By Jay Mathews
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 14, 2006; 11:06 AM
One day in May 2004, a student at Short Pump Elementary
School in Henrico County, Va., walked up to fourth-grader
David Henck in the cafeteria and said, “It would be a holy
day if you were shot dead by a sniper.”
That single incident would have been bothersome enough to
David and his parents, Bill and Leigh Henck, but it was not
the first time children at Short Pump Elementary had been
cruel to David. He has Asperger Syndrome, a neurobiological
disorder marked in part by social clumsiness. He was, as
his father put it, a bully magnet, and his parents did not
think the school was doing enough to help him.
I am telling this story based almost entirely on Bill
Henck’s account. I asked the Henrico County school system
for a response, but at first got only two short and
relatively general statements from the superintendent,
which did not surprise me in the least. I have been
investigating several cases of communication between
parents and school officials in difficult circumstances,
and the standard official response to the parents, and to
any reporters who might inquire, is often as little a
response as possible.
I don’t blame the school officials for this. It seems to
me, and the bizarre twists of the Henck case buttress that
impression, that the educators are doing only what their
lawyers tell them to do. I don’t have any cure for this,
but I think relating what happened to the Hencks, and how
they achieved the momentary but still remarkable milestone
of getting the Short Pump Elementary principal indicted for
perjury, will dramatize what an awful problem we have in
parent-school relationships, and how it might be a good
time to get people other than attorneys involved.
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