The two families suing Vashon’s school district, alleging their children’s repeated bullying and harassment was not addressed by the district, are asking for at least $31.5 million in damages plus attorneys’ fees, according to documents released by the school district.
The document outlining the damages associated with the — the tort claim — was made public by the Vashon Island School District (VISD) on Wednesday after at least two islanders, including a Beachcomber staff member, filed public records requests. It breaks down estimated monetary damages sought for the suit that alleges VISD was negligent in addressing multiple incidents of harassment and bullying against two separate students that exacerbated the anxiety disorders of the students. Alleged damages include:
1. Loss of earning potential — meaning that the harassment and bullying were so severe that they impacted each student’s ability to earn money in the future — in the amounts of $750,000 to $1.5 million per plaintiff.
2. Life care plan — the long-term care required for the plaintiff students as a result of the alleged harassment — in the amount of $500,000 to $1 million per plaintiff.
3. General damages — compensation for pain and suffering — in the range of $2.5 million to $7.5 million per plaintiff.
4. Loss of consortium for parents — damages suffered by the family as a result of the district’s alleged negligence — in the amount of $2 million per plaintiff.
5. Punitive damages — damages that are awarded not to compensate a plaintiff for injury suffered, but to penalize a defendant for wrongful conduct — in the amount of at least $10 million per plaintiff.
6. Unknown costs and attorney’s fees.
The basis of the case, which was filed in U.S. District Court on April 19 and names VISD as a defendant along with Vashon High School principal Danny Rock, McMurray Middle School principal Greg Allison, VISD Superintendent Michael Soltman, his assistant Donna Donnelly and the district’s Title IX coordinator Paula Cummings, revolves around Title IX and the Americans with Disabilities Act. Jeannette Cohen, the attorney for the two island families filing the suit, says that the two students suffer from disabilities such as anxiety and depression, and that one of the students was harassed just because she is a girl, while the other’s harassment reportedly stemmed from the fact she is openly gay.
Cohen wrote in the tort claim that the two were harassed to the point that they suffered “psychological injury, exacerbation of disabilities (and) loss of educational benefit” to an unknown extent.
When reached last week, she declined to elaborate on the reasoning behind the requested damages, stating that the case needs to be “tried by a judge and jury in court, not in the media.”
“This is not the best place to explain (the amount of the damages). I’m not going to give you explanations,” Cohen said.
The amounts are estimations and will change as the case moves through the legal process. The judge and jury have the ultimate say in the amount the plaintiffs receive, if anything. On the day last week that the tort was made public, VISD sent an email to families of children in the district, which stated that the claim was received by the district on April 26 and estimates damages at $44 million — the high end of the range of damages.
In the email, Soltman said VISD’s commitment is to “keep our community informed as to the progress of this lawsuit, implications for our school district, and to share public information as appropriate.”
Reached by phone last week, he said the suit is unsettling for the district employees named as defendants in the suit.
“This (suit) is really having a profound effect on our administrators,” Soltman said. “Looking at the $10 million (in punitive damages) … is causing a great deal of concern.”
Soltman said that the district has $20 million in liability coverage from its insurance company, but that amount does not cover the $10 million per plaintiff in punitive damages.
VISD’s attorney, Mark O’Donnell, said over the weekend that the individually named defendants — Rock, Soltman, Allison and Donnelly — could be responsible for punitive damages if a judge or jury were to find the damages appropriate.
“If the court of the jury ultimately decided that punitive damages were appropriate, it is possible that they would be the responsibility of the individual defendants: Mr. Soltman, Mr. Allison and so on,” he said. “Whether they would all be individually responsible depends on what the jury determines.”
The district opened an investigation in March into the allegations that sexual harassment, gender-based discrimination and inappropriate sexual comments directed toward the two students by other students at McMurray Middle School and Vashon High School created a hostile education environment. Results of the investigation, which is being conducted by Shawn Flood, a Tacoma attorney who specializes in complaints against public and private agencies, are expected this week.
“As part of our response to the reports preceding this lawsuit, I requested an independent investigation of the reported incidents, our responsiveness to the incidents and an assessment of the efficacy of our policy implementation,” Soltman said.
He also said that he believed the families had other options for addressing the issues.
“We believe that a filing of the Title IX complaint through the standard administrative complaint process would have created the opportunity to address these issues at little financial cost to the parties,” Soltman said.
Both families are referring all questions through Cohen and have asked that their identities not be disclosed. However, two of the involved parents — one parent of each child — and Cohen, participated in KOMO television interviews last week and revealed their identities as “Dr. Wright” and “Antonio.” Wright has also emailed a press release about the case to on-and off-island sources using a general email address that did not identify her or the other parents. She later emailed the same release to The Beachcomber from her personal email.
The release quotes “one of the parents in this suit” as saying the children’s treatment is “unconscionable.”
“My daughter can no longer even attend school because of fear of reprisals. She isn’t the only child I know that has been harassed or bullied out of the schools on Vashon in the last few years without support from the administration, but I hope she is the last,” the parent said in the statement.
Wright declined further comment.
“Between (the press release), the KOMO piece, and the facts in the claim, there is not much else to say, so I will not comment further,” Wright said in an email last week. “Until the investigation that VISD has requested is made public, there is little else to say.”
According to court documents, Wright started reporting her daughter’s harassment to Soltman, McMurray principal Allison and the VISD board in the fall of 2015. She said in the KOMO interview last week that action by the district was delayed.
“That report didn’t get looked at until March,” Wright told KOMO. “By that time she was out of school. It had gotten so bad we couldn’t manage it anymore.”
A second parent involved in the suit, who asked to go by the name Antonio in the KOMO piece, says his daughter has been harassed for being openly gay. According to the lawsuit, the girl has faced relentless harassment from “students, teachers, and administrators,” and no one from the school addressed or stopped it.
“I just want my kids to have a safe place on Vashon,” Antonio said in the television interview. “We love this place, and then to go through this when everybody knows you, it’s not easy.”
The suit’s filing comes at a time when bullying is taking a national stage. A report about bullying issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and other federal agencies, was released earlier this month. According to press accounts, the report said bullying should be taken as seriously as concussions in youth sports.
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