Breaking silence over a Pittsford school incident

Two Pittsford parents have come forward alleging they faced stonewalling and silencing by the Pittsford Central School District after their daughter’s hair was touched repeatedly by a Barker Road Middle School lunch monitor early last year.

Jerome Jean-Gilles and Deepika Singh’s daughter, who is half Black and half Indian, was a sixth grader when the incident occurred in January 2024. While she was sitting at a table with her friends, a lunch monitor touched her hair twice—even after she told him not to do it, the parents say after having reviewed security camera footage.

The incident triggered a chain of events that would culminate in the district offering to pay a year of private school tuition for the couple’s daughter in a settlement agreement that would have included a non-disclosure agreement described by the district’s lawyer, Laura Purcell of Bond, Schoeneck & King, as a “typical” provision for “such agreements,” according to a Sept. 25, 2024 email she sent detailing the district’s settlement response. The parents, who rejected the agreement, say they are coming forward now in the hope that others who may be bound by similar agreements with the district will also speak out publicly. 

After her hair was touched, Jean-Gilles and Singh’s daughter and her friends notified three other adults in the lunchroom about the incident, the parents say, and none of them helped. 

“All three of them failed to initiate a conversation with my daughter to see if she was okay. All three of them did nothing to help remove the offender from the situation,” Jean-Gilles says.

It wasn’t until two of their daughters’ friends went to the front office and told Assistant Principal Richard Vigdor about the incident that it was reported an hour and a half later to then-Principal Sarah Jacob, who is now principal of Honeoye Falls-Lima High School, the parents say. 

“That’s at about minute 23, so within 23 minutes this guy had done it, three other people in the lunchroom knew he did it and confirmed with him that he did it and didn’t do anything about it, and the vice principal knew that he did it and/or was told that she had been touched and didn’t do anything about it,” Singh says. “Nobody checked on our daughter and said, ‘Are you okay?’ Nobody took the guy out of the lunchroom—nothing happened.” 

When they met later, Jacob had Vigdor set up a meeting with the lunch monitor and tell the school counselor to follow up with Jean-Gilles and Singh’s daughter, according to a timeline given to the parents, who were told it was put together by the school’s human resources department. During this meeting with the counselor, the couple’s daughter said this was not the first time the lunch monitor had touched her hair, the timeline states.

At this point, Jacob determined the lunch monitor shouldn’t return to his lunch duties the next day. Administrators did not, however, notify the girl’s parents—Jean-Gilles and Singh only heard about it secondhand, they say. 

“Nobody notified us. The counselor, the principal, nobody told us what happened,” says Singh. “We only came to find out because one of our daughter’s friends told their mother, and their mother told me.”

The parents reached out to set up a meeting with Jacob the next morning, during which they were able to review video of the incident, they say. They also were able to request the school’s internal summary of what happened from human resources, and they say it whitewashed the accountability concerns raised by the alleged actions of the adults in the room.

“A lot of it was untrue,” Singh says. “It was stuff that was made up or left out, and we know this because the principal had already told us what had happened, and we watched video of what happened, and we have all these other girls who said what had happened.”

At the parents’ urging, the school then initiated a Dignity for All Students Act report to the state detailing the harassment, the timeline states. Under the law, originally enacted in 2010, schools are responsible for collecting and reporting data regarding “material incidents” of discrimination, harassment, and bullying. This report too, the parents say, raised accountability concerns.

When asked to comment on the incident, Nancy Wayman, the district’s director of communications, replied:

“These events took place well over a year ago. At that time, the District’s administration worked extensively to both address the specific situation that occurred as well as to respond to additional follow-up from the parents. While it is unfortunate that the family was not satisfied with those efforts, the actions and response by the District were appropriate for the circumstances. As is typical, the Board of Education was kept fully informed about this matter.”

After the meeting with Jacob and others, the parents reached out to the Board of Education and Superintendent Mike Pero with a number of requests to try and work with the district to address the situation and ensure the same kind of thing doesn’t happen again, they say.

“Nobody responded to us,” Singh says. “The board of ed to this day has not responded to us.”

“We kind of just hit a wall as far as communication and really any kind of engagement,” says Jean-Gilles.

It took retaining a lawyer, Nate McMurray, months later to get a meeting with the superintendent, they say, even though they didn’t want to sue. During that meeting, Jean-Gilles and Singh learned that the lunch monitor was still employed by the district as a bus driver, the parents say. The district did not respond to a request to confirm whether he is still under their employ.

Jean-Gilles and Singh asked the district for two years of private school tuition, revisions to the DASA report, and attorney’s fees. The district agreed to pay for a year of tuition and to make some revisions to the DASA report, but only if the parents would sign a non-disclosure agreement. The couple rejected the offer but still put their daughter in private school after the end of that year.

On the non-disclosure agreement, the district says they are common for all negotiated settlements of disputes for any organization. It did not answer whether these kinds of incidents and agreements are common in the district.

“The District did not suggest any such provision until the family threatened litigation and demanded a monetary settlement,” the district’s statement says. “In order to resolve the matter and move forward, the District responded to the family’s demand. However, as no settlement was reached, the family has been and continues to be free to share their perspective. We wish them well.”

Jean-Gilles says he chalks up the district’s lack of response to officials trying to avoid embarrassing situations “even though these are learning situations,” especially given the potentially racist nature of the incident.

“The more they just don’t own it, the more they don’t have to do anything, and the more this problem doesn’t exist, they can cast light on the complainees,” he says. “They’ll distort it and say there’s a different agenda we have. That we’re trying to, like, you know, create an agenda, or something politically motivated, or there’s something nefarious we’re trying to do and making something bigger than it is.

“People should take pride in their community, I have no problem with that, but whenever something embarrassing happens, particularly one that can be skewed or can be viewed as negligence due to some kind of racial component, they become very ardent about—‘Oh, this is people just trying to make something out of nothing.’”

Regardless of the potential racial component, Jean-Gilles thinks the district’s alleged response to a situation where his child was touched inappropriately, was “gross negligence.”

“It’s their role to make sure the environment is safe,” he says of the adults involved.

Justin O’Connor is a Rochester Beacon contributing writer.

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