jonetta rose barras: Lawsuit filed on one-year anniversary of the suicide death of 12-year-old charter school student

When Stormiyah Denson-Jackson, a 12-year-old middle-schooler at SEED Public Charter School in Southeast, told school officials in December 2017 that “she didn’t want to live any more,” they reportedly performed an assessment that indicated she was having suicidal thoughts. School psychologist Allison Hopkins determined, however, that Stormiyah was a “low-level suicide threat.” Hopkins essentially told the principal and others not to worry.

No one at SEED told Stormiyah’s mother that her daughter was having suicide ideations. No one ever reported the findings of the assessment to her mother. No one made any external referral to a psychiatric facility or any mental health center.

By Jan. 23, 2018, Stormiyah had died by suicide; she hanged herself in her dorm room at the boarding school.

Her mother, Patricia Denson, “was informed of her daughter’s death by the Metropolitan Police Department,” according to a lawsuit filed Thursday in DC Superior Court against SEED School and SEED Foundation.

“No officials from the SEED School or SEED Foundation ever informed her of her daughter’s death,” asserts the lawsuit filed by William J. Lightfoot and William P. Lightfoot of Koonz, McKenney, Johnson, DePalois & Lightfoot LLP, on behalf of Denson, as representative of the Estate of Stormiyah Denson-Jackson.

The complaint, a copy of which was provided to The DC Line, accuses SEED School and SEED Foundation of “grossly negligent conduct and reckless indifference to the health and safety of Stormiyah and other students’ mental health needs.”

SEED is the only public boarding school in the city. It opened in 1998, serving children in grades six to 12 with a college preparatory curriculum. The school at 4300 C St. SE was the brainchild of former management consultants Eric Adler and Rajiv Vinnakota. At the time, it was heralded by District political and education leaders as cutting edge — a lifeline for low-income students, many of them African-Americans from underserved communities. During a visit to the school in 2009, President Barack Obama called it a “true success story.”

Jasmine Morgan, who is listed on the lawsuit as a representative of the SEED Foundation, could not be reached immediately for comment. Vita Makle, executive assistant to the head of the SEED School, declined to comment and referred me to the communications director, who was not available.

After publication of this article on Thursday, a school spokesperson provided a statement in response to the filing of the lawsuit: “The passing of our scholar Stormiyah Denson-Jackson was a terrible tragedy first and foremost for her family, and for the entire SEED community. Based on the advice of our counsel, we are not able to comment further at this time.”

At the time of Stormiyah’s death, the SEED School released a similarly worded statement that called the event a “tragedy for the family first and foremost as well as for the entire SEED Community. We ask that you respect the privacy of the family and of our community of scholars and teachers in their mourning.”

The 22-page court document draws extensively from information gathered by attorney William J. Lightfoot through Freedom of Information Act requests and from interviews with various individuals and government officials. The SEED School and the DC Public Charter School Board refused to provide certain financial information to the family’s lawyers, however.

The lawsuit states that SEED Foundation, as an independent contractor for the school, has received as much as $803,506 annually in compensation, according to a 2015 tax return. In a subsequent fiscal report, the DC charter board noted that the foundation had “both an economic interest in the School and controls members of [its] Board of Trustees.” In the past, the DC Office of the Attorney General has raised concerns about a similar arrangement when it was determined that one charter founder had established a management firm and was benefiting financially.

Interestingly, days before Stormiyah’s suicide, the DC charter board and SEED agreed that the school would immediately halt enrolling new middle school students. The board found the school had not “met goals and academic expectations.” The board did, however, extend SEED’s charter, contingent on the school’s agreement to stop accepting new middle-schoolers immediately and close its middle school by the 2019-20 school year, according to minutes from a December 2017 meeting. The high school remains in operation.

There was no mention in the minutes, however, about repeated reports of bullying and parents’ concerns about violent attacks of students against students. Denson told NBC4 the day of the suicide that Stormiyah had confessed that she had been a victim of bullying. “When she tried to tell the staff, they wouldn’t do nothing about it,” Denson said. “But when she reacted, they put her as the bully.”

The lawsuit paints a disturbing picture of the institution — one where local laws were violated and where mental health officials lacked required licenses. For example, according to the lawsuit, Hopkins was not a licensed psychologist in DC. In fact, “none of the SEED School’s [psychologists] were licensed to practice psychology by the DC Department of Health at the time of Stormiyah’s death,” the document states.

Further, the school was out of compliance with the South Capitol Street Memorial Amendment Act of 2012, which required that by Oct. 1, 2014, all teachers and principals at public charter schools complete training to help identify behavioral needs of students — including suicidal tendencies. However, as of Feb. 1, 2018, many SEED staffers had not completed that training, according to government documents. The lawsuit also states that “no principal” at SEED School and “no staffer” received the training required by the Youth Suicide Prevention and School Climate Survey Amendment Act of 2016.

Many education advocates, parents and students have complained increasingly about the lack of trained mental health clinicians in the city’s traditional public schools as well as charters. Elizabeth Davis, president of the Washington Teachers’ Union, told me that the Office of the State Superintendent for Education’s directives regarding mandatory training have not trickled down into the schools: The professional development is not thorough enough or frequent enough, she said. While researching a series of reports about childhood trauma, I asked city officials last year for the list of individuals who had taken the training related to trauma-informed care; neither OSSE nor the DC Department of Behavioral Health provided me the requested information.

That Stormiyah was thinking about suicide should have raised a red flag, especially considering that in 2018 the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported it is the third leading cause of death nationally among youth ages 10 to 24. The 2017 Youth Behavior Risk Survey found that in the District, 15.6 percent of black female middle school students had attempted suicide and 32.1 percent had seriously thought about killing themselves.

The lawsuit seeks compensatory damages of $5 million. It asks for punitive damages that consider the net worth of SEED School and SEED Foundation as well as “the nature of the wrong committed, the state of mind of defendants and other factors.” The suit also says the damages ought to be “sufficient to punish” while serving as “an example to prevent others from acting in a similar way.”

Jan. 26: This post has been updated to include a statement from a spokesperson for the SEED School. The post was previously updated to include the request for $5 million in compensatory damages and to remove an incorrect reference to LaRuby May as the school’s attorney; she is actually co-counsel for the plaintiffs and the attorney for the Estate of Stormiyah Denson-Jackson.

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jonetta rose barras is a DC-based freelance writer and host of The Barras Report television show. She can be reached at thebarrasreport@gmail.com.