The Belton school district is fighting back against the Texas Attorney General’s Office trying to keep some teacher records private.
This comes after teachers ordered an officer to handcuff an elementary school student. The Belton I-S-D-is now asking for a judge’s opinion on whether they should release documents that evaluate the administrations performance.
The parents who requested the information said they just want answers. On February16, 2016 the Caruso family’s 8-year-old son was handcuffed by police after teachers said he was acting out, but parents believe their son was being bullied.
They said they are still unclear as to what exactly happened during the incident that day.
Since then, the Caruso's have requested multiple documents from the school. They did receive some documents, but in their opinion the school has not been as transparent with other information as they would like.
Some video footage and other documents were released but the Caruso's say they really want to know how the administration was disciplined, or if they were at all.
“I think it's important that they protect the teachers and the administrators but it seems like the amount of effort that their going through says that there hiding something. We just want to know what happened” said Josh Caruso.
On Monday, six out of seven board members voted to approve the contract for legal services after the Texas Attorney general advised them to release information about the incident.
Belton I-S-D said it’s confidential, and they are willing to pay thousands of dollars in court to keