What Parents Should Know About Dodgertown Elementary

The School District of Indian River County promotes Dodgertown Elementary as a Community Partnership School, a model designed to bring schools, families, and community service providers together to support children.

That sounds good in concept.

But parents also deserve to understand how that interconnected system functions when something goes wrong inside the school.

A Pre-K student in our family arrived at Dodgertown Elementary without injuries. By lunchtime, he had patterned bruising on both upper arms. He demonstrated how a staff member had restrained him.

What happened afterward raised questions that every parent should care about.

How the Systems Connect

Children's Home Society is one of the organizations involved in the Community Partnership School model at Dodgertown. Children's Home Society also provides child-welfare and Child Protection Team services in this region.

Following the injury, DCF investigators and Child Protection Team clinicians became directly involved.

That means the response did not occur inside a series of completely separate systems. The school, its community partners, child-welfare professionals, investigators, records, video evidence, and other information became parts of an interconnected response.

That structure makes the handling of complete and accurate information extremely important.

What Happened to the Evidence?

Before the caregivers were interviewed, and before critical school video and physical evidence had been fully examined, life-changing decisions were already being made based on incomplete information.

That is where our concern begins.

A school district controls information that outside investigators may not have when they first become involved.

The District controls its schools. It employs and supervises its staff. It possesses school records. It controls access to school video. It can identify which employees were present, who interacted with a child, what reports were made, and what evidence exists inside the school.

When outside agencies are making decisions involving a family, the completeness and accuracy of the information supplied by the school can matter enormously.

If important information is delayed, omitted, misunderstood, or not fully examined, the consequences do not necessarily remain inside the school building. They can follow a family home.

Who Is Responsible?

Superintendent David Moore has previously taken the position that decisions made by outside entities are beyond the District's authority.

There is an obvious truth in that statement: the School District does not control DCF.

But that does not end the inquiry.

The District does control Dodgertown Elementary. It chooses the organizations with which it partners. It permits partner personnel to operate within its schools. It controls evidence generated by the school. It is responsible for investigating alleged misconduct by District employees.

Above all else, it is responsible for protecting the children entrusted to its care during the school day.

The District cannot reasonably promote an interconnected partnership when that partnership brings resources, services, recognition, and funding, while treating those same organizations as completely unrelated outsiders when something goes wrong.

Partnership must include accountability.

Why Parents Should Care

This is not simply about one family.

A parent can send a healthy child to school in the morning believing that the school system will protect that child and, if something happens, accurately document and investigate it.

But when school-based information feeds into a larger child-welfare system, decisions with profound consequences can begin before parents have even been interviewed and before all of the available evidence has been examined.

That possibility should concern every parent.

Parents should be able to expect that when a child is injured at school:

• the injury will be documented accurately;
• available video will be preserved and reviewed;
• employees involved will be identified and interviewed;
• parents and caregivers will be heard;
• investigators will receive complete and accurate information; and
• responsibility will be determined from evidence rather than assumption.

Those are not unreasonable expectations. They are basic safeguards.

Partnership Without Accountability Is Not Enough

We are not opposed to Community Partnership Schools. We are not opposed to providing services to children and families. And we are not opposed to cooperation between schools, community organizations, law enforcement, medical professionals, or child-welfare agencies.

Those systems can provide tremendous benefits when they work properly.

Our concern is what happens when those systems become so interconnected that responsibility becomes difficult to locate.

When everyone participates, but nobody accepts responsibility, families can fall through the gaps.

The answer is not less cooperation. The answer is better safeguards, complete information, transparency, and accountability.

A partnership should never make it easier for an institution to simply say, "That wasn't our decision."

If the District controls the school, employs the staff, possesses the evidence, chooses the partners, and participates in the system that responds afterward, then the District has a responsibility to make sure that system receives complete and accurate information.

Every Parent Deserves to Understand How the System Works

Parents should not have to learn about these relationships only after something happens to their child.

They deserve to know who operates inside their schools. They deserve to understand what organizations have access to students. They deserve to know how information moves between the School District and outside agencies.

And they deserve confidence that when allegations arise, complete evidence will be examined before conclusions are reached.