Seattle Schools Community Forum

The District is definitely having trouble around field trips. There has always been incidents of misbehavior on field trips but they didn't get much publicity until the report of a rape on a Garfield High School field trip to NatureBridge. The review of that incident revealed the lax supervision that was practiced and the total neglect of the policies and procedures.

There's a story in the Seattle Times about Carol Burton, who lost her job for violating field trip procedures. The story outlines her argument but it leaves out her best one: when other teachers violated field trip procedures - in worse ways with worse consequences - they were not disciplined at all.

I am troubled by my dilemma of putting a link to the Investigation report and/or naming the chaperones and their statements to the investigator.  I know these are public documents but it does give me pause.  However, someone already put a link to the report so I will as well.  Report document.   If you do read it, understand that "identifier" means the private school - which we all believe to be Blanchet High School - "student 1" is the male student in question and students 8 and 9 are the girls who were groped.  None of the students nor the male student's mother is named.  All of the chaperones are named.

I will be doing a lot of reading over the next several hours as I received both the report and the exhibits.  I have to say - just scanning the exhibits - that there are many contradictions from what I have heard from several directions.  It's going to be interesting cross-referencing both. What I can say is that there are two connecting issues that could be problematic for the district. One is that it is not clear if the district made an effort to find out the past history of the male student involved.  The "admissions form" for SPS does ask two questions about past discipline issues and the parents are supposed to "certify" that these are "true and accurate."  What is problematic is that the attorney for the teacher could not get access to this student's admission form. Did the district know this student had issues (and, in particular, had been in trouble for nearly the same behavior at another field trip)?  I have heard that someone at JSC...