GILROY
– The school district is investigating complaints about the
alleged quashing of a student protest by Gilroy High School
administrators nearly a year ago.
By Lori Stuenkel
GILROY – The school district is investigating complaints about the alleged quashing of a student protest by Gilroy High School administrators nearly a year ago.
In an attempt to address community concerns about the incident, Superintendent Edwin Diaz responded to ongoing discussion on the Opinion pages of The Dispatch in a letter sent to all high school employees and to the newspaper. It appears in today’s edition.
Also, school board trustees Thursday night rejected a claim of unfair hiring and firing filed by Kim Lemos, the former GHS English teacher whose lay-off inspired the student protest. The move opens the door for Lemos to sue the district. She declined comment for this story.
The investigation into whether GHS administrators and staff confiscated vests, petitions and posters as part of a student protest has already cost Gilroy Unified School District around $3,000, Diaz said.
The money has paid Patty McKernan, an attorney with GUSD’s legal firm Kay and Stevens, to conduct interviews and research district policy. Depending on how long the investigation takes to complete, Diaz said, the cost to the district could go as high as $30,000. The investigation is ongoing.
GUSD launched the investigation shortly after Dispatch columnist Cynthia Walker in October recounted the story of GHS junior Alex Williams. Williams says Assistant Principal Mani Corzo and staff at GHS in spring 2003 prevented herself and fellow students from distributing petitions, posting fliers and wearing vests on campus bearing the phrase, “No Lemos, No Peace” after the teacher’s lay-off became public.
“Any time someone says students’ civil rights were violated, you want to follow through on it and see if there’s any concern about it,” Diaz said.
Walker’s Oct. 24 column, in which the alleged confiscation was originally mentioned, did not provide names, she implied administrative cooperation, GHS Principal Bob Bravo said. Bravo asked Diaz to conduct an investigation after reading the column, which he said is the first time he heard of the items being taken.
“If (GHS staff) are the persons who may have done the wrong thing, then I don’t know that we should be investigating,” Bravo said, explaining why high school officials are not conducting the investigation.
The situation has been debated by two columnists disputing each other’s facts about the case, as well as letters from Williams’ mother, Shairon, and others.
Denials that the incident occurred have left Williams confused and angry.
“If we are really lying about this situation, then why would we continue it and suffer all this grief?” Alex Williams said. “Why do we keep fighting?”
Williams said she was called out of class several times last fall for interviews, with Bravo, Assistant Principal Greg Camacho-Light, and one with McKernan – with no prior notice to her mother. Diaz has since apologized for the interview with McKernan in a phone call, Shairon Williams said.
Williams said she has felt “watched” on campus since the protest, and Shairon fears her daughter has been labeled a trouble-maker.
In his letter, Diaz calls into question the truth of Walker’s columns.
“I attempted to be scrupulously careful to write the facts as presented to me by the people I was interviewing, and I tried to distinguish carefully when I did give my opinions, from the facts,” Walker said.
Walker said she has known Williams for years and has always known her to be truthful.
According to Diaz, the district has found no one who saw the petition circulated last February, which Williams said was signed by about 1,200 students.
Steven Casalegno, Emily Horta and Brittney O’Neal, three GHS students, told The Dispatch Thursday that they signed one version of the petition last year. Nine other students have also said they signed it.
The students had heard second-hand that the petitions were confiscated, although they did not know by whom. Many had seen Williams wearing her vest on campus.
Diaz states in his letter, and Bravo confirmed Thursday, that the district has no “credible evidence that any vests or petitions were confiscated.”
Bravo said he never instructed GHS personnel to confiscate the students’ items.
Diaz did say that the investigator found that posters were removed by a GHS staff member who believed they were inappropriate.
“We have a general policy that posters, they need to be related to school activities,” Bravo said. “They’re club-related, they’re school-related, or they’re approved by the administration.”
Unapproved posters are taken down as a matter of habit, he said.
Williams said a yard supervisor removed posters from school property and confiscated hundreds more directly from her around March 2003.
Bravo said he did not know whether posters were confiscated, but said he expected that a yard supervisor would check with school administrators before doing so.
Although Bravo said he has no evidence that the vests, petitions or posters existed, he also has no reason to think they did not exist. He heard about the petitions second-hand from a GHS employee last spring and “thinks (he) saw” a vest himself.
Diaz also notes that no formal complaint forms were filed with the district office.
Shairon Williams said she wasn’t asked to fill out a form and thought her meeting with Bravo and discussions with Diaz were part of the process to resolve her complaint.
“I thought meeting with them meant I was involved now and let’s work this out,” she said.
Now, both mother and daughter are considering filing a formal complaint stating that GHS administrators and staff are being untruthful.
Williams and her mother said a recognition of the incident would be an ideal resolution to their conflict.
“We want a public apology and an apology to me as well,” Williams said. “It’s like a school yard fight. We thought we were going to be heard.”
“I believe it could have ended with a level of acknowledgment,” Shairon Williams said. “I would like the school to just say … ‘We are sorry about some of the things that happened and here’s what we’ll do: We’ll train our staff and our yard duties about First Amendment rights.’ If what they did was so disruptive, then show these students what was the proper thing to do.”
