You know full well what you did was wrong. There was a rule against playing baseball in the front yard. You should have abided by the policy of the household. But you persisted in doing it your way, not knowing until it was too late that your actions contributed to something unfortunate happening on accident.
It wasn't completely your fault. You were just standing there when the window got broken. Maybe you weren't even paying attention. You didn't throw the ball or even hit it. It was a crime of omission rather than commission.
Now imagine you're the only person getting grounded for the broken window. You aren't the only person who had a hand in this situation. In fact, others are more to blame than you are. So why are you the only one getting in trouble for it, you ask?
A certain public school employee in a local district is probably asking that very question today. And he should be. Something is rotten in our community, as usual.
Our activist watchdog group, Shame on Fairfield City Schools, has been highly critical of a public employee: Fairfield Middle School Principal Lincoln Butts. On numerous occasions throughout the Emilie Olsen case, Mr. Butts has conducted himself in a manner that defies explanation or a credible means of defense.
Mr. Butts was head principal of Fairfield Middle School in the Autumn of 2014 as Emilie's bullying grew progressively worse. Some have argued that since he was building administrator, Mr. Butts is solely responsible for everything that went on there.
We certainly see the point of that contention, but we have to disagree and take up defense for Mr. Butts. We believe he is has been singled out for blame for some unknown reason. It's wrong and it needs to stop.
To be certain, Mr. Butts has a great deal to answer for over his actions in the Emilie Olsen case. The allegations made against him in the family's federal lawsuit are grave and serious. In our opinion, Mr. Butts should have had his employment with Fairfield City Schools terminated. He should not be serving our community a day longer.
We too have documented several questionable actions by Mr. Butts. We have documented evidence which proves what Fairfield City Schools (not Mr. Butts) had to say about the nature and purpose of his visit along with police to the Olsen home on December 16, 2014 was a complete and total fabrication. That's according to a Fairfield Township Police report we blogged about recently. We have also documented an e-mail conversation whereby Mr. Butts admitted to this group that the song "Another One Bites the Dust" was played over the PA system at the middle school to remind staff about a meeting in which a topic was Emilie's one-year memorial vigil:
While some of his actions have been questionable, Mr. Butts is being singled out for a scapegoat by the media and possibly even Fairfield City Schools itself. He resigned recently, effective June 30, 2016, and you can read more about that here in this WCPO story. Following his resignation, even the Washington Post featured an article about Mr. Butts and Emilie's story.
Our question is the same thing you should be asking: where are the consequences for the other staff and administrators at Fairfield City Schools who failed Emilie Olsen?
The first thing we'll say is that despite having received a mountain of documents, e-mails, confidential eyewitness reports, and other information of all sorts, we have yet to be able to definitively point to any scrap of evidence that proves Principal Lincoln Butts was notified in real time of the bullying Emilie Olsen was going through while she was attending Fairfield Middle School in 2014.
Yes, you read that correctly. Despite the media's vilification of this man, even harsh critics of the district like ourselves cannot claim or prove Mr. Butts was ever told of Emilie's bullying while she was alive.
This apparent fact does not absolve Mr. Butts of possible culpability, and nor does it explain away some of his other actions since Emilie's death. He was still administrator of the middle school and bears some burden of responsibility for anything that occurs there.
But fair is fair: Mr. Butts was apparently never informed of what Emilie was going through as it happened.
Yes, we know what you're thinking. What about all the e-mails and incident reports that Fairfield City Schools has showing Emilie was bullied? That's an excellent question.
We know for a fact, thanks to public records requests, that Marc Olsen sent the following e-mail to Fairfield Intermediate School Assistant Principals Allison Cline and Missy Muller on January 30, 2014, when Emilie was in 6th grade:
Through our public records requests, we obtained copies of all e-mail activities for both Ms. Cline and Ms. Muller from January 30th-February 6th, 2014. We also obtained e-mail activity from the same time frame for Fairfield Intermediate School Principal Jeffrey Madden, as well as Superintendent Paul Otten and Assistant Superintendent Roger Martin. We found no evidence that either Ms. Cline or Ms. Muller had forwarded Mr. Olsen's e-mail to anyone in their chain of command at Fairfield City Schools during the specified time frame.
This very problematic for the district generally, and these two employees particularly. Fairfield City Schools has a clear bullying policy, in accordance with Ohio Law. You can check it out here. Among other things, the harassment policy (which also covers cyberbullying) states:
- "No administrator, teacher or other employee of the District shall encourage, permit, condone or tolerate any hazing and/or bullying activities..."
- "All hazing, bullying and/or dating violence incidents are reported immediately to the Superintendent/designee and appropriate discipline is administered..."
