$60,000 Settlement on School Bullying to Be Topic In The Morning Zone

3/3/2011

Earlier this week, the Casper Star-Tribune reported that a Casper woman, Pam Gray, who accused school officials of failing to protect her daughter from months of bullying accepted a $60,000 settlement offer from the Natrona County School District. Friday at 8:07AM MST, one of the attorneys who represented Mrs. Gray and her daughter will be our guest in The Morning Zone along with Marvin Nash of Bullying Hurts to discuss this case and the settlement. Meanwhile, Thursday, Mrs. Gray and her husband, Steve Gray, released the following :

PRESS RELEASEDuring the 2009-2010 school year, our second grade daughter was bullied and harassed

repeatedly at her school. Without any request from us for them to do so, the school district and Principal Larson made a formal written offer of judgment in amount of $60,000.00. This week we accepted that offer ultimately resolving our daughters claim. The federal court has entered a judgment for our daughter.

For the record, our daughter is the person receiving those funds, after she pays her attorneys’ fees and costs from that amount. We, her parents, are not receiving any money from the judgment.

We are petitioning the Court for permission to grant a portion of our daughter’s settlement to an organization in Cheyenne, Wyoming called Bullying Hurts, in our daughters name; so that they can assist other Natrona County School District students and parents with complaints of bullying.

Her attorneys have agreed to waive their fees for that portion of the judgment.

Bullying Hurts is a program that focuses on positive youth development and prevention of the antisocial behavior of bullying in schools and communities. You can learn more about that organization by seeing www.bullyinghurts.com.

We brought this lawsuit not to just help our daughter, but to help stop bullying in Natrona County Schools. Federal law requires that students be provided a safe place to learn. State law requires that Wyoming schools have an anti-bullying policy; and that they affectively implement a program to stop bullying. Our daughter helped enforce those laws and we are proud of her and her lawyers for taking that stand.

We feel that because the district and principal Larson made a formal Offer of Judgment, that the Natrona County School District and Principal Larson acknowledged that we were well on our way to proving that they were deliberately indifferent to our daughter’s repeated complaints. In spite of their claim that the offer was made without admitting liability who in their right mind would pay $60,000.00 if they were not liable?

It is not easy to take on the School District and your child’s principal. We followed the rules of the School District in voicing our concerns about our daughter being tormented, assaulted and bullied; and the School District refused to follow or enforce its own rules. After numerous requests by us for assurances that our daughter would be protected, none were forthcoming. After numerous complaints by us about the treatment she was receiving at the school, nothing changed. Last April when we were looking for help both from the principal or the School District and elsewhere, only two people returned our calls, stayed interested, and took real action to help us; Frank Chapman and John Robinson our lawyers. So far as we can tell, only this one federal court lawsuit has ever been filed in Wyoming, regarding bullying in schools. That groundbreaking work should be recognized and acknowledged.

We don’t blame the other child who was involved in this bullying. We believe the entire fault lies with the principal and the school district that did nothing to protect our daughter from the obvious, often repeated, predictable behavior. The boy who did this obviously needed help too. He apparently didn’t get it either.

We believe bullying is a learned behavior. Children who are bullied often bully others themselves. It is a cycle that can be broken. Children can be taught that bullying is wrong and simple enforcement of the school rules should have prevented and stopped what happened to our daughter. Those steps certainly would have prevented any lawsuit being filed.

Bullying is clearly nothing new and isolated incidents of bullying are inevitable. When it occurs however, children and their parents have a right to expect that the schools and the School District will follow their own rules to try to prevent reoccurrence. That’s why we support the efforts of the organization “Bullying Hurts”. We sincerely hope that other Natrona County School District students and parents will not have to go through what our daughter and our family did.

Steve and Pam Gray

Categories: Cheyenne News