by P.D. Lesko

Ann Arbor Public Schools attempted to have a lawsuit brought by Jaime Nelson-Molnar thrown out on multiple grounds, including governmental immunity. In a blow to the District’s legal team, U.S. District Judge George Caram Steeh ruled that there’s evidence to send the case to trial for alleged disability discrimination. The Judge in his ruling cited the plaintiff’s claim that the case, “is about an assault motivated by animus to students with disabilities.”

In his ruling that the lawsuit should go forward, the judge dismissed several counts against the school district. Those counts included that AAPS created a danger for the student, failed to report child abuse and intentionally inflicted emotional distress.

Nelson-Molnar, is a 45-year-old mother who is suing the Ann Arbor Public Schools over a 2020 bus incident during which an aide pinned down, repeatedly slapped and restrained her then 7-year-old son as he yelled for help and flailed his arms. The boy, then a second-grader at Carpenter Elementary during the incident, no longer attends school there.

In a story first reported by the Free Press, Nelson-Molnar said she did not know about the incident for five weeks and didn’t know the details of precisely what happened to her son until months later. She says a detective showed her a videotape of the incident at the Pittsfield Township police station.

In court documents, the school district has defended its handling of the bus assault, arguing, among other things, that the plaintiffs failed to exhaust administrative remedies and that the school followed proper protocol.

Judge Steeh in his ruling pointed out that a principal knew about the videotaped incident, yet told Jaime Nelson-Molnar to continue allowing her son to ride the bus.

Judge Steeh in his ruling wrote, “The school principal advising a parent that their autistic child should continue to ride the bus with an aide that presents a known danger is an affirmative act for purposes of surviving a motion to dismiss,” Steeh writes, adding the principal “potentially created or increased the risk of harm” to the boy by the bus aide” if for no other reason than that (the boy) became increasingly agitated at the end of the day when he had to ride the bus.”

In Sept. 2023, the Ann Arbor Public Schools Board of Trustees forced out then Superintendent Janice Swift as a result of public pressure and legal fallout from the incident. She was given a $230,000 golden parachute. Liz Nowland-Margolis, Exec. Dir. of Student and School Safety for the Ann Arbor Public Schools at the time of the incident, is still employed. In July 2022, she was promoted.

According to Margolis’s LinkedIn profile she has no education or experience in student or school safety: “I am an experienced professional with expertise in marketing, communications, public relations, crisis planning, management and response as well as strategic planning. I have worked for both for-profit and not-for-profit companies with an emphasis in not-for-profit work but always with an organization that understands the need to lead a successful not-for-profit using sound business models.”

In the district’s motion to dismiss, attorneys argued that the boy’s mother failed to describe how the principal and bus company “were deliberately indifferent” to her son’s rights, and urged the judge not to adopt the mother’s narrative as truth, specifically that the district’s conduct was “egregious” and “outrageous.”

“Staff at Carpenter Elementary and the transportation team followed appropriate procedures in responding to this unfortunate incident,” the district Director of Communications Andrew Cluley said in a prior statement. Cluely is a former journalist who worked for local radio station WEMU.

The bus aide, 48-year-old Rochanda Jefferson, was convicted last year of fourth-degree child abuse and sentenced to 30 days in jail by District Court Judge J. Cedric Simpson. Along with 30 days in jail, Judge Simpson sentenced Jefferson to five years of probation and 100 hours of community service.

During Jefferson’s sentencing, Jaime Nelson-Molnar delivered a victim impact statement: “As a fourth generation public educator, I’m now scared to send my son to school. His faith has been destroyed by Ms. Jefferson. School is supposed to be a safe haven for children, and Ms. Jefferson took that sense of security,” Nelson told the court. “I’ve devoted my life to provide for the safety of thousands of students in our public school system, she couldn’t take care of my one [student].”

Durham Transportation, the school district’s bus vendor, is also a defendant in the lawsuit. The company was hired in 2015, bus services outsourced, and the district’s unionized bus drivers all let go.

Durham though has long been labeled as one of the worst school bus providers by organized labor; even winning induction into the Oregon School Employees Association’s “Outsourcing Hall of Shame” for their poor safety record and low wages.

Many Durham drivers say that the lack of training for school bus drivers employed by Durham and the low pay that makes it difficult to attract more skilled drivers. 

Jaime Nelson-Molnar’s attorney, Megan Bonanni, says the school district had an obligation to look at the bus video earlier and that AAPS should have immediately suspended Rochanda Jefferson while the incident was investigated. Instead AAPS officials kept the aide on the bus and let Jaime Nelson’s terrified child ride 17 times before the aide was removed.

According to Nelson-Molnar’s lawsuit, “Nelson only learned of the physical abuse through a teacher who broke ranks to tell the truth.” Her son’s classroom teacher wrote an email confirming what Nelson and her lawyers allege was a cover-up by AAPS officials: “I am concerned that I am going to lose all credibility with mom when she finds out that I knew about these allegations and didn’t tell her,” the teacher emailed the principal and others on Jan. 18, 2021 — more than a month after the assault. “I also don’t feel comfortable keeping this from mom.”

“(The) decision to dismiss AAPS’s motion to dismiss and allow our case to proceed corroborates what we already know to be true: AAPS acted discriminatorily in their failure to protect a disabled student from repeated verbal and physical abuse from an AAPS employee,” Bonanni said in a statement following the judge’s ruling.