Parents of a biracial
6th grader complain about discrimination at the Ethical Culture
Fieldston Schools. The posh private school allegedly retaliates with a false
allegation of child abuse. When the family sues, the school attacks the family
in a mass email.
The school says
everything it did was legal. But was it ethical?
By Richard Wexler, NCCPR Executive Director*
 |
| The Fieldston Middle School |
The
Fieldston School, in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, one of the Ethical
Culture Fieldston Schools (ECFS), is one of those private schools that the New
York City tabloids like to refer to as “posh” or “tony” or “ritzy.”
(
The
New York Times tends not to do this, probably because a lot of
Times journalists send their children to
Fieldston.) These adjectives tend to make alumni cringe. They also happen to be
accurate.
I know this
because I’m one of those alumni (class of 1972). My relationship with the school has always
been ambivalent. While I was there, the
school and I had a prolonged difference of opinion over which of us was underachieving.
But never in the nearly 47 years since I
graduated have I been as ashamed of Fieldston than I am right now. But not, perhaps, for the reason those who
have read about the school lately may think.
If the name
of the school seems familiar it’s probably because in March students of color
and their allies
took
over a building and locked administrators out.
The immediate cause was the failure of the
administration to respond adequately to a racist video, but that was only the
final straw.
Other concerns go far
deeper (you can
read about it
all here).
The administration agreed
to all of the student demands, and a geyser of conciliatory rhetoric has burst
forth in emails to “the school community” from the administration, particularly
Head of School Jessica Bagby.
But months
earlier, Fieldston did something far worse than the way it handled the racist
video. At least the video was initiated
by a couple of students. The earlier incident involves actions of staff and administrators,
including Bagby. And this time Bagby’s rhetoric
has rubbed salt into a family’s wounds.
The family
alleges that, in retaliation for their raising issues involving racial bias, Fieldston
filed a false allegation of child abuse against them; causing enormous trauma
for the child and his younger sibling.
Then, after the family sued, the school attacked the family in a mass
email.
The school denies
any retaliation or racial bias. It uses
the same justifications authorities always use when families are harmed by
false allegations, justifications that boil down to: We were just trying to
keep children safe and anyone who wants to call us out doesn’t care about child
safety. In fact, though of course it
wasn’t their intent, if anyone made children less safe it was a person or
persons at the Ethical Culture Fieldston Schools. All of the time, money and effort wasted on
the false allegation initiated by someone at ECFS was, in effect, stolen from
finding some other child in real danger.
But
Fieldston styles itself as a cut above other schools, especially when it comes
to ethics. “Ethical” after all, is the school’s first name.
 |
Founder Felix Adler said the goal of the
Ethical Culture Fieldston Schools is
"to put it boldly, to train reformers." |
Fieldston
is a school that prides itself on being a leader in “progressive” education. It
is a school whose stated mission is to “inspire … ethical individuals who aim
to make the world more humane and just.” It is a school whose founder, Felix
Adler, declared that its mission is “to put it boldly, to train reformers.” Yet
late in 2017, the Ethical Culture Fieldston Schools unleashed on one of its own
students and his parents the full power of a system – child protective services
– with almost no checks and balances, a system that regularly runs roughshod over
due process and civil liberties, a system that is permeated with racial and
class bias.
At best, the reasons presented by
administrators reflect a disturbing ignorance of how much harm can be done to
children by a child abuse investigation.
At worst - and this is what the family alleges -- it was a deliberate act
of racial discrimination and retaliation.
But Fieldston doesn’t just defend
its behavior in this one case.
A school
which just saw one of its buildings occupied because of its insensitivity to
racism now offers enthusiastic endorsement of a massive system of reporting of
families to child protective services
–
a system so rife with
racial and class bias
that a recent study found that
a
majority of African-American children will be caught in its net at some
point during their childhoods
. (And by the way, a system put in place
with
no scientific evidence of
effectiveness.)
To what extent does that bias in
child abuse reporting extend to Fieldston’s “grassy banks and wooded ways”?
(That’s from the school song.) One of
the questions I posed in an email to Bagby was how many times during the
2017-2018 school year employees of ECFS called the state child abuse hotline –
and the racial breakdown of the alleged victims. The school did not reply.
But a school truly committed to
progressive values, a school dedicated to training reformers, would be fighting
to reform this system, not extolling it.
Imagine if
a school that proclaims itself a champion of social justice allowed its
security guards to stop-and-frisk a Black student without cause.
Then, in addition to defending the individual
guard, the school proclaimed that stop-and-frisk is essential to public safety
for the entire nation and any complaint about it risks jeopardizing this vital
part of law enforcement.
That is
analogous to Fieldston’s behavior in this case.
Last month,
a judge denied Fieldston’s motion to throw out the suit before trial. The school has appealed. After I contacted Bagby by email with a
series of specific questions and a request to see any documents the school
wanted to share, she passed my request on to the school’s lawyer. He provided Fieldston’s brief for the
school’s appeal. But he said “it would
not be appropriate for me to provide other details at this time.”
The case
In the fall of 2017, Columbia
University Professors Hillary Hallett and Chris Brown were looking forward to
sending their son, whom I’ll call Adam (not his real name) to Fieldston. Prof. Brown took a second job so the family
could afford the $53,000 tuition. Brown
says that Adam, too, was “really excited about the opportunity to go there.” He’d
done extra work and “invested a lot of hope and enthusiasm.”
But that
would change quickly. Except as
otherwise noted, all of the following are allegations from the lawsuit:
The
problems began shortly after Adam, who is biracial, enrolled in sixth grade. Adam
was upset when another biracial student told him a white classmate he’d known
before coming to Fieldston -- and thought of as a friend -- had made racist comments. Adam asked his
white friend what had happened. In
addition, Prof. Hallett complained to the school about practices she felt
encouraged segregation.
Then, in
November 2017, the white child’s parents complained to the school about their
son being questioned by Adam.
Shortly
after, Adam injured his arm while playing football during recess. The injury was minor. His parents did everything asked of them by
their own pediatrician and by Fieldston, and Fieldston had full documentation
for this. Furthermore, the parents had
signed forms allowing the school itself to obtain medical care for Adam if he
never needed it and contact information for Adam’s doctors.
But a few
days later, someone at the school reported Adam’s parents to the New York State
Child Abuse Hotline, alleging that the parents failed to properly respond to
the injury and also that Adam had twice arrived at school hungry –
notwithstanding the fact that the school provides breakfast to every student
who wants it. (Let me confess here and
now: There were days when I skipped
breakfast before heading to Fieldston – and back then you could not get
breakfast at the school. Nevertheless, my parents were never reported as
alleged child abusers.)
Three days
after the call to the hotline, at 8:30 p.m., the family found at their door a
caseworker from New York City’s Administration for Children’s Services (ACS). The worker said ACS had received a report
from someone at Fieldston. Adam was put through all the inherent trauma of a
child abuse investigation. He was left
emotionally distraught; terrified that he would be taken from his parents.
The report was wrong
Perhaps it
was just coincidence that a report based on so little was phoned in to the
hotline
But this much
we know for sure: The report was wrong.
just days after the parents started complaining about things that were
happening at the school.
We know
this because the ACS caseworker declared the case unfounded. In New York you have to be demonstrably
innocent for that to happen.
In New York, as in every other
state, a finding that abuse or neglect is “substantiated” (in New York the term
is “indicated”) does not require a trial.
It does not require both sides to present evidence, and it does not
require proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
It doesn’t even mean that the worker has to think it is slightly more
likely than not that abuse occurred.
In New York
“indicated” means only that a caseworker believes that there is “some credible
evidence” of abuse or neglect. Even if there is more evidence of innocence, the
worker is supposed to check that “indicated” box.
But in this case – and, indeed, in
more
than 60 percent of cases investigated by ACS, there was not even “some
credible evidence,” so the case was deemed unfounded.
Prof. Brown
said in an interview that the family pediatrician was “horrified” that
Fieldston had rushed to call the hotline.
“She could not understand why the school had not talked to her first.”
The only
abuse suffered by Adam was the emotional abuse of the investigation, an
investigation initiated needlessly and, the parents allege, maliciously, by the
Ethical Culture Fieldston Schools.
The damage done
The ACS
investigator interrogated Adam, and a younger sibling. He physically examined them and photographed
them. The next day, the investigator
showed up at Fieldston to interrogate Adam again.
But first, according
to the lawsuit, his Fieldston guidance counselor pulled him out of class to
talk to him. At age 12, Adam was old
enough to understand what ACS can do. He
told the counselor he was terrified of being taken away from his parents.
Initially that fear caused sleep
disturbances. Then, as the school year
progressed Adam suffered from what his mother describes in an email as “a cascading
series of psychosomatic symptoms at school.”
There were headaches and stomach aches.
He began seeing a therapist to help him cope.
One day in
January, 2018, Adam experienced chest pain at school – but he wouldn’t tell
anyone at Fieldston – because, the suit says, he was afraid it would lead to
“further retaliation against the family.”
The chest pains got worse, and by the time he got home they were so bad
the family had to seek emergency medical treatment.
He wasn’t
the only one who was fearful. One day Adam had some slight swelling near his
eyes because of a mosquito bite. Concerned about further retaliation, Adam’s
father, Prof. Brown, got a note from Adam’s pediatrician explaining what
happened – and delivered it personally to an assistant principal.
Later that
day Adam’s science teacher notified his mother, Prof. Hallett, that Adam
appeared upset. She called the guidance
counselor to ask her to let him speak to Adam to be sure he was o.k. But, the
lawsuit says, the counselor would only let Adam talk to his mother on
speakerphone – so the counselor could monitor the conservation.
Through it
all, Adam never knew who, exactly, had called the hotline. So he felt he could
trust and confide in no one at Fieldston’s middle school. Eventually, an agreement was reached that
when he had a problem he would see the nurse or counselors at Fieldston Lower –
the elementary school on the same campus.
Repeatedly,
the parents allege, they would ask for help so Adam could better cope with the
stress caused by the false allegations and its effect on his schoolwork. They
say they got none. Says Prof. Hallett:
“They never showed any interest in the welfare of a newly 12-year-old kid who
was brand new to the school and navigating the pressures of just starting
middle school.” Prof. Brown says the
school “just left him kind of dangling.”
The parents
think the school wanted to be rid of the family – and in that much, they have succeeded.
But not
before the family filed their lawsuit.
The school’s response
It’s worth
comparing the immediate response to that lawsuit to the response to the recent
student protests.
After the
group called #StudentsOfColorMatter occupied a building and issued their
demands, gained a ton of well-deserved support and generally created a p.r.
nightmare for Fieldston, Bagby, the Head of School, went into full conciliation
mode – praising the protestors and putting enormous emphasis on the need for
civility.
In one
email to the entire “school community” – students, parents, faculty and alumni
– she wrote about the need for “…eschewing within our own school community the
sanctimony and mean-spiritedness of our current national discourse that resorts
to attacks on individuals” and stressing the need to avoid branding anyone with
“labels and reprisals from which they cannot recover.”
Compare
that to the email Bagby sent to the same “school community” in late March,
2018, right after the family filed its lawsuit. Bagby contented that the school was simply
acting in accord with state law which makes educators “mandated reporters” of
child abuse.
But New York State law does not
require even mandated reporters to report anything and everything. It requires them to report only when they have
“reasonable cause to suspect” abuse or neglect.
Bagby then declares that the
demonstrably racially biased system of mandatory reporting “is vital to the
safety and security of students across the country.” Again, to see the problem with this,
substitute “stop-and-frisk” for “mandated reporting.”
