BOSTON (WHDH) - A Jamaica Plain school is getting a failing grade from Boston’s superintendent.
Dr. Brenda Casseillus is recommending that the Mission Hill School, which has been open since 2012, shut down at the end of this school year after a bombshell report details years of sex and violence among the student body.
On the wall outside the building, the words, “be kind” are painted. Inside, independent investigators found students were physically and sexually abused, bullied and neglected while staff looked the other way.
Complaints from parents prompted the school district to hire a law firm and look into what was going on. Glory Acevedo said her fifth-grader has experienced the abuse firsthand.
“Bullying yes, a lot of bullying,” she said. “I brought it up to teachers and nothing has been done.”
The finding that was released in a lengthy report detailed, a staffer who “said a student was throwing things, cursing and tipping a table over.”
Another staff member “recalled walking in a hallway with a second grader and having to ward off two other students who began jumping on” the child.”
“It’s devastating to see the experience that families within our school district had,” said Mayor Michelle Wu. “That young people had experienced horrific abuse and that there was a continued, inappropriate, lack of reporting of it. That most of all is what makes me angry.”
It’s that culture of sweeping things under the rug that prompted five families with kids in the school to file a lawsuit in 2017 against the district.
“They were sort of dismissed and poo-pooed in that this is the way we do it here and I think a lot of staff were discouraged from coming forward,” said attorney Dan Heffernan who represented the families in the suit.
Heffernan said the families reached a financial settlement and also wanted reform.
This latest investigation found school leadership,“failed to protect the mental, physical and educational well-being of all students, including by failing to appropriately investigate and respond to incidents of bullying, sexual misconduct, and unsafe behavior of and among students.”
Superintendent Brenda Cassellius said that in light of this, it is time to call it quits.
Wu said a help line will be set up to help the community and students and staff will get assistance transferring to new schools.
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