Perhaps leaders were informed afterwards or by some other means, but it was not by e-mail during the specified timeframe. We have the e-mails of all district employees involved, and can state positively that nothing in the documents indicate that the issues raised by Marc Olsen about Emilie's harassment at FIS were forwarded by e-mail in the week after the school was made aware of the situation.
It gets even worse though. Check this out. It's a forward of Marc Olsen's January 30th, 2014 e-mail to FIS Assistant Principal Allison Cline. She forwarded it after Emilie's death to district Public Relations Director Gina Gentry-Fletcher, Mr. Otten, and others; with some enlightening comments:
It was sent December 17th, 2014. That was almost a week after Emilie's death, and at the height of the community's anger with the district over what was an obvious scandal.
As you can see for yourself, administrators at FIS "usually follow this sort of thing with a phone call," according to this e-mail. Ms. Cline also claims that Ms. Muller spoke with at least one teacher and all those involved in the alleged bullying of Emilie.
So where was the bullying report? When did these assistant principals inform their chain of command or Superintendent about this bullying incident, which Ohio law and district policy mandates?
It's great and all that some kind of phone call was made. It's great the bullies were spoken too. But where was the report? Why wasn't the district's bullying policy adhered to? A bullying report would have started a paper trail that could have been used as evidence and a credible reason to render assistance to Emilie when the bullying carried over into the next school year.
And that bullying did carry over to the Autumn of 2014 when Emilie was a 7th grader at Fairfield Middle School. Even before classes began, Emilie's father, Marc Olsen, was concerned. On August 15th, 2014, Mr. Olsen wrote this e-mail to FMS Assistant Principal Mark Rice, where he spells out his specific concerns for Emilie, and even forwards the e-mail detailing the bullying he reported to FIS administrators on January 30, 2014:
Through public records request, we have obtained all e-mail activities for Mr. Rice, Principal Lincoln Butts, the Superintendent and his secretary, and the correspondence for the Assistant Superintendent from August 15-22, 2014. Again, we can find no evidence that Mr. Rice even responded by e-mail to Mr. Olsen, or that this anticipated bullying was passed along to anyone else at Fairfield City Schools.
In the Olsen family's federal lawsuit against Fairfield City Schools, it is alleged that several employees at the middle school were informed or had knowledge of bullying Emilie was facing that Fall in 2014. The lawsuit alleges that throughout the Fall of 2014, the Olsen family was barraging administrators at teachers at Fairfield Middle School with requests for help, information, guidance, and schedule change requests. We have submitted public records requests for some of these purported e-mail correspondences, but have yet to receive them all.
The below eyewitness statements to a bullying incident at the middle school on October 21st, 2014, in which Emilie was the apparent target, seem to lend credence to what the lawsuit alleges:
These are powerful statements detailing how Emilie had been bullied that day, that year, and the year before. Most damning of all in our minds is the last eyewitness statement. Read it carefully. Mr. Rice is mentioned by name as the staff member who broke up the altercation and sent everyone down to the office.
These eyewitness statements from just a few short, precious weeks before Emilie passed away create a lot of issues and questions for a great many employees of Fairfield City Schools. Who were these eyewitness reports given to at the main office? Why didn't these reports get into the hands of investigating police after Emilie's death? Where were these reports when police were investigating?
Lastly, according to these eyewitness statements, Mr. Rice had knowledge of at least one incident involving Emilie. The Olsen lawsuit alleges more. So what did Mr. Rice know, and when did he know it? We have an e-mail from that August proving he was made aware of bullying Emilie faced the year before.
Where was the followup? What actions were taken? Why weren't dots connected? Was the district's bullying policy followed?
As you can see, there are other people employed by Fairfield City Schools who have a lot of explaining to do in the Emilie Olsen case. Many people have a lot more questions to answer than Fairfield Middle School Principal Lincoln Butts, who we feel is being unfairly scapegoated and singled out for some reason.
Yes, Mr. Butts should have resigned. Yes, his actions in visiting the Olsen home days after Emilie passed away was wrong. He should not have played "Another One Bites the Dust" over the PA system to remind staff about a meeting where Emilie's vigil was discussed. Mr. Butts probably should have had better command and control of his building.
But a building administrator can only address the issues that are brought to his attention by staff and subordinate administrators.
Unlike three current assistant principals still employed by Fairfield City Schools however, we can find not a single piece of evidence that Mr. Butts was ever informed of the bullying Emilie Olsen was facing while she was still alive. We have e-mails and other documents which prove that three other district administrators were informed of Emilie's harassment though.
And despite being in possession of a mountain of e-mails, we cannot find proof that any of these three administrators in question adhered to the district's bullying policy by informing either their own chain of command or the Superintendent about the bullying Emilie was facing.
So why are these three administrators still on the district payroll, and safely tucked away out of the media limelight?
