Mom Says Officials Ignored Abuse of Son With Special Needs
The outraged family of a middle schooler has filed multiple civil rights complaints against the school district in their Arizona community, claiming administrators have been dismissive of a student with special needs and have taken no action to protect the child from repeated acts of brutal violence.
Family members also claim the local police department has been negligent and failed to act despite being notified of the ongoing abuse.
“The police department and the school district are creating this power line where no one can question them,” the boy’s mother Elizabeth Tietje said.
In an emotional interview with The Daily Beast, Tietje explained that her son—whom she prefers to leave unnamed—was diagnosed as having a Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) with cognitive impairment when he was 7 years old. Along with her mother, Julie Kent-Partridge, they allege the boy had been bullied by the same student during his elementary years in the Dysart Unified District in Surprise, just northwest of Phoenix. However, they say the abuse against the boy got worse once he entered fifth grade at Sonoran Heights Middle School—which is within the same school district.
“I believe on Oct. 26 (2022) when my son came home and he was telling me that there was a child that was constantly picking on him and that he was always getting hit in the head,” Tietije said during a video call with The Daily Beast. “The kid was referring to [my son] as mean names. We’ve been having issues with this child from previous years before, as there’s been incidents in the past that the district has documented.
“So when my son came home… he was telling me that this child is still messing with him, but now he’s getting hit,” she continued.
Elizabeth Tietje’s son.
Tietje said she explained what happened to her own mom, the boy’s grandmother, who is a school social worker for another district. Kent-Partridge immediately told her daughter that she needed to call the school and alert staff about the bullying.
The next morning, Tietje said she called the school before classes started and was directed by the receptionist to the school counselor’s voicemail where she left a message. By lunchtime, four hours later, Tietje still hadn’t heard back from the school.
“I started getting these weird feelings in my stomach,” Tietje said, adding that her son told her that he was typically picked on and hit in the head during lunch.
She called the front office again, but administrators were in meetings. After getting frustrated by the secretarial staff, Tietje ended up driving to the school and discovered that her son had been assaulted by the same student.
Tietje met with the school resource officer, Wendy Klarkowski, who suggested that the student suspected of bullying be brought “under [her] wing” to dissuade the victim’s family from pressing charges.
“‘He’ll be with me, and I will make sure that he doesn’t do this to any other person,’” Tietje quoted Klarkowski as saying. “At that time, I was just so frustrated over this entire process.”
Despite her son being hit, Tietje said the school never sent him to the nurse’s office. If that had happened, she says she would have received a mandatory injury report, as specified in the Dysart district policy handbook.
According to the policy handbook, victims of reported acts of harassment and bullying are supposed to be given a copy of rights and protection services, and their families should be notified.
Tietje said neither she nor her son received anything until a month later.
“After that assault happened, we felt like they violated my son’s [Individual Education Program] IEP,” Tietje told The Daily Beast, explaining her son’s special education needs. “My son has emotional needs that weren’t being met.”
On Oct. 28, Tietje took the matter to the City of Surprise Police Department, but she said they told her she couldn’t press charges on matters that take place on the school’s campus where there’s a resource officer.
“That was very neglectful to [my grandson] and us when we were trying to get help,” Kent-Partridge said of the Surprise police. “If parents do this… then that’s neglect because they failed to protect the child. Nobody [at Sonoran Heights] protected this child.”
In recordings from March 2023, reviewed by The Daily Beast, Tietje and Kent-Partridge met with then-Dysart Assistant Superintendent Dr. John Croteau, then-district Director of Student Services Craig Mussi, and Sonoran Heights Middle School Principal Dustin Hamman about IEP procedures and protocol for reporting on-campus harassment. (As of the current academic year, Croteau and Mussi have been promoted to superintendent and assistant superintendent, respectively.) The administrators insisted that the victim’s family reach out to them despite there being an alleged lack of action in the past.
“Know that if you have something and it’s not getting handled, call. I’m being serious about that, and we’ll get what we need to do,” Croteau said. “We will help you out one way or another.”
However, Tietje said she didn’t receive a victim’s copy of the SRO report from Oct. 2022 until April 2023 after she and Kent-Partridge scheduled a meeting with Surprise Police Department Commander Norman Owens.
In another audio recording reviewed by The Daily Beast, a male voice Tietje said is Owens instructed them to contact the police if they don’t “get the proper response from the school.”
