The Paper Trail

In this email thread, you can read our initial follow-up with Shirley Volk and Emily Bowar, requesting a meeting to discuss the issues that had been raised by Ms. Bowar at conferences. As well as the lack of response from others at the school.

As the thread overlap with other email threads, you can see how it became necessary to remove Ms. Bowar from the conversation.

You can read the email sent to the elementary staff detailing Ms. Bowar’s plan to isolate children, sending them alone, into the hallway, and putting up a sign to tell everyone walking by that the child is no to be engaged.

This meets the definition of hazing, and of emotional abuse. This email shows that this is an official policy being used in the school.

Ms. Bowar’s policy suggests consent would be granted by the child being isolated. This was not the practice, as confirmed by Ms. Volk. You can hear her admit such on the Voice Recordings page.

Read my initial follow-up with Ms. Volk about the issues of abuse at Oak Hill. It lays about a bit of the timeline of events, and lets Ms. Volk know of the details of the information blockade, as well pettiness on the part of Ms. Bowar in dealing with a family member that works at the school.

This email is informing Ms. Volk of Ms. Bowar’s denying recess to students in her class, including my daughter, which is in violation of Minnesota state law.

Also included is a request for the school’s recess detention log, required to made available to the public on request. As of this moment, that log has not been provided, also in direct violation of state law.

In this thread, you can see that Ms. Volk took a full school week to complete an “investigation” in which she did not speak to anyone except the adults in elementary classes. All of whom work around 25 feet from her office.

You can also now see that Ms. Volk believes our daughter was “safe” to return to the care of her abuser, with no justification for that belief.

After receiving a notice that our daughter was absent from school, this served as a formal reminder that she would not return until she was removed from Emily Bowar’s class.

This thread shows when the school board at Oak Hill was fully informed of the abuse taking place at the school they run. In addition, you will see the head of the Board, Lilyan Hoyos, and the director the authorizer (MOCHA), David Peterson, establish that they will not assert their independent oversight of the school, and, instead, begin their deferral to Ms. Volk.

In this thread, you can see when the head of the Board, Ms. Hoyos, and the director of the authorizer (MOCHA) both declined to attend the meeting to discuss Ms. Volk’s findings. Ms. Hoyos was too busy on a “work trip,” and Mr. Peterson was too busy playing with his grandchildren to attend a meeting about my child being abused at the school they run.

Neither elected to attend via video conference, nor to delegate to anyone else in their respective organizations.

Here, you can read an email exchange with another family at Oak Hill. This family confirms that Ms Bowar has denied students recess. They also report that information to Ms. Volk who brushes them off with a short, terse email.

This exchange also hints at the culture of fear of retaliation that promoted this family to not report this information sooner.

In this thread, you can read about Ms. Volk’s request for another meeting, in which she wished to discuss putting our daughter back in the care of her abuser, Ms. Bowar.

We declined that meeting.

You can also see how Ms. Volk continues to believe a discussion on “interventions” (her word to justify the abuse) will solve the problem. Also noted is our dismissal of discussions of “interventions.”

You can also find that, on March 28th, the authorizer (MOCHA) finally offered up a formal complaint form, which was returned to them the same day.

Thread ends with a follow-up from us on April 25th, to MOCHA, requesting their findings. Almost a month later, there had been no contact, at all.

In this email, you can see Oak Hill’s threat to unenroll our daughter. In this email, they cite a state law that surrounds the funding of schools based on attendance. There is no requirement that schools unenroll students. They are also given the option to apply to the Department of Education for an exception, which Oak Hill did not do.

In addition, state law prohibits them from unenrolling any student within 90 days of a formal complaint to the state. This thread informs them of that statute.

In this thread, you can read when we formally informed the entire school board of the abuse at Oak Hill by Ms. Bowar, and the defense of said abuse by Ms. Volk.

We also requested time at the next board meeting, which took weeks to get a reply to. The board refused to hear the complaints publicly, only accepting a “closed door” meeting, suggesting they did not want the public to know what was happening.

Please note: the final email of this thread contains cursing (from our side). This is a reflection of the frustration with the situation, and served as the final contact with the board after learning of our daughter’s diagnosis due to abuse at the hands of Ms. Bowar.

Please also note: No member of the board, other than Ms. Hoyos, replied to concerns, nor have they at the time this site was published.

Here, you can read about when we requested the meeting about why our daughter could not be removed from the care of her abuser, Ms. Bowar.

A voice recording of that conversation is available on the Voice Recordings page.

In this thread, you can see Ms. Volk fail to comply with Federal law (FERPA) by denying us access to our daughter’s student records.

Ms. Volk also admits the school has no records to suggest, or prove, that our daughter had any behavior issues that would lead to a need for “interventions.”

The authorizer of the school (MOCHA) finally responds to our complaint from a month prior.

Note: the authorizer spoke solely with the staff at Oak Hill, and did not avail themselves of their independent authority to oversee the school.

Read the response to our complaint from the authorizer. The organization did not speak to any of the kids in the class, and, instead, defaulted solely to what Ms. Volk told them.

Basically, they asked people accused of abuse, as well as violations f state and federal law, if they abused students or violated the law, those people said no, and the authorizer said, “oh, OK.”