School Bullying Council

By Max Reinhart
MReinhart@News-Herald.com

Though bullying is an issue at virtually all schools, perhaps no district has been as scrutinized for its bullying issues and policies as Mentor Schools has been in recent years after lawsuits filed against the district.

Board members got an update on the school system’s efforts to combat bullying at Tuesday’s meeting.

Bill Porter, director of K-8 education, presented the semi-annual report on bullying in the second semester of the 2010-11 school year.

Porter said there were nine reported incidents of bullying at the high school, six at the middle school level and 10 at the elementary level.

“The numbers are comparable to those from the first semester this year, but are down almost 50 percent compared to the second semester of last school year,” Porter said.

“Most incidents are verbal in nature, while fewer are physical,” he said. “Some are a combination (verbal and physical).”

Porter said a special emphasis has been put on stopping cyber bullying, which occurs over the Internet or by other technological means.

While isolated incidents of such behaviors have sprung up, Porter said so far they have not fit the district’s definition of bullying because the harassment has not been sustained over time.

“Very few of those incidents rose to the level of being persistent and pervasive, but (cyber bullying) will continue to be a focus as technologies change and evolve,” he said.

Last month, a U.S. District Court judge dismissed a lawsuit against Mentor Schools, filed on behalf of 17-year-old Eric Mohat’s estate. His family claimed Eric shot and killed himself after months of persistent bullying in math class.

Judge Donald C. Nugent found that because Mentor High School did not have a “special relationship” with the teen, the school did not have a “heightened level of responsibility for his care and protection.”

A separate lawsuit brought forth by the family of Sladjana Vidovic, another Mentor teen who committed suicide after allegedly being frequently bullied, continues in U.S. District Court.

That suit alleges that three other Mentor students committed suicide in 2007 and 2008, at least in part because of bullying.

Superintendent Jacqueline Hoynes said the full bullying report will be made available today on the district’s website, mentorschools.net.

Hoynes also took time during the meeting to report on the district’s declining enrollment.

Since 2000, total enrollment throughout the school system has dropped from just over 10,000 to just over 8,000 students.

The superintendent said the figures are not a surprise and that another small dip is projected for next school year.

“A lot of people moved to Mentor in the ’70s with a lot of kids,” Hoynes said.

“Now, even though the population of Mentor is not declining, we have more older people and a more balanced demographic profile than we did in the ’70s,” she said.

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Eric Mohat

CLEVELAND, Ohio — A federal judge has thrown out one of two bullying lawsuits involving student suicides at Mentor High School.

U.S. District Judge Donald Nugent dismissed a lawsuit brought against school officials by the parents of Eric Mohat, 17, who shot himself in 2007 after enduring what his parents described as months of harassment by classmates.

But Nugent continues to preside over a second case filed last year by the parents of Sladjana Vidovic, 16, a Mentor High student who hung herself in 2008. Sladjana’s parents contend their daughter was persistently tormented by classmates.

Attorney Kenneth Myers filed both cases in federal court, asserting violations of the parents’ 14th Amendment right to “the companionship, care, custody and management of their child, including the right to control his education.”

But Myers said the cases involve different legal issues and Nugent’s decision to dismiss the Mohat case shouldn’t have an impact on the Vidovic case.

In the Mohat case, Myers was unable to provide evidence that school officials had been made aware of the bullying that was going on, he said. But not so in the Vidovic

case.

“In the Vidovic case, we have a lot more evidence that the parents had repeatedly complained about the bullying to the school,” Myers said. “And the suicides occurred a year apart, so the school district was on notice as a result of Eric’s death.”

Myers said he plans to meet with Eric’s parents, Bill and Janis, to discuss whether they want to refile the case in Lake County Common Pleas Court, or to appeal Nugent’s ruling.

In a prepared statement, the school district said: “This decision will not end our ongoing commitment to train our staff and students with anti-bullying and mental health education initiatives. Our deepest sympathy remains with the Mohat family grieving the loss of their son.”

The Mohats’ lawsuit accused the Mentor School District and school officials of failing to intercede on behalf of Eric against the bullies, and that this failure contributed to his decision to commit suicide.

But Nugent wrote in his order that the school had no constitutional duty to protect Eric from harm, nor could it have prevented his suicide.

“Consequently, however tragic and unfair this may seem,” Nugent wrote, the Mohats “have not established that the school’s failure to stop the bullying Eric suffered, or its failure to prevent his ultimate suicide,” was a constitutional violation.

Although the Mohats lost their lawsuit, they succeeded in making school officials aware of bullying problems at the high school, Myers said.

“One of their main goals was to bring this to people’s attention, and they certainly did that,” Myers said. “Their other goal was to hold people accountable for their failure to act. That, to some extent, is being done through the Vidovic case.”

To reach this Plain Dealer reporter: jmccarty@plaind.com, 216-999-4153

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A lawsuit filed by the parents of a Mentor, Ohio, high school student who committed suicide
after being bullied at school was dismissed today by the Ohio Supreme Court.

In a unanimous 7-0 opinion, justices said the case was “improvidently accepted for review,”
meaning it should not have agreed to hear the case in the first place. After hearing oral arguments
in the case on Feb. 16, the justices decided that the suggested issue of state law is not
valid.

The lawsuit filed by the parents of 17-year-old Eric Mohat now reverts back to U.S. District
Court Judge Donald C. Nugent who asked the Supreme Court to rule regarding the applicability of
state law on the statute of limitations.

Bill and Janis Mohat, Eric’s parents, sued Mentor High School officials 2009, just short of two
years after their son shot himself in the head. He had been bullied for months at school, his
parents said, including a student who told him, “Why don’t you go home and shoot yourself? Nobody
would miss you.”

Schools officials responded by saying that the Mohats’ negligence may have contributed to his
decision to commit suicide. Further, they argued that the two-year statute of limitations applied
because the Mohats had not set up an estate for the son at the time the suit was filed.

ajohnson@dispatch.com

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