Mother’s lawsuit claims city schools’ actions harmed daughter, 9

A woman sued Pittsburgh Public Schools, its top administrator and other school leaders in federal court this week, alleging her daughter was subject to repeated incidents this school year, including allowing the girl to wander unsupervised on Federal Street.

Rachel Barron filed the lawsuit Thursday on behalf of her 9-yearold daughter, a student at Pittsburgh King PreK-8 on the North Side. Her lawyer, Jennifer O. Price, is asking for compensatory and punitive damages for the harm they claim the girl suffered during five months at the North Side school.

Superintendent Anthony Hamlet, his executive director, Errika Fearby Jones, King principal Leah McCord, assistant principal Andrea Brown and music teacher Ryan Griffin are named in the suit. Solicitor Ira Weiss said the district had no comment and would file a response to the complaint after reviewing it.

Ms. Price said she wasn’t available for comment Friday, and Ms. Barron, 28, didn’t return a message left at a number listed for her.

The suit describes the following events of Oct. 20, 2016: Ms. Barron was en route to UPMC Magee-Womens Hospital in early labor when she called the school to request an early dismissal for her daughter and son, who is not a plaintiff in the suit. When she was told that couldn’t be arranged by phone, she sent her fiance, Dwayne Sims, to pick up the children.

But because he wasn’t listed to do so in the girl’s file, the school wouldn’t allow him to leave with the children. A little more than an hour later, Ms. Brown, the assistant principal, called to say Ms. Barron could fax a letter from the hospital authorizing the pickup — or permit her children to be driven there by a school counselor, who also would bring the requisite paperwork.

But the counselor arrived without the children, saying she

was told only to bring the documents. Neither Ms. Brown nor Ms. McCord knew the girl’s whereabouts, according to the suit, and Ms. McCord said she didn’t tell a counselor to take the children to the hospital.

Ms. Barron’s aunt found the girl and her younger brother walking on Federal Street. Whether they were alone wasn’t immediately clear.

A few weeks later, a teacher scrubbed a Halloween tattoo off the girl’s face “with such force” it caused “bruising, redness and swelling,” the suit alleges. The principal, Ms. McCord, notified school police, whose investigation, for an unexplained reason, led to a report filed against the parents via Child Line, the state’s abuse reporting hotline. But “at no point did the principal ever talk to the teachers on that hallway or take any other actions to any teacher accountable for such abusive actions.”

And last month, a boy in music class shoved the girl to the ground, causing her to hit her head, according to the suit. The teacher, Mr. Griffin, didn’t intervene or report the attack, the suit alleges, and instead walked the students to their next class, even as the girl stayed behind. There, she was beaten up by three other boys — and was later scapegoated during an assembly that touched on the importance of lining up for class changes, the suit continued.

In the latter two incidents, the suit claims the school leaders told Ms. Barron video surveillance wasn’t working.

The girl “has been psychologically traumatized by these incidents,” the suit alleges. “She cries every day and has no desire to go back to school.”