheld in the suit for privacy, the filing said.
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The suit claims that Child Doe sat “in close proximity” to the bus monitor, but that did not prevent her from becoming the victim of “numerous rapes and indecent assaults and batteries.”
The unnamed “Perpetrator” allegedly threatened Child Doe with “physical violence” if she reported the abuse, but she told two friends about the assaults, the suit says, and it was the friends who alerted authorities.
Boston Mayor Michelle Wu claimed that she was essentially powerless to address the issue, claiming — apparently falsely — that Child Doe did not attend a public school, according to WFXT.
“It is difficult because we don’t have the full authority to take action, when it comes to students that are not Boston public school students,” she claimed. “They don’t go to BPS, even if they are Boston residents and are connected to some of the charter schools or other schools that use the BPS buses for transportation.”
Match, however, is a charter school, which is publicly funded. In fact, the full name of the school is “Match Charter Public School,” which its website describes as “an innovative, high-performing free public school in Boston.”
Moreover, Boston Public Schools told WFXT that it requires all of its buses to have video cameras installed, but that it was unable to retrieve the footage involving Child Doe because of the time between the incidents and their reporting, acknowledging that it provided transportation to the child while simultaneously attempting to distance itself from her allegations.
In fact, WFXT’s report shows a number of officials, all of whom have some level of responsibility for the safety of schoolchildren, each blaming someone else for these incidents — and none of them denying that they occurred.
BPS blames Match; Match blames Transdev; Mayor Wu blames Jane Doe for having the audacity to remove her child from the mainstream school system in which, according to Niche, only 22 percent of students are operating at grade level in math and only 33 percent in reading.
Regardless of whether you consider a charter school a public school or not — people of good conscience disagree on that point — the fact remains that charter schools are required to follow at least some of the policies of the public system, and this suit alleges that it was the failure of the various entities involved to do that that led to this horrific tragedy.
“Our lawsuit alleges that it was the failure of Boston Public Schools and Transdev to follow their policies that directly led to this young child’s assault,” attorneys Nina Bonelli and Alexander Zodikoff told WFXT.
“Our client will experience a childhood haunted by trauma and flashbacks, and we will do everything in our power to hold the defendants accountable and prevent anything like this from happening to another child in our city.”
Actually, forget what I said before. It’s not time to remove your kids from the public school system; that time came and went a long time ago.
