A federal judge heard more than four hours' worth of testimony Friday in a case that pits a school district's obligations to protect its students against the rights of special-education students to receive the most normal public education possible.
At the close of the hearing, U.S. District Judge Kristine Baker said she hopes to issue a written order before Thursday on whether the Vilonia School District should be forced to readmit a suspended special-education student who last month posted a picture online of himself holding a gun, acknowledged being suicidal and said he was "just joking" when he recorded himself saying in a menacing voice, "I fight to kill."
A hearing is set Thursday before an officer appointed by the Arkansas Department of Education to weigh the district's request to continue providing the boy an education, but in a more restrictive setting, against a request from the 15-year-old's parents that he remain enrolled in regular ninth-grade classes.
Vilonia School District Superintendent David Stephens, a former special-education teacher, acknowledged from the witness stand Friday that the district intentionally violated a hearing officer's recent order that the district readmit the boy, who is protected under special-education laws from being removed for more than 10 days, because, "We made a decision in the best interests of our kids," particularly after the Feb. 14 shooting at a school in Parkland, Fla., that left 17 people dead and is one in a growing wave of school shootings.
Ronnie* Simmons, principal of the school's Freshman Academy, testified that he was alerted the night of March 1, by the parents of another student, that the boy had just posted a photograph on Snapchat, a social media site, showing him holding a gun -- which turned out to be a pellet gun -- and the words "Iloveitwhentheyrun," which his mother said are lyrics in a recently released song by his favorite rapper.
Simmons testified that the boy was suspended March 6, after another student told him March 5 that the boy had said in an earlier conversation, "I just want to fight someone and end up killing them and go to prison for the rest of my life."
He said the suspension and the district's desire to expel the boy centered on the Snapchat post, as well as other images and videos later found on the boy's phone and the phone of another student -- including a photo of a classmate with whom the boy had been feuding, with the other student's head circled in red.
Simmons said the boy's behavior problems were well known at the school, that he had been involved in a "love triangle" involving two female students, and that the boy had recently admitted he had been contemplating suicide and kept a picture on his phone of himself with a belt around his neck.
The boy allowed school officials to look at his phone, where they also found a picture of him holding a handgun that turned out to be real, Simmons said.
Just this week, the principal said, another student showed him an earlier message in which the boy had said, "I'm going to kill [a particular student] and then shoot myself." Simmons noted that at the time, the boy was fighting with the male student he named.
The mother of the suspended boy testified that she and her husband were both surprised to see the photo of her son with her husband's handgun. She told the judge her husband keeps all his guns locked up except for his personal weapon, which he had left behind only because he was taking a trip by airplane and couldn't take it along. She emphasized that the gun wasn't loaded and that all ammunition in the house was locked away.
The woman -- who was identified in court only by her initials, as was her son -- testified that after the family moved to Vilonia when the boy entered the eighth grade, she agreed to the district's recommendation to place him in an alternative learning environment. But she said it only caused a worsening of his behavioral issues, which stemmed from traumatic brain injury as an infant.
The woman said she adopted the boy when he was two months old after she and her husband, who couldn't have children together, tried to find an older child to adopt to be a brother to a son she had from an earlier relationship.
She said she ended up changing her plans after receiving a call that an infant was in immediate need of a family after suffering 22 fractures and possible brain damage as a result of his mother repeatedly slamming him against a wall face-first. She said the boy was developmentally delayed, but emergency room doctors had observed that he was also bright enough to "play dead" at the sound of his mother's voice.
Once he reached school age, she said, "We had continuous problems because of his disruptive behavior," and the schools' efforts to subdue him only made him more frustrated.
She said the family moved to Vilonia because the district was known for its educational programs and its work with special-education students. But she said the alternative learning environment isolated him from most of the student body, and "taught him a lot of bad habits," such as encouraging him to yell or scream as long as he didn't physically harm anyone, and to record his thoughts, no matter how ugly, into a personal journal as a means to relieve stress.
She said he was only employing the tactics taught in the alternative environment when he recorded the message that was later found on an app in his phone. Played in court, the boy could be heard saying, in a swaggering tone, "For all you p---- f------ out there who think you can beat my ass, I .... [unintelligible] cause I don't fight to hurt people, I fight to kill."
It wasn't until the end of the eighth grade, the boy's mother said, that an evaluation ordered by special-education officials revealed that her son suffers from traumatic brain injury, memory deficits, psycho-motor and other deficits that keep him from processing information quickly, depression and oppositional defiant disorder.
Attorney Jay Bequette represented the district and attorney Theresa Caldwell of Maumelle represented the boy's mother at Friday's hearing. The boy wasn't present.
Metro on 04/07/2018
*CORRECTION: The principal of the Freshman Academy in the Vilonia School District is Ronnie Simmons. His first name was incorrect in a previous version of this article.