“In the future… call the police,” he said. “It appears that you tried to go to school to report it, which is good, too, because you would want to report it to the school. But when it comes to your child being hurt or injured by another student, the police need to know about it.”
But Dysart school resource officers are provided by the Surprise Police Department, and Owens openly said that he was the boss of Sonoran Heights SRO Klarkowski.
“This is an abuse of power and discriminatory policing,” Kent-Partridge told The Daily Beast, describing the relationship between the Dysart school district and local police.
The police department also provided the family with Klarkowski’s report. That’s when Tietje discovered that her son had been hit in the head multiple times during that one incident.
“I asked [the suspect] when he started having issues with [the victim] this year, he said that it was in September,” Klarkowski wrote in the report. “I reminded [the suspect] that he told Mr. Hamman that he had [struck the victim] in the back of the head between five and ten times.”
In April, after filing a public information request with the City of Surprise, Tietje received bodycam footage of Klarkowski taking the suspect to Hamman’s office.
The Daily Beast reviewed a copy of the footage filmed Oct. 28, 2022, in which Hamman had a conference call with the suspect’s mother, as well as Assistant Principal Amber Luna, and Klarkowski. Hamman told the mother that her son had been “pushing and tapping” the victim on the back of the head.
“I wouldn’t say that I really hate [the victim],” the suspect said, “but I don’t like him that much.”
The suspect’s mother asked about moving her son to another school.
“It would hurt my heart to hear that [the suspect] leaves us,” Hamman said before giving the mother information for district administrators. “This is not something that we are encouraging.”
In another recording from Klarkowski’s body camera, Luna said during a conference call with Tietje that school cameras did not capture the assault. Hamman also told Tietje that her desire to press charges “is not affiliated with the school; that’s with the Surprise Police Department.”
Tietje continued to voice a slew of concerns over how the administration responded to her complaints.
“You’re bringing up the past,” Hamman told her. “I struggle with how to respond to that.”
Tietje asked if she needed to contact anyone else in order to press charges.
“No, I am a police officer for the City of Surprise. I’m taking the report,” Klarkowski said. “I’m already taking care of it.”
Tietje claims other students with disabilities have dealt with similar apathy from Sonoran Heights administration. In text messages sent between Tietje and another parent she shared with The Daily Beast, students with behavioral and mental disabilities have been bullied by other students and mocked by teachers. That parent declined to speak to The Daily Beast on their lawyer’s advice while they consider their own legal action.
In a statement, Dysart Director of Communications Renee Ryon said that student records and specific instances of bullying could not be discussed, but the district has “a number of systems in place to help us address concerning behaviors.”
“We have a reporting process that allows anyone to submit concerns to us,” Ryon wrote. “All reports are thoroughly investigated and followed up on, including discipline, according to district policies and procedures. Law enforcement is often involved as well, depending on the issue. Students or parents who report bullying are given a specific form to complete in order to assist us in the investigation, and their cooperation in working with us throughout the process is necessary and highly valued to ensure we can resolve it promptly.”
She added that Croteau, Mussi, Hamman, Luna, nor Officer Klarkowski would be available to speak on the matter.
“Sonoran Heights Middle School does have a School Resource Officer on campus at all times and is included in safety and discipline as needed,” Ryon said.
She noted that school resource officers are meant to foster “positive relationships with students and families, and work closely with administrators in an effort to create a safer environment for both students and staff.”
“With student safety as our top priority, we take every incident seriously, and report to law enforcement anytime there is a possible violation of the law,” Ryon said.
Ryon added that all teachers are trained in “classroom management techniques, positive behavioral interventions and supports (PBIS) and skill-based interventions to help mitigate” any possible tension between students.
In a request for comment from Commander Owens, a public information officer with the Surprise Police Department confirmed to The Daily Beast that “Tietje filed a police report with a school resource officer assigned to Sonoran Heights.”
“This investigation was submitted to the Maricopa County Juvenile Division for review and charging,” Sgt. Richard Hernandez wrote in an email.
“The Surprise Police Department employs a number of school resource officers assigned to public and charter schools within our jurisdiction. Our school resource officers are in place to provide a safe and secure learning environment for students and staff,” he continued.
“If a school official or parent believes a crime was committed on school campus, our school resource officers will complete an investigation,” Hernandez wrote. “This investigation process includes working with school and district officials, which is what occurred during this particular incident involving Elizabeth Tietje’s son.”
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