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Teen's expulsion makes mom a crusader
Fran Valenta says schools overreact in wake of Columbine
By JENNIFER GISH
Dispatch/Sunday News
David says he thought he'd get back at the boy who had been
teasing him for months.
It ended up changing his life.
On Sept. 9 last year the police were summoned to Eastern York
Middle School to search for bombs and the students were evacuated
because of a note found in the school hallway.
David Wineholt, 14, said he penned the "hit list" of
students, with another student's name scrawled across the top to
make it appear the other boy had written it. He said the boy was
a bully who had been teasing him for months.
He said he was planning to show it only to the boy. The shy,
quiet boy who pulled average grades said he only wanted to make
the other boy mad.
Instead, it cost David his education.
During his Sept. 27 disciplinary hearing, the Eastern York School
Board went beyond Superintendent Susan Weeks' recommendation of a
one-year expulsion and permanently expelled David.
"I felt angry at myself and disappointed in myself and
depressed, and I was really bummed out about it," David
said.
David's expulsion from school is harming him more than helping
him, said his psychologist, Julie Swope, who also has experience
with educational matters from the more than 15 years she served
on the York City School Board.
"His needs can best be met in the regular classroom,"
Swope said. "This is not the profile of a kid who is
dangerous to himself or anybody else. It was a bad judgment thing
that he did, but in terms of depriving him of an education ... we
have to watch we don't go overboard with this stuff."
Swope said David now suffers from sleep disorders and anxiety.
"I would say that he's working it out, but it's not a slight
consequence," she said. "This youngster's going to be
affected by it."
Mom speaks out: David's mother, Fran Valenta, who still hopes to
get her son reinstated at Eastern this school year, told David's
story Friday at Temple University as part of the Twentieth Annual
Conference of the Future of Psychology in the Schools titled
"Lost Children: Serving Disenfranchised Youth."
Valenta, of Wrightsville, was invited to speak to the nearly 300
school psychologists and some school administrators after she
contacted professor Irwin Hyman of Temple University.
She learned of Hyman and his book "Dangerous Schools: What
We Can Do About the Physical and Emotional Abuse of Our
Children" in a newspaper article.
She immediately called Hyman and talked to him about David's
situation. Hyman later invited her to speak during the
conference.
Hyman said Valenta's story reinforced the theme of his book, that
laws and school policies are unduly punishing students.
"It's because we give unbridled authority to schools with
stupid laws" he said.
Valenta is also working on her own book titled "Fairness in
the Age of Columbine."
The book, which she hopes to finish in a few months and then have
published, will include research on the issue, David's story and
the accounts of other students who have gone through similar
events, she said.
Note a mistake: David had never demonstrated any dangerous
behaviors in the past and his school record includes no
behavior-related or violent incidents, both Swope and Valenta
said.
Although his note included comments about blowing up buildings on
9/9/99 and drawings of swastikas, David pointed out the symbols
most often associated with Nazism are also an American Indian
emblems for good luck. His mother said he got the idea about
things blowing up on Sept. 9, 1999 from news reports about
possible destruction that day.
The eighth-grader said he wrote the note a couple of days before
it was found and had shown it to his best friend, who told him he
should throw it away without showing it to anyone.
He tore it out of his notebook and slipped it into one of his
books, he said. It would later fall onto the floor of the school
hallway and would be found by a teacher cleaning trash off the
floor.
"I didn't intend for no one to find it, and I didn't think
that no one would find it. I'm sorry if I scared anyone," he
said.
During the disciplinary hearing, David said the board members
asked him why he didn't tell a teacher or guidance counselor
about the boy's teasing him about his appearance.
"They'd just put you and the other students in the room and
talk it out and the students would just go out and tell other
kids and you'd get teased more ... I said I was sorry and I
didn't mean to scare nobody and it would never happen again"
he said. "When I heard that I was going to be expelled
permanently I was sad and mad at the same time at myself."
Student safety: Weeks said she made her decision based on student
safety and the individual facts of the case.
"We are governed by and large by the parameters of the law
and district policy, and we try to take individual circumstances
into consideration," she said.
Weeks said David can apply for entry into the school district
through a letter on or before July 1 and that she would give a
recommendation to the board as to whether David should be
permitted to return to Eastern schools.
It is unknown why the board went beyond Weeks' recommendation and
expelled David permanently.
The Eastern York School Board's solicitor Emily Leader said she
is not comfortable speaking about the issue or having board
members speak about the details of the case because it is a
student-related matter.
David was also found guilty in juvenile court of making a
terroristic threat and is awaiting his disposition hearing, where
he will find out how long he will serve probation.
'Stern lecture': Though Valenta said she took the note very
seriously and David received a stern lecture afterward, she said
she could tell right away that David had not been plotting any
kind of activity similar to Columbine or other school tragedies.
"I'm looking at this thing (the note) and it looks like a
kid carrying on," Valenta said. "What that shows right
there is my child needed therapy."
About a week after the note was found, Lower Windsor Township
Police Chief Dave Sterner described the note to the York Dispatch
as a "cry for help type of thing" and said that police
will work with the school to resolve the situation.
In the Sept. 19 article, Sterner also was quoted as saying that
"We're going to work with the school and come up with an
appropriate punishment. The school's going to punish him; we're
going to take some action, too, to send a message that this kind
of thing won't be tolerated."
Valenta says she was offered the option of having David sent to
an alternative school for students with behavior problems or
having a teacher come to his home.
Because Valenta did not want her son to be influenced by boys
with behavioral problems, she turned down the district's offer
for alternative education.
The teacher who would have been sent to the home was a certified
special-education teacher, Valenta said, so she also turned down
that offer because she wanted David to be taught by a
"regular" classroom teacher.
Valenta did work out a deal with the district to have a friend
who substitutes for another school district seek employment with
Eastern so she could serve as David's tutor, and he now receives
almost daily instruction from that teacher.
Weeks confirmed Valenta's story and added that the district is
paying for David's tutoring sessions.
Cracking the books: Now, David struggles to catch up on nearly
three marking periods of work.
His mother just wants her son back in school, since he was denied
admission in private school because of the expulsion.
A psychological evaluation that showed David did not put the
school in any danger, and a recent letter to the administration
from Swope saying that David would benefit from being back in
school should be enough to get David back in, she said.
And she says that what would have been appropriate at the time
would have been a 10-day suspension, David's mandated attendance
at an anger management class and a stern warning from police.
David, who says he harbors no anger toward administrators, school
board members or police and is more angry at himself, would just
like to return to school.
"I think about going back to school like every day and I
would like to go back to that school," he said. "I
would get to see my friends more, and I would be able to get past
this grade easier."
© 2000 MediaNews Group, Inc. and York
Newspapers, Inc.
Left to Right
Dr. Irwin Hyman author
of "Dangerous Schools"
Co-author Pamela A. Snook RN MSN not pictured.
James Garbarino, Ph. D.
author of
"Lost Boys, Why Our Sons Turn Violent and
How We Can Save Them"
Myrna B. Shure Ph. D. author
of
"Raising a Thinking Teen"
The Luncheon at the Radisson
Twelve Ceaser's Hotel.
I was honored to present my son's story to
the workshop for
Dr. Hyman and Pamela Snook RN, MSN
My Worst School Experience Scale
Franapple@suscom.net
"Fairness in the Age of Columbine" by:Fran Valenta