Failure to follow bullying protocols led to basketball players being harassed more
’I heard a statement about circling the wagons around our own.
Make sure that wagon reaches around the entire school
so the kids are protected as well as the teachers.’
-Councilman Tom Rotondi
OCEAN CITY — As soon as there were reports of bullying by the girls basketball coach, the school administration should have acted quickly to resolve the situation but failed to follow protocols.
That was the forceful message speakers — including an Ocean City councilman — delivered to the Ocean City Board of Education on Wednesday night, describing the lack of action as an abject failure that led to students being harassed even more both in school and outside it.
Three parents with children in the district — one whose daughter was on the girls basketball team — spoke up during public comment, laying into the administrative failures that, if handled correctly from the outset, could have remedied the situation long before it came to a head in public.
Ocean City resident Jill Adamson, an Ocean City High School graduate whose father served on the school board for nearly a decade, blamed the administration for not starting an HIB investigation when reports of bullying first came to light in January from players, including her daughter.
HIB stands for Harassment, Intimidation and Bullying, a set of guidelines set up to protect students. In addition to serving as athletic director, Geoff Haines is in charge of HIB for the high school.
Several players met with Haines to report bullying and other ways their mental health was being affected, but “the administration failed to follow protocols, policies and procedures,” Adamson told the school board. She said there is rampant inherent biases and conflicts of interest within the chains of command and school leadership.
“In this present day, it’s wholly unacceptable to willfully ignore the emotional and mental health of the students in your charge,” she said. “We will never know if proper remediation, discipline or intervention would have been successful and prevented all of this because it never happened.”
Adamson made it clear the administration would have done nothing had nearly the entire team, frustrated by inaction by their coach and the athletic director, not stood before the school board Feb. 23 to ask for help.
She said the team’s complaints have been “recklessly ignored, callously dismissed and shamefully refuted” by those in the district’s administration, which has supported coach Michael Cappelletti even during an open investigation.
She pointed out how the girls on the team, after making their concerns public, have been ridiculed and shamed by adults and alumni. She said she understood how people could support the coach, but not how that turned into a “character assassination” of the girls in his charge.
Adamson added that the top administrator told her the toxic environment that was created was the fault of the parents.
“It’s shocking the amount of energy that has been spent on discrediting and disbelieving the girls’ reports,” she said, pointing out others are likely afraid to speak out for fear of retribution and retaliation.
When an HIB investigation was finally initiated, she said her daughter was offered mental health services but she declined because she would not put her back into an administration that failed her, and now that was being used against her and could be used as leverage to support the coach.
Students brave enough to speak out should be encouraged and supported, Adamson said, not shamed and blamed. High school should be a safe haven encouraging physical and mental wellness, critical elements in a young person’s life.
She said the rate of suicide in the district in recent years is “devastating. What is more important than the physical and mental health of the children in your charge?”
Referring back to the players’ plea before the school board when they asked members not to renew the coach’s contract for the following year, she referenced a person, a supporter of the coach, who spoke up at a special meeting on the topic March 10. That person warned the board about setting a precedent about not hiring the coach, inferring that would give too much power to players and parents to decide who guides teams.
Instead, she said, the board should consider the precedent it would set by rehiring the coach.
“You’ll show the students and families in this district and the public that an administration can infiltrate the process with rampant micro intimidation, harassment, disbelief and discredit of these girls, policy negligence, violation of codes of conduct and professional standards, and conflicts of interest so pervasive in the administrative methods that a fair and legit process seems impossible,” she said.
The administration, Adamson said, is “fixated” on protecting their own and failing to protect the best interests of the children.
The hiring of a new coach should be left to the new superintendent, she said. Thomas Baruffi, who was at the meeting, is the interim superintendent this school year as the board searches for a permanent top school administrator.
A city councilman speaks for the girls, slams the process
Ocean City Councilman Tom Rotondi, who is raising three children in the district, said he felt compelled to speak to the school board on behalf of the student athletes whom he believes “have shown tremendous courage.”
He credited the girls on the basketball team for approaching the board to ask for help rather than going to social media to air their complaints and smear people’s names.
Rotondi referred to a discouraging quote by one of the players: “We’re here to stand up for what is right and simply the only option left in the situation. The administration has ignored us and our cries for help.”
He said three girls went to the athletic director to report “bullying” in January. That was important, he said, because HIB protocols were set up in New Jersey to prevent students from killing themselves, some reportedly because of bullying.
As soon as the kids made their report, those protocols should have been enacted, he said, and followed up with a meeting with the coach and the parents, a process that would have protected everybody.
“This shines such a bad light on the city I felt the need to come in and talk about it today,” Rotondi said, adding two family members who are Division I athletes heard about and asked him about the situation, wondering why the district isn’t protecting the girls.
If the HIB protocols had been followed, the situation could have been mediated long before it came up at the school board meeting, Rotondi said. Not doing that was a “catastrophic failure.”
Following the protocols would have taken the personal issues out of it, protecting the city, “the kids more importantly than anything else,” and the coach by giving Cappelletti the chance to change course if he was doing something wrong.
He added it was “embarrassing that some of the adults in this situation went after these kids,” Rotondi said. “It’s amazing. The kids stood up for themselves. They did the right thing … They came (here) and asked for help and they didn’t get it. If they did, it wouldn’t have led to what’s going on right now.
“I guarantee you if the administration treated teachers the way these kids got treated, the union would be in here so fast that you’d be firing people,” Rotondi said. “Please, in the future, do a better job for our students. I heard a statement about circling the wagons around our own. Make sure that wagon reaches around the entire school so the kids are protected as well as the teachers.”
“Something is wrong”
Parent Jennifer Bowman, an OCHS graduate with two daughters who went through the district and a third in high school, said she doesn’t have a child on the team but wanted to speak on behalf of the players and their parents.
Bowman said she has known many of the parents involved for decades, knows their character and how they are raising their children. She said many of the basketball players are three-sport athletes who have had many coaches over their young years.
“Something is wrong. Something has failed these girls,” she said. “Something failed this coach. This should never have gone this far.”
She repeated the quote of Joe Monteleone, a player’s parent who spoke at the special meeting March 10: “People will forget what you said, they may forget what you did, but they will never forget how you made them feel.”
“You have the opportunity to make these young ladies feel better. What you do as a district is being watched,” Bowman said, noting how much the district spends to attract School Choice students and the revenue the district gets from that. (According to the budget presentation earlier in the meeting, the district is expecting more than $2.7 million in School Choice aid next school year.)
Some local parents, however, are pulling their children out of the district, she said, including parents of talented basketball players now in eighth grade.
“I pray some good will come of this,” she said, adding she hopes the players will be celebrated at their end-of-season banquet. “Don’t let these local families feel they have no other choice but to look for another high school.”
School board members respond
Jacqueline McAlister said although she can’t speak for everybody else on the school board, “a good portion of us, at least those I have spoken to, do take it very seriously how the children are made to feel. It is critically important ….
“The most important thing for me as a board member is how our children feel in the school district,” she said. “That is the first and foremost thought in my mind.”
“We take our students very seriously,” fellow board member Cecilia Gallelli-Keyes added. “We listened to what they’re saying.”
She said it was brave of the girls to go to the board to “tell the story of how they felt. We’re listening to all sides. We just want everyone to know that we are listening and we will come to a decision. Kudos to the girls. I give you so much credit and I pray this comes to a peaceful resolution.”
Story and photos by DAVID NAHAN/Sentinel staff