Who’s the bully: One man’s war against School District

Since December 2006, an angry father has appeared before the Brandywine Board of Education to ask: why weren’t officials protecting his son from bullies? Why did they bar him from hallway bathrooms, and prohibit him from going to class when there was a substitute teacher present?

Donald Soles, who is white, has attended Board meetings regularly, asking the same questions, but he has been ignored for the most part.

“Mr. Soles is wrong with his statements, and the entire case is well documented,” said District Superintendent James R. Scanlon, who declined to provide specifics as it would violate the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act.

Soles said he never gets answers, so he has narrowed it down to two possibilities.
“The superintendent and the principal of P.S. duPont have decided that they do not want my family in the district anymore,” he said at a May 19 Board meeting, because they “thought it was easier to shuffle the victim of out of the school building than to deal with the racist attackers.”

Another reason, he said, “might be some new form of segregation in which white kids are told not to go to classes and not to use restrooms the other children are using.”

The backdrop
of diversity

Underlying Soles’ story of a white child bullied by black students has been the Board’s struggle to maintain mathematical diversity amid declining enrollment, school closures and state pressure to return to neighborhood schools – a shift that would create racial imbalances many in Brandywine oppose.

Incredulous, Soles insisted on knowing why, when 1,000 students have left the district since 2000, no one called him when he pulled his son out. No one had an answer for him.

Now, Soles wants Scanlon fired for denying a child equal access to an education.
“He would never dare do this to an African American child because he knows the public outcry . . . this would attract,” Soles said.

After the latest June 23 meeting, Scanlon’s patience had run out.

“Mr. Soles is way out of line coming out to public meetings and continuing to speak like that” after his children were no longer enrolled in Brandywine schools, he said.

“His concerns have been investigated fully …and we spent a lot of time doing that.”
Soles remains enraged. He has pledged to keep coming before the Board until he gets answers. In the meantime, he has sought answers elsewhere – the Department of Justice – with little satisfaction.

In an October 11, 2007 response to his complaint, Deputy Attorney General Victoria Witherell said the AG’s Office had recommended two years before that he notify the police directly regarding the incidents which included an alleged choking.

The school was not required to report them to police because none of the incidents qualified as assaults or felonies, the letter said. The AG’s office also determined 17 other incidents were consistent with school crime reporting laws.

“The alleged incidents may have involved harassment, disorderly conduct” and other offenses, Witherell wrote, but none “meet the elements for an assault III charge. This is not to make light of the difficulties …but simply an evaluation under the appropriate criminal laws.”

Witherell’s letter also said others reported Soles’ son used foul language toward teachers and called other students “retarded” or “racist.”

Soles said this happened out of frustration toward the end of enduring two years of harassment.

Of the 28,509 reported incidents in the Brandywine last year, 5 percent (1,542) were serious enough to be reported to police. Still, a number of staff and parents have expressed the need for the District to focus greater attention on discipline, Scanlon said.