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North parents: People need answers on the suspension of school administrators

Dominion Post - 2/28/2023

Mar. 1—The parent of a child on the autism spectrum who attends North Elementary School chided district Superintendent Eddie Campbell Jr. Tuesday night — saying he needed to be more forthcoming with last week's reported incident that led to the suspensions of North's principal and vice principal.

That incident — and maybe incidents, even — likely occurred in her son's classroom, Autumn Wise said.

Counting her son, there are five students in that room, she told Monongalia County Board of Education members during their evening meeting, and all are acting out in distress to some degree.

Principal Natalie Webb remained on paid leave Tuesday, along with Carol Nuniz, vice principal.

Webb declined comment on the matter the day before.

In the meantime, Corey DeHaas and Katherine Sherald, vice principals at South Middle and Westwood Middle, are now serving their interim roles at the school on Chestnut Ridge Road while the incident remains under investigation.

That's not the point, Wise said.

"Personnel changes, I don't care, " she said.

"What I have an issue with is the lack of transparency for parents, " she continued.

Parents, she said, who don't know if their child was victimized — or witnessed a classmate being victimized.

In a message that went out to North's community Feb. 14, Campbell announced the suspensions and interim appointments, while saying an incident was being investigated.

Whatever it was, she said, happened in late January.

"My child has not slept a full night since Jan. 26, before the letter came out, " she said. "Before everything."

Her son — who has very limited verbal abilities, she said — curled into a fetal position and refused to get out of the car when she pulled into North's parking lot Feb. 16, the day before the message was distributed.

Wise said he had just started at North after the holiday break on Jan. 4.

Before he was receiving applied behavior analysis therapies at WVU, she said, with registered behavior technicians administering the regimen.

In the field, the therapy and its professionals are known by the initials of ABA and RBT, which is a kind of autism shorthand.

"Why can we not get ABA and RBT help in these classrooms so these things don't happen ?" she asked.

And, she asked further, why didn't the superintendent talk to her directly when she made repeated calls to him ?

Campbell: "When it's specific to something, I usually ask the staff that serves in that expert capacity to communicate with the person that's asking."

"You can talk to me, " BOE President Ron Lytle told Wise.

Lytle directed her to his personal cellphone, which is listed on the board's website, and said to copy him on any emails of inquiry she sends out further.

As frustrating as it may be, he told the parent, there's still a protocol and process involved in any district matter under scrutiny.

"I will hold the staff's feet to the fire to make sure they're answering your questions, " he said, "but you have to know that there are things we have to do as a school system."

In the meantime, she's waiting to see video footage from the classroom, which she finds a bit dubious, in that such surveillance is only viewed sporadically under state law.

She doesn't know what happened, she said, and her son doesn't have the cognitive capacity to tell her.

"There's rumor and speculation, " she said in a hallway after addressing the board and the superintendent. "Answers are owed to the parents."

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