The St. Joseph School District is refuting allegations that the district failed to comply with new regulations on bullying policies.
As we previously reported, St. Joseph resident and parent Brian Cronk sent the Board of Education a letter Thursday night stating the district was not in compliance with a new law regarding a bullying policy and a violation of the Missouri Sunshine Law. Cronk said he started looking into the issue after several kids close to him experienced bullying at an elementary school in the district.
“I don’t want a suicide to occur because the district couldn’t follow the laws designed to protect kids,” Cronk said. “I filed some sunshine law requests at the end of January to determine the extent of bullying at Bode. The responses from their attorneys are what led me to discover that they are not complying with the law.”
Superintendent Dr. Robert Newhart said the district is aware of the new regulations and has been working since last year on following the new requirements. Newhart said even though a written policy has not been updated they have been following the new law.
“In October we received the policy updates from MSBA and sent them to legal review. We received those legal reviews back both from our internal Spencer Fane attorneys as well as MSBA in January and are working through these. All in the meanwhile, implemented many of the law requirements, rightfully so since August of 2016,” Newhart said. “There’s no way you’re going to get that into a handbook for a 16-17 school year for a statute change.”
The St. Joseph Post plans to contact the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education and MSBA to try to find out what the requirements are but at the time of this post business was closed for the weekend.
In information provided to the St. Joseph Post Thursday, Cronk said he contacted Missouri’s Attorney General and the Buchanan County Prosecutor’s Office in reference to the new bullying legislation and the district’s failure to comply with his sunshine request for documents. When we emailed Buchanan County Prosecutor Dwight Scroggins to find out if the office is looking into the matter. Scroggins said the office will look at any investigation that gets presented to the office from a Law Enforcement Agency on the matter.
Dr. Newhart said the district took some time in compiling the sunshine requests due to the amount of work involved in compiling the information.
“When you get as much information as they’re wanting it takes a little bit of time to compile them,” Newhart said.
Cronk said the district’s attorneys’ sent him a response to his sunshine request Friday. We are continuing to look into the story and will follow up on Monday when businesses reopen for the work week.