After another seven-hour rehearing on the expulsion of a Belleville High School student, the Van Burn Public Schools Board of Education on Monday reduced Albert McGee’s expulsion to suspension for the rest of the school year.
Also, the criminal activity and gun possession charges were dropped and he was suspended for gang activity and intimidation, having to do with postings on the internet.
Since the charges were not violations of the state school code, but violations of the student handbook, Albert, 16, is eligible to go to another school until he is able to apply for reinstatement to BHS.
His school records were introduced as evidence by the school district to show he came to BHS from Southfield in the second semester of the 9th grade. But his attorney used the information to show Albert has good grades – 3.125 grade point average — and is eligible for the Honor Roll.
Meanwhile, Albert is being tutored with the three others expelled or suspended on Nov. 3, to honor Circuit Court Judge Cynthia Stephen’s desire that the students not lose any education while their law suit is going through the courts.
School Supt. Pete Lazaroff has guaranteed the four teens education until the end of the first semester, so they can pass their final exams. He has hired two certified teachers to work with the students 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. each school day.
The school board adjourned the hearing at about 11:20 p.m. Monday, with two students left who still needed rehearings, under the judge’s order.
Deonte Bruce-Ruffin’s hearing was set for 5 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 5, and Tory Sykes’ hearing was set for 5 p.m. Tuesday, Dec. 11.
The attorney for the families, Cliff Woodard, said he is convinced that each hearing will take about seven hours, as the first two have taken.
Woodard is the attorney bringing the law suit against the school district and Supt. Lazaroff, seeking reinstatement and an unspecified amount of money. Woodard has said to the media, however, that he is seeking $1 million for each student.
The daylong, Nov. 3 hearings for eight students were held in closed session, at the request of the parents. But, these re-hearings, laying the groundwork for Woodard’s law suit, are being held in open session.
Although the attorneys had told Judge Stephens they would start Monday’s hearing at 4:30 p.m., Woodard made the board wait a full 15 minutes before he and his entourage of parents and students swept into the room, were seated, and said they were ready to begin.
A stipulation of rescheduling the re-hearings beyond the Nov. 29 session was that no new evidence would be admitted, but the school district presented an updated account of the disruptions to the school caused by the internet postings and gang activity and Woodard entered the 2006-07 BHS yearbook that showed a teacher making hand signs.
Woodard said it was a Crips’ gang sign and BHS Principal Sheila Brown said it looked like peace signs to her.
Although the school district presented a list of disruptions caused by the postings of the pictures and gang activity, Woodard insisted that they can’t charge his client with what happened after the pictures were discovered on the internet.
“Typically the crime happens before the charge, not after,” he said.
School district attorney Lori Steinhauer said this information is to show that actions have results and the student’s actions have caused “havoc and chaos in this district … This district is impacted in a negative way.”
Woodard claimed the school district “ran off to the media” and Steinhauer said it was the parents who had a press conference and revealed the students’ names and released the MySpace pictures to the media.
Woodard again asked school board members Keith Johnston, Toni Hunt, and David Peer to recuse themselves from the rehearing because of comments attributed to them in newspapers. Hearing officer William J. Blaha asked them if they could be fair and then allowed them to stay.
Later, Woodard also asked that board members Bob Binert and Martha Toth recuse themselves, stating Toth looked angry with a red face. Toth explained she always has a beet red face and she was frustrated, not angry. He accused Binert of feeding information to Warren in an effort to “rehabilitate the witness.” Blaha rejected his requests.
Toth said she was frustrated that Woodard is not allowing the students to testify as they normally would in an expulsion hearing and Blaha said there is no obligation for them to testify.
Toth said in order to preserve the privacy of the students after the Nov. 3 hearing, the board members shredded all the pictures and documents.
Woodard also asked hearing officer Blaha to recuse himself because he wasn’t fair, and Blaha refused.
Woodard also mentioned appellate court at one point, intimating if the board stuck with the expulsions / suspensions, he would appeal.
Steinhauer asked that deference be given to a witness, assistant principal Larry Warren, who recently had surgery, and everyone agreed, but Warren was grilled in the witness chair for an hour and 40 minutes.
Also, the audience was supposed to be quiet, since it was not a public hearing, and keep cell phones off. At one point, however, a white father of a BHS student stood to say he was being threatened by a black man in the back of the room, so he was leaving to call the police.
Steinhauer asked that the board take “judicial notice” of BHS Principal Sheila Brown’s testimony from Nov. 29, so it wouldn’t have to be repeated since everyone already heard it.
Woodard objected and said he and his clients were leaving and he would take it up with Judge Stephens in the morning. He and his clients got up to leave while he stated, “This is not due process for my client.”
Blaha protested that he had not yet ruled on Steinhauer’s request. He said she wished to exclude unduly repetitious testimony.
Steinhauer said Brown just laid the groundwork for the testimony and Warren was the one who conducted the investigation.
“This is a hearing on a separate child,” Woodard emphasized and this would deny him due process by reading testimony in from somebody else’s hearing.
“Collins Blaha will get its money. I may have to wait to get my money,” Woodard said of the district’s law firm. “What’s the rush? Usually a rush to justice leads to injustice.”
Blaha denied Steinhauer’s motion and Woodard and his clients settled back into their chairs. Woodard called Brown to testify briefly later in the long hearing.
