On April 4, 2003, the police were called to North Mecklenburg High School. There had been a sexual assault in a bathroom, and they arrested an 18-year-old freshman, one of two students who took part in the assault. His victim was a girl with mild mental disabilities.
He was convicted of felony kidnapping, the toughest charge prosecutors threw at him, and forced by law to register as a sex offender on North Carolina’s sex offender registry, a list that helps authorities keep track of people who commit serious sex crimes.
A rational person would assume this would put a quick end to this kid’s academic career at Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools. Instead, he later turned up as a 19-year-old freshman at West Mecklenburg, his third known high school in two years.
It was the last straw for Gwendolyn McGowens, a teacher at the school. McGowens and a group of teachers I interviewed for this column first heard about his past record when they were warned by a faculty member at West that he “should never be left alone with a female.”
Earlier in the year, a teacher’s car had been stolen from the school parking lot by a male student who snatched her keys out of her purse. That student was back in school after 10 days, which was bad enough. But this was too much. The sex offender is a big kid, and they knew they couldn’t watch him all the time, much less have any hope of physically restraining him. They also feared for their own safety, especially after he began sexually harassing other personnel, offenses for which he was suspended at least once last school year.
So McGowens began writing letters about the situation, begging for something to be done. She wrote to Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education Chairperson Joe White, school board member George Dunlap, Dr. Ralph Taylor, Director of Alternative Education and Safe Schools, CMS Superintendent Jim Pughsley, and Ann Clark, Regional Superintendent of High Schools.
Only White, the school board chairperson, even bothered to respond to the letters. “Please keep in mind that our students, just like our teachers, have rights as well,” White wrote in a letter which reminded McGowens that there is a “process and procedure” in place for such concerns.
The most outrageous part of the whole situation is that the student code doesn’t prohibit sex offenders who commit their crimes on campus from returning. In fact, according to page 24 of the student code, the minimum punishment for sexual assault, rape or attempted rape isn’t that much tougher than the one for consensual sex on campus.
The minimum punishment for consensual sex is long-term suspension or “exclusion,” a suspension that lasts for up to 365 days. The minimum punishment for sexual assault is “suspension that lasts beyond the school year.” The maximum is exclusion or expulsion.
In other words, according to the student code, our friend the sex offender has every right to be on campus with the general student population, and the Gwen McGowens of the world better just get used to it. And if teachers or other students spend their days in fear, or worse yet, are victimized? I guess that’s not a big enough deal for school system leaders to waste their time on.
The irony here is that it wasn’t McGowens who contacted me about this, but a female African-American honor student at West who was outraged after watching teachers struggle to keep students safe at the school she loves. She’s tired, she says, of CMS using her school as a dumping ground for dangerous felons they wouldn’t dream of stashing in places like suburban Providence High.
Perhaps that’s why only 37 percent of students at West Mecklenburg reported they “felt safe at school” compared to 88 percent at Providence. The parents at Providence wouldn’t put up with this, and the system knows it. Apparently, being a suburban white kid in this system comes with certain privileges, like being able to use the bathroom in school without fear of being sexually assaulted.
The saddest part of this is that McGowens is an African-American teacher who came out of retirement to teach at West because she wanted to help the most disadvantaged kids in the system. She’s the kind of experienced teacher who usually winds up in the suburbs, the kind school system leaders claim they’re making an effort to retain at high-poverty schools like West Mecklenburg. Instead, they’ve slapped McGowens, and the other highly experienced teachers at West who’ve raised a ruckus about this, across the face.
But I’m willing to give them another shot. I’ll be happy to provide this kid’s name and the record I’ve amassed on him to any school board member that wants to take a break from arguing over where to build schools and do something about this. My number’s in the book.
Like McGowens, I’m not one to give up. I believe that every school board member can learn if we’re patient and repeat things enough times in simple terms they can understand. Let me start with a basic, three-word concept: This is unacceptable.
Contact Tara Servatius at tara.servatius@cln.com
This article appears in Jul 21-27, 2004.
