Schools are under enormous pressure to manage and triage family custody issues among parents, children, courts and the schools. Schools have become arbiters and they tend to avoid errors by taking the strictest interpretation of information they receive. But are they getting accurate information? Does one parent have an “in” with school personnel and thus get to tell the narrative? Is the legal paperwork provided? And is it properly and fairly interpreted and implemented?
The answers to these questions are troublesome. Favoritism is pervasive in schools that are militarizing against one parent over the other. This article will discuss the issues of communication, hypothesis bias, and unwarranted prejudice by school personnel in the murky waters of family custody battles in the battlefield of the school. The following stories are all based in Jefferson County, Colorado schools from 2021 till the present.
Katie Wallace, a 27-year-old single mother of two children, ages 3 and 8, has a story to tell. The involved actors include Katie’s mother (Grandmother); Josh, Katie’s partner and father of her 3-year-old son Reilly, her 8-year-old daughter Cammie, and Katie’s Aunt Connie and her Connie’s husband Russell.
The story is best told in reverse chronology. In February 2024, Katie and her advocate went to Green Gables Elementary School, 8701 W Woodard Drive, Lakewood, Colorado. Katie had looked at the school website online over the weekend, and she realized that her Aunt Connie and step-uncle Russell were listed as parents of Katie’s 8-year-old daughter. Katie immediately changed the designationne onli to reflect that she was the parent.
However, on Monday morning, she contacted her advocate and said that the computer had defaulted back to Connie and Russell. What was going on?
So Katie and her advocate from Consideration: A Fighting Chance, a non-profit that helps parents with custody and guardianship issues, walked with little Reilly in the stroller to the neighborhood school which Katie herself had attended twenty years earlier.
We approached the secretary and told her that Katie’s change had not been saved in the county database. The secretary informed her that the school had made a change of parent designation back in August 2023. The secretary had been informed by Aunt Connie and Russell that the child was living with them and that all communication regarding grades, attendance, and other school issues would go to them. Katie was surprised, to say the least.
How did Katie not notice that she was not receiving information from the school? For several years, “Uncle Russell” had been picking Cammie, the 8-year-old up often, and driving her the five houses down the street to Green Gables. He had done so under the appearance that he was helping Katie and her mother Laurie because the mornings could be hectic. Katie had to get her three-year-old son Reilly to school where he was receiving care and socialization since he suffered from cerebral palsy and was not able to walk. The state was providing a lot of services for him. Grandmother Laurie worked at another Jefferson County high school as the cafeteria manager for the school-lunch program. Yes, the mornings were hectic, and yes, Katie appreciated the help from Russell in getting Cammie to school. Since Katie worked and had to pick Reilly up from another school, her friend with a daughter in Cammie’s class would take Cammie home after school on most days.
Two months earlier, on December 5, 2023, Katie’s life had changed drastically. In the morning activity, Katie had called in to awaken her mother. She followed up with opening the door and telling her it was getting late. It was not until Russell picked Cammie up that Katie gave her mother her full attention. At that time, she noticed that her mother was unresponsive. She tried to wake her up and called 911.
It appears that Laurie had suffered a heart event and that she lost so much oxygen that she went into a coma and never regained consciousness. She died on December 8, surrounded by her five children and her seven grandchildren. Of course, the Christmas holidays were a time of grieving and redefining the structure of Katie’s life without her mother.
As a result of the disruptions and time demands, Katie was caught off guard that she had been removed as the mother of her daughter in the Jefferson County parent communication system.
Katie and her advocate, along with Reilly in the stroller, went into the office and told the secretary about the mix-up. When Katie asked when and how Connie and Russell had become contacts and claimed to be the parents, the secretary said that they had come in at the beginning of the school year in August and told them that Cammie was living with them and they were her guardians. Katie looked at her advocate and said, “That was before Mom died.” This fact was very alarming, primarily because they had the audacity to do this before Laurie died. She never would have consented to this arrangement.
Katie asked the secretary if she is the one who physically changed the school record and what documents she was provided. The secretary had indeed changed the record on Connie’s word alone. At that point, Katie asked for Jenn Withee , Principal of Green Gables, to be contacted. T he principal was quite nonchalant about the situation. She told Katie that the school district allowed site personnel to make the call on such changes. Katie asked if there was anything besides grades and attendance that she had not received communication about. It turned out that Cammie was receiving counseling from a district counselor, without parent consent or knowledge.
Katie told the principal that she had already changed the record back to being the parent of record and that it had not been updated. That is when Ms. Withee asked, “Do you have any proof or records?”
The advocate told the principal that she was going to the press about the story if Katie was not immediately reinstated. By the end of the school year, Cammie was enrolled in school in Kansas.
The policy that allows school personnel to change parent of record documents is rife with potential abuse.