Five-day suspensions a typical punishment
Some parents say that’s not enough for bullying, serious student attacks
The physician had just said goodbye to her last patient of the day when she received a call from the nurse’s office at Niskayuna High School. Her son had suffered serious injuries.
“He’s missing teeth — he needs to be picked up immediately,” the mother recalls the assistant saying.
“Missing teeth? Is there bleeding? What happened?” the mother choked into the phone. “My son doesn’t fight — was there a fight?”
The nurse grabbed the phone from her assistant, and said, “I’m trying to save the teeth.”
“Do you know what happened?” the mother asked again. “No,” the nurse responded. “Is he crying?”
“Yes.”
“Call 911,” the mother told the nurse.
Minutes earlier, just before 3 p.m. Nov. 14, 2019, her 14-year-old son had been seated at a table outside his school’s weight room
with his lacrosse teammates throwing paper planes they had made out of sticky notes at the ceiling.
A football player sitting nearby, who was 6 feet 3 inches and 275 pounds, tossed a sticky-note pad to her son. Her son tossed it back. Suddenly, the football player stood up, walked behind her son and wrapped his arm around the smaller boy’s neck, choking him until he passed out. A school surveillance camera that captured the incident showed the larger boy letting go of the unconscious 14-year-old, who fell head-first to the hard floor.
The impact fractured his jaw in several places and broke eight teeth. He has needed continuing medical treatment, including the need to endure dental surgeries — which could cost up to $80,000 — for years into his adulthood, according to his mother.
“I have seen (the football player) put choke holds on people before but he usually lets it go before anything happens,” her son wrote in a statement to police.
The incident resulted in the football player receiving a five-day suspension. He was eventually charged with assault and, after his case languished in Schenectady County Family Court for months during the pandemic, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to probation.
The outcome underscores the policies of many school districts across the state to impose five-day suspensions to discipline students who have seriously assaulted or bullied other students — including in unprovoked attacks that cause injury. In many districts, a suspension of more than five days triggers a hearing process involving the superintendent in which officials evaluate the situation, and assess if further suspension should occur. In Niskayuna, that hearing process is triggered by a five-day suspension.
The fallout is that schoolchildren and teenagers are routinely assaulted in schools, where officials give the victims or their parents the option of contacting police while school officials often mete out light punishment. In some schools, the severity of the punishment is much more severe if a student attacks a teacher.
Jennifer Snider, an attorney for the mother whose son was injured, filed a lawsuit on her behalf that claims the suburban school district failed to protect her son from violence. The complaint asserts school officials were aware that the football player had allegedly engaged in other acts of violence, including an incident on the day her son was choked, and another two weeks after the football player returned to school following his suspension.
The Times Union is not identifying either student or the mother to protect the privacy of the minors.
“We do not discuss details of incidents related to particular students,” Matt Leon, a spokesman for the Niskayuna School District, wrote in an email. “Generally: It’s important to know that every violation or suspected violation of the code of conduct is thoroughly investigated and the response is based on the specifics of the situation. We work to understand the specifics of what oc- curred, what is appropri- ate in terms of discipline, the best way to follow up and follow through with students and families and what will be most effective in terms of maintaining a safe environment and helping students learn and grow.”
But that was not the experience for the mother of the injured boy. A su- perintendent’s hearing did not occur until she spoke up, which according to the Niskayuna School Dis- trict’s code of conduct should occur any time extreme violent behavior using force causes harm or injury. The hearings also are supposed to take place following incidents in- volving possession or use of a weapon.
After five days at home, the football player re- turned to the same hall- ways with the injured boy. He lost no privileges, according to the mother. Her son suffered from continuous fear and un- certainty for weeks.
The principal told her a safety plan was put in place, but she and her husband never received a written plan despite ask- ing to see it multiple times. They believed their son’s teachers knew about what happened, but when he came home with un- usually bad grades on his homework assignments — because of his absences due to medical treatments — he told them that his teachers did not know the specifics of what happened.
They emailed each teacher directly and many responded immediately, writing that they had no idea how severe their son’s injuries were.
“We felt like we were kept in the dark,” the father said. “We felt like everything the district did was to protect the other kid. They hid behind, ‘We can’t tell you anything ’ and the ‘code of conduct.’”
“He really could have been killed,” Snider, the couple’s attorney, said. “He could have had a brain injury. I don’t know how he doesn’t. The next kid is going to.”
The Niskayuna case does not stand alone. Other parents in the Capital Region have had to advocate for their children— at times taking legal action — after incidents of physical harm or bullying to get school officials to take disciplinary action and provide services for victimized students.
In December 2019, a student at Albany’s Thomas O’Brien Academy of Science and Technology was violently choked by another student who also threatened to kill her when she was standing in line for lunch in the school’s cafeteria, a lawsuit alleges. The principal did not take action until the parent of the student who was choked pressed charges. The City School District of Albany then got involved and provided services for both students, much to the father’s relief, said Snider, who also re