Much of the testimony was a replay of the Nov. 29 session for Anthony Allen, including disagreement on whether MADE Squad was a gang or a rap group.
Warren testified that Albert said he was a member of MADE and “the weed” in the limo was brought in by another student. Woodard had claimed the baggie contained oregano or parsley.
He identified Albert in a photo from the internet that showed him wearing a MADE Squad T-shirt.
Warren said that Albert told him the guns in the pictures were fake and “we were in the 9th grade… We were at Aaron’s house. There was baking soda on the table. I don’t know if the shells were fake.”
Warren testified that Albert told him in the limo “the gun and weed were Aaron’s.”
Board member Johnston said the Applebee’s manager said there were “20 little boys and six adults with bandanas on their faces.” He asked if the Applebee’s confrontation between MADE and MMB had affected the school.
Warren said there were tensions and the two groups caused problems in the hallways and at lunch.
Supt. Lazaroff testified that after the Nov. 3 expulsions, some 19 leaders of the 400 members of the VBEA teachers union met with Lazaroff to discuss concerns teachers had over intimidation and safety. He said teachers were locking their classroom doors after class begins because of concerns for safety.
He said the administrators’ union also voiced concerns about safety.
Lazaroff testified that on Nov. 30, the day after the last rehearing, 16 BHS teachers were absent, with only three related to professional development. There usually are four to eight absences per day, most for professional development, he said.
“This is the holiday season,” Woodard said, dismissing the numbers. “They could be at the mall.”
Lazaroff testified to more than a dozen incidents on and off campus as a result of the photos posted on the internet.
“In my days as a superintendent, I’ve never seen this amount of activity having to do with one issue,” Lazaroff said. He has been a superintendent for 14 years at three districts.
Lazaroff said the manager of Applebee’s said the two gangs in her parking lot were disruptive to business.
Binert asked that the CD Lazaroff said he made from the MySpace web site be replayed to get the words. Albert was pictured on the site, next to “Al,” and participated in the new raps, Lazaroff said.
Woodard had a paper which seemed to contain the words to the newest rap songs on the internet, but he did not offer to share it. He referred to it often during the playing of the CD and replaying of parts.
Lyrics in the rap songs included references to lying to get out of trouble, getting an extra banana clip extension, new guns, a possible problem with Ypsilanti Township, and, “I keep hos like a nigger keeps a garden.”
Woodard said it was young men’s bragging, freedom of artistic expression.
When Principal Brown was called to testify, she said every set of parents except for one expressed shock and dismay when they first saw the photos from MySpace. She said Albert’s parents weren’t the ones she described as not cooperative.
In her closing statement, Steinhauer said the administration must take steps to avoid problems. The students posed with drugs, weapons and gang signs, which was threatening and intimidating to other students and staff.
“We are not going to wait for another Columbine … Actions have consequences,” Steinhauer said.
Woodard said it’s a very sad world when you would punish people for what they might do. He said Albert is an honor roll student.
“What we have is a cultural divide,” Woodard continued. “Whether you accept it or not, rap music is artistic expression … Albert has always expressed he was a rapper … He did not pose a threat at all to the school district. He goes to school every day, raps on the side.”
He said rap music has been here for the past 25 years, so the board better get used to it. And, the No. 1 rapper is white, Emimen.
Woodard said the boys are just emulating stuff they’ve seen on TV. The rap about keeping hos? “He’d probably run if a real woman came to him,” Woodard said, bringing an embarrassed grin to Albert’s face.
“You can’t prove he put them there [on the internet] or that he knew they were there,” Woodard said. “He didn’t incite anyone to violence … He’s too busy being on the honor roll…”
When the board started deliberating, Toth said the pose of the young men around a table with guns and drugs and tough expressions, was deliberately instigating trouble, “like a dare or a taunt.” She said the taunt brought the MMB to confront MADE in the limo.
She quoted the second CD, “You think you tough? You think you can’t bleed?”
She said she would agree to finding Albert guilty of gang activities and intimidation and other board members agreed.
“He’s been to my home. He’s not a bad guy,” Johnston said. “Bandanas around their faces doesn’t seem to scare anybody. It scares me… It scares me to death that one of these boys will end up dead… The rap lyrics are horrible … You have talent … I hate to see you wasting it this way … I cannot vote to have you come back to school.”
Nodwell said if these students were his children, he’d be asking himself “Where did we go wrong?” He said his grandchildren go to the Van Buren Schools and he wants to assure them of a safe school environment. He said people won’t want to go to Applebee’s until this gang activity is settled.
Toth said the board doesn’t want to ruin anyone’s life and in fact tried to protect the identification of the students by shredding of records.
Peer said if the board violated the students’ privacy rights, Woodard would have the district in court on that.
“Albert is responsible for nothing,” Peer said. “They set this table up with BHS ID … BB guns… I don’t see any BBs… I don’t see any musical instruments… It’s intimidating to me… What it is is a threat to BHS … they are all powerful … invite other gangs to come in.
“If they can take the Big Boy logo and put a gun in his hand, they could have taken out the student ID card,” Peer said, noting Albert is leaning into the limo picture in one shot.
He agreed to suspension for the rest of the year.
Ran on 12-6-07