Mom sues Columbus private school for alleged racial, disability discrimination against son
A mother has sued a Columbus private school for alleged racial and disability discrimination against her child.
Jaketra Bryant filed the lawsuit Nov. 16 in federal court against Calvary Christian School on behalf of her 13-year-old son.
According to the complaint, Bryant’s son, who is Black and was diagnosed with autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, enrolled at Calvary as a sixth-grader in 2019 because of its advertisement as a school providing “personalized attention for students with special needs.”
Bryant, however, contends Calvary teachers and administrators violated her son’s civil rights by:
- Discriminatory discipline
- An unwillingness to accommodate his disability
- Repeatedly encouraging Bryant to medicate him despite her requests for non-medical interventions
- Refusing the assistance of supportive therapies to help teachers instruct him
- Forcing him to remain with a teacher following complaints of discrimination.
According to its website, Calvary‘s program for students with special needs, called Discovery School, has “an atmosphere in which students are nurtured, encouraged, and challenged to explore their talents and use their strengths in order to reach their potential. We work closely with the classroom teachers, school administrators, and parents to provide individual and small group instruction daily in the areas of mathematics, reading, and language.”
Calvary dismissed her son in March 2021 “for behavioral manifestations of his disability,” the plaintiff says in the lawsuit.
Bryant further alleges Calvary “punished similarly situated Black students with harsher sanctions and penalties for similar offenses committed by white children — leading to the dismissal … of multiple Black students in the 2019 and 2020 academic terms.”
Angelik Edmonds of the Edmonds Law Office in Atlanta is the plaintiff’s attorney. She told the Ledger-Enquirer in an email that her client hopes to “influence the school’s policy” so other students aren’t “similarly pushed out of the classroom for discriminatory reasons.”
Calvary headmaster Jim Koan declined to tell the L-E who is representing the school in this matter. He said in an email, “Calvary adamantly denies the allegations. We are handling these measures through appropriate channels and have no further comment.”
Allegations
Bryant says Calvary refused her request for “reasonable accommodations” for her son when the school transitioned to virtual learning in April 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Those accommodations aren’t specified in the lawsuit.
Despite her son’s educational schedule decreasing from 8 hours per day during in-person instruction to 1 hour per day during virtual learning, he received the school’s “Faithful Effort” award for improved academics and behavior, according to the lawsuit.
During the 2020 fall semester, Bryant provided the administration multiple written and verbal notices of a “series of racial and disability-based experiences from faculty and administration” against her son, the lawsuit says.
Her son’s teacher “was especially critical” of him, “disregarded his needs for accommodations, and had little patience in her interactions” with him, the lawsuit says. The director of the special-needs program denied Bryant’s request to meet with the teacher and refused to investigate the allegations, according to the lawsuit.
Although she didn’t receive complaints about her son from other teachers, Bryant was told to medicate him, the lawsuit says.
In November 2020, her son threw a calculator at a wall and was suspended for three days despite the administration’s knowledge of his disability, according to the lawsuit.
It was among four incidents of misbehavior related to his disability during his 1½ years at Calvary, but none of them involved harming or attempting to harm anyone at the school or interfere with anyone’s teaching or learning, the lawsuit says.
Bryant’s son tried out for the soccer team but never was told whether he made the team while white students received such notifications, according to the lawsuit.
In December 2020, Bryant met with school administrators to discuss supportive services for her son, but she was told to “find another school,” the lawsuit says.
In February 2021, Bryant paid Ready To Learn ABA, an applied behavior analysis practice in Columbus, to evaluate the possibility of additional support services for him and his teachers, according to the lawsuit. Bryant gave Calvary the 33-page recommended behavioral intervention plan, the lawsuit says.
The administration, however, denied her request for him to return to school based on “the seriousness of his behavior record,” the lawsuit says. Calvary’s student handbook requires that a student exhibit “persistent or significant discipline problems” to be expelled or dismissed from the school, according to the lawsuit.
The plaintiff seeks a jury trial, unspecified punitive and compensatory damages, plus legal expenses.
This story was originally published December 14, 2021 at 6:00 AM.
