The Hancock-Henderson Quill, Inc.
by David Grimes for The Quill
Union school officials will continue to work with Cathy Burgdorf and her son, Aaron TeJai, a third-grader at the school, to resolve to the boy's claims that he suffers physical and emotional abuse at the hands of fellow students.
Superintendent Dean Irlbeck said last week some questions remain regarding several of the alleged incidents, but stressed that the Union School District does not discriminate. TeJai is bi-racial.
Burgdorf alleges her son has been the target of racial epithets, shunning and physical bullying by other students at the grade school and that school officials have been unresponsive to their complaints, if not inclined to blame the boy for the incidents.
School officials heard Burgdorf's concerns formally during Wednesday's School Board meeting and arrived at an agreement whereby Burgdorf's son will submit to behavioral testing and administration will deal with future complaints on an issue-by-issue basis.
Burgdorf will monitor her son's progress at school and meet again with the school board in May.
She has kept her son from riding the school bus and attending classes for two weeks, instead picking up and returning his homework assignments and allowing him to study at home.
Following the Wednesday board meeting, she said she would allow her son to return to classes at the school on Monday.
"We don't intend to be adversarial, we only want to see that Aaron is treated with the same dignity and respect as any other student," said Greg Houston, president of the Macomb Chapter of the NAACP, who accompanied Burgdorf to Wednesday's board meeting.
The board also questioned the boy's homeroom teacher, his bus driver, an aide and the school district's social worker during Wednesday's board meeting.
Burgdorf said she was taking a "wait-and-see" view of the arrangement, but was willing to give it a chance to work "as long as I can see changes being made."