Students, parents again call on Norwalk school board to take action against bullying
George ShillcockStudent and parent activists again called on the Norwalk Community School District's school board at a Monday meeting to change how the district addresses discriminatory bullying of minority students and how the district teaches diversity.
Josie Mulvihill, her mother, Mindi Mulvihill, and two other students addressed the board during the public forum portion of Monday's meeting. Josie, who is a senior at Norwalk, Crow VanKerckvoorde, who is a eighth-grader, and Eleanor Cole, who is an sophomore, each told board members about being targets of racist, homophobic and sexist bullying by teachers and other students in the district.
"Students come to you with complaints, with stories — with their truth about what's happening — and you're failing them because they don't see any change," Mulvihill said.
VanKerckvoorde said they and their friend group are bullied and called homophobic slurs by other classmates and pointed to studies about suicide rates among minority and LGBTQ people that are influenced by racist and homophobic bullying and not being accepted by society.
"I've come with this information in the hope that the board will start to care a little more," they said. "We need to pay attention to (LGBTQ) people and make school a real safe space for them."
Cole spoke briefly in support of what Mulvihill had told the board while adding that she and her friends have been slut-shamed and bullied by teachers and other students.
Last week, Mulvihill and a dozen other demonstrators interrupted a school board special meeting to tell the board members about racist, homophobic and sexist bullying that they say happens regularly in the district. A public forum was not part of that meeting and the students were told several times by board members and Magee that they would not be allowed to speak and would need to address the board during Monday's meeting.
Magee said last week that the allegations would be reviewed by the school but declined to comment on the status of that investigation Monday, arguing school disciplinary records are sealed under Iowa law. Mindi Mulvihill, however, confirmed to the Register that an investigator had been assigned to look into the allegations.
After speaking out at last week's special board meeting, Mulvihill also participated in a protest at the Iowa Capitol, where she was arrested and charged with assaulting a police officer, a serious misdemeanor.
Mulvihill has so far declined to comment on her arrest.
Students' first priority: Reforming the system for filing bullying complaints
Mulvihill told board members Monday that the board's work to prevent bullying and rewrite the district's curriculum around racism and diversity should start with improving the system students use to submit complaints about bullying on campus and having the district make it more widely available and the process more transparent.
Mulvihill said the district does not advertise the proper way to report bullying aside from having it in the student handbook. She said students just don't know what to do when bullying happens.
Magee, who, along with the rest of the board, largely sat silent for the majority of the public forum, argued that the district follows state law when it comes to dealing with reported incidents.
The school's bullying and harassment policies are outlined both online and physically in the student handbook.
He said staff are required by state law to go through annual training on bullying and harassment, and that students participate in the Leader In Me program, which broadly addresses bullying.
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Mulvihill argued the district offers little to no seminars or training for students on what to do when they are bullied.
"We always have a challenge, as a school district, to make sure that, whether its board policies or provisions, that people are aware of them," Magee responded.
According to data provided by Magee, there have only been 22 formal complaints and 46 informal complaints submitted to the district by students about bullying or harassment since 2018.
Of the formal complaints, only four were determined to be founded; 13 were determined to be unfounded, one was inconclusive, and four were later withdrawn.
Mulvihill said the numbers aren't representative of how much bullying actually occurs in the district because students aren't reporting incidents, don't understand how to report and often choose not to report because they don't believe the system will do anything.
"People think that 'this is just what teenagers do — it's just bullying.' But this is a crime," she said.
Both Josie and her mother argued the district should handle the issue more aggressively, pointing to what they called a "zero-tolerance policy" at West Des Moines' Valley High School as an example of a better approach.
"The (Norwalk district's) complaint form is a joke," Mindi Mulvihill said.
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Students argue the school's curriculum needs rewriting, too
Josie Mulvihill said Monday that the district also needs to change the curriculum that's being taught at every grade level.
Mulvihill, her mother and Cole said students are not taught about slavery, the holocaust or diversity in the right way, leadsing to students believing it's okay to use racial slurs, display hate symbols or misunderstand history.
Mulvihill said students are taught to list both the pros and cons of slavery, that slavery was not the main cause of the Civil War and said some students are taught that Nazi Germany-era concentration camps were "training camps" rather than places where Jewish people were killed in mass.
She said bullying also prevents students from learning the curriculum effectively.
"There are so many of us who don't feel safe. It is hard to come to school to learn effectively when you don't feel safe," she said. "You're too focused on making sure you aren't assaulted, making sure you aren't violated, making sure that people aren't hurling slurs or slut-shaming you."
After the public forum portion of the meeting, the school board discussed curriculum, the certified 2021-2022 budget and a presentation on the end-of-year report from the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference.
The board originally planned to hold a groundbreaking ceremony for a new $24 million physical education center Monday, but that event was postponed.
George Shillcock is the Register's Des Moines southern suburbs reporter. He can be reached at GShillcock@registermedia.com and on Twitter at @ShillcockGeorge.