But even with that, had Bagby
simply claimed the school had no choice, was following the law, and supporting
child safety she would have been wrong, but at least the tenor of the email
would have been in keeping with her own later statements about civility. But she didn’t stop there. She wrote:
While the family has
now filed a lawsuit, you should be assured that our school's child safety
policies will not be compromised. We are saddened that anyone in our community
would try to undermine this important system with a baseless lawsuit that puts
profiteering ahead of students' safety.
So now, a
12-year-old boy gets to read that he and his parents are engaging in
“profiteering” in an email to the entire “school community.”
He can read
a
similar statement from the school in a story about the case in the
New York Post.
That
prompted the family to amend their lawsuit to add a claim for libel. In its response Fieldston denies that the
statement about “profiteering” is libelous under New York State law. But my concern, as an alumnus of the Ethical
Culture Fieldston Schools is not just whether the statement was legal. My
concern is: Was it ethical?
Even if a
court rules that the statement was not libelous, it was still gratuitous, cruel
and unworthy of an “ethical culture” school.
The very
first sentence of Fieldston’s appellate brief declares that “This case is an
assault on the mandatory reporting system that protects children in New York
against potential abuse and mistreatment.”
In fact, the suit is nothing more than an attempt to seek redress to the
harm done to one child by one school’s alleged abuse of the system.
But more
disturbing to me is the fact that, over and over and over Fieldston’s brief
doesn’t just defend but extols the “mandatory reporting system.” Again, substitute “stop-and-frisk” and you
can see the problem.
By the way,
there is no actual scientific evidence that mandatory reporting improves child
safety.
The laws were passed decades
ago, with no study, in the midst of a wave of hysteria over child abuse.
As the National Research Council
explained in 1998:
“Mandatory
reporting requirements were adopted without evidence of their effectiveness; noreliable
study has yet demonstrated their positive or negative effects on the health and
well-being of children at risk of maltreatment, their parents and caregivers
and service providers.”
So there is actually no scientific
evidence in support of Bagby’s claim that the mandatory reporting system “is
vital to the safety and security of students across the country.”
And if this system really makes
children safe, how, exactly, is Adam safer now than he was before he enrolled
at Fieldston?
“The impact on him is lasting,”
says Prof. Brown. “And the impact on our family has been lasting. It’s hard for me to imagine a white family
being treated the same way.”
Indeed, to
the extent that anyone wound up jeopardizing safety here it was a person or
persons at ECFS. Caseworkers at ACS,
like their counterparts in most of the country, constantly complain about being
overloaded. When there are high-profile
tragedies, it’s almost always because of that overload. False allegations divert workers from real
child abuse in the same way false alarms divert firefighters from real
fires.
So truly keeping children safe,
truly allowing “this important system” to function well, requires that mandated
reporters know when to report and when not
to report. In New York, that means reporting when there is “reasonable
cause to suspect” abuse or neglect. I
have seen nothing to indicate that this case qualifies.
The school’s defense
on appeal
Since
Fieldston declined to provide any response beyond a legal brief, I know only
its response concerning the law.
Fieldston’s legal defense boils down to this:
Yes, state
law says you can’t make a malicious false report of child abuse. But state law
also protects the identity of reporters.
So even if a report was made maliciously, unless you happen to know who
did it, there’s not a damn thing you can do about it! In this case, the family argues that a number
of school officials share responsibility. Fieldston says only the person who
made the actual phone call is responsible, the family doesn’t know who that is
– so tough luck. (And, of course, they say, this Catch-22 is vital to keep
children safe.)
In fact, it
is for just this reason that, for decades,
NCCPR has proposed an exception
to reporter confidentiality when a family can persuade a judge that a report
was, in fact, malicious.
One would think
a school committed to civil liberties and racial justice would embrace such a
proposal.
But again,
to this alumnus even if Fieldston is legally right, that’s not good
enough. The question is: Is Fieldston ethically right?
Asked what
he thinks of Fieldston now, Prof. Brown quotes one of the students who took
part in the recent protests: “The school is not the place it pretends to be.”
*-I write all of the posts on this blog, but in this case, I thought a byline was appropriate
