Park City • The first grader’s bullying started last fall, around the beginning of the school year, his parents say.
He was at a local park when his mother first overheard other schoolchildren “calling him weirdo and things like that,” the boy’s father, Karl Persson, said.
His mother reached out to staff at Jeremy Ranch Elementary to let them know, but nothing happened, the father said.
About a week later, the school’s dean of students, Alane Gaspari, called the boy’s parents to inform them that another student reportedly choked their son at school, Persson said. The next day, the father emailed a number of school administrators and Park City School District officials, noting his concerns. He requested that the other student have no contact with his son.
“I got a nice email from the superintendent, [saying] that we take bullying seriously, we’re going to do all this stuff,” Persson said. But he said again, “nothing really happened.”
The parents ultimately filed a complaint in October with the U.S Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, alleging that the Park City School District failed to adequately investigate the bullying allegations and protect their son.
Their son has a disability and is on an Individualized Education Program, a learning plan designed for students with disabilities, Persson said. The Salt Lake Tribune verified his enrollment at the school but is not naming the son or disclosing his disability in an effort to protect his educational privacy.
The federal office opened an investigation into the Persson family complaint in November to determine whether the alleged harassment has “negatively affected his receipt of a free appropriate public education,” which is a right under the Individuals with Disabilities Act.
That happened as federal civil rights investigators continued to assess another Park City School District case, in which they ultimately found the district repeatedly failed to adequately respond to multiple student reports of racial, antisemitic and sexual harassment, according to a federal agreement the district entered into in March.
Father accuses district of ‘subtle retaliation’
The parents also reached out to the Summit County attorney’s office in late November to investigate their son’s treatment.
An investigative report from the office, which Persson provided to The Tribune, mentions the alleged incident at the local park, as well as the choking allegation, along with other alleged confrontations: one where another student was accused of kicking their son, and another where their son had “been hit so hard that he could not see,” the report states.
No charges were filed as a result of the county attorney’s office investigation, which stretched into January, Persson said. The father said he was told that the evidence “didn’t rise to the level necessary for them to proceed,” but that prosecutors were “critical about the school’s handling and not involving School Resource Officers.”
One investigative report does state that, according to an interview with the school’s principal, Shawn Kuennen, their son and a student accused of bullying the boy were moved into different classes. The county attorney’s office declined to comment on the investigation.
As the federal civil rights investigation proceeded though, Persson said he believes the school officials also engaged in “subtle retaliation” against the parents after they submitted their complaint.
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