SHERBURNE – The Sherburne-Earlville School Board is continuing an investigation in a matter involving several students on the high school football team and what school administration says was ill-suited conduct of students on social media.
School officials say students were involved with inappropriate behavior on social media websites, leading to disciplinary action against a few players on the varsity football team, involvement of the New York State Police, and possibly further consequences for a handful of students.
The issue, which the school declined to give in detail, became the foremost topic of concern at a meeting of the school board on Monday. Dozens of concerned and frustrated parents turned out to the meeting to discuss the matter and the handling of it by school administration.
Parents called into question the policies and procedures of the school district for approximately 40 minutes before the board entered executive session concerning specifics of the case, as requested by head football coach Mike Jasper.
Parents and administrators also offered conflicting narratives on the issue which was brought to the school’s attention Friday morning. According to some parents, legal charges against students have since been dropped and police are leaving it to the school to take appropriate action. However, the school has not yet heard the status of the charges from police and are being cautious moving forward, said Superintendent Eric Schnabl.
“We have to ask hard questions sometimes and this process, quite frankly, is difficult. But this was something we had to address,” Schnabl said, adding that “mistakes were made” in respect to the school’s communication with parents during the early stages of the investigation.
Parents additionally questioned procedural policies of the school district and the school’s decision to sequester students after learning of the incident. A decision to search students’ cell phones based on reasonable suspicion was also called into question, along with the written clarity of the district’s student code of conduct.
“As far as procedures go, when something comes to our attention, we try to act on it a timely manner,” said Schnabl, noting the school’s legal obligation to report potential criminal activity of students when it’s brought to attention. “When the school district is misrepresented, we can act upon that. But the long and short of this is the inappropriatenesss,” he added. “As mandated reporters, when we come across a situation where the laws have been broken and inappropriate items may involve our own students, we as a district are obliged to investigate. If we didn’t investigate, we would be dealing with another storm that we didn’t do anything.”
“Having children in the school district, I don’t think any of these children understood the consequences of how serious this was,” commented a mother of one of the involved students. She requested the school have a plan to educate students on the seriousness of internet safety and the repercussions of what they post to social media. “Social media is not going away, and things like this are not going away,” she added. “So we need to educate kids on it.”
The district is continuing investigation of the inappropriate actions of students. The school board said it would not take action following the executive session.