For every parent who takes his case public, there are more who remain anonymous, saying they fear retaliation from the school. Some of these tales of woe seem like petty retaliations, others more life-altering:
-- One mother told the story of her son, a special ed student at a Katy high school, who was accused of drawing graffiti on a wall. "My son can't draw at all," she says. The school kept quizzing him about it, kept after him to say who had been involved, telling him it was a felony offense just to conceal information. Finally he went to one teacher and she put a halt to the questioning. In another instance, police questioned her son and his mother still wasn't notified.
Photo courtesy of Mary Van Der Loop
Steven Avary was sentenced to eight weeks in
alternative school for bringing home a pocketknife.
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-- Two years ago, a Katy Taylor freshman girl rode to a football game with new friends, one of whom started passing around alcohol. The girl declined and sat with other friends at the game. The alcohol was discovered, the names of all the car's occupants were secured, and the next thing she knew, the girl was sentenced to ten weeks in alternative school. An assistant principal had even smelled her breath, saying he couldn't smell anything.
According to her mother, the girl, now a junior, has had a terrible high school experience ever since. Labeled a troublemaker upon her return, the girl initially was told she couldn't try out for the softball team. She was finally allowed to, but sat on the bench all season, her mother says. She was told not to sign up for softball the next semester.
"We sorely wish we had never moved to Katy, to the supposedly 'superior' school district. There is nothing exemplary about the way they treat our children here. It is a military environment with Hitler ideas. If you are not 'perfect,' get out or we will get you out," the mother says.
-- In another Katy junior high, a 12-year-old boy with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, kept acting up in class. His father says he and his wife went to the school and told administrators that the "behavioral intervention plan" the school had devised for his son wasn't working. Nothing changed, and things escalated until he got a misdemeanor ticket.
"That ticket had a bad emotional and mental effect on him. At times I went to bed laying down next to his bed, holding his hand," his father says. "He was crying because he was so upset about it, and he was so convinced he was a bad kid."
KISD critics say an appeals process is nonexistent. One says her appeal to the superintendent's office got her the remark that they don't interfere in decisions made at the high school level. Bonnie Holland says the state provides for no appeal if the punishment is no more than 60 days.
According to Cindy Nemec, administrators regularly employ what she calls a bullying technique.
When a school official is handing out discipline and a parent objects, the administrator will say, "Well, just let me say that I'm going easy on the child. I could have given a lot worse, could have gone up a level or added more days," Nemec says. "The principal makes you think they are doing you a favor."
Taylor says administrators are not allowed to change the level of the offense, higher or lower. Yet Nemec says she's witnessed this from four people herself and has been told of this by others.
Critics of Katy's system say administrators and school board members haven't listened to their complaints about discipline at all. Taylor says that's not true. She points to the district's decision four years ago to begin allowing students to bring cell phones to school after parent complaints.
In like manner, she says, there are already plans to ask for more parental involvement to review the discipline policies to make sure they are being applied fairly and equally.
As it stands now, as soon as they step on school property, Katy ISD students -- in fact, most students -- lose the civil rights that adults take for granted. They can be interrogated without an attorney. They can have their possessions routinely searched. They aren't allowed to contact their parents.
Cindy Nemec begins to cry as she struggles to explain her biggest frustration: "We can't protect our children."
Fred Hink echoes that. "In a way I feel I should be at school the entire time my kids are there, shadowing them to make sure that they do not break any of the discipline codes."
In any school kids face a lot of pressure to get good grades and stay out of trouble. That's true in Katy, too. Be good. Better yet, be perfect.
This is a no-mistakes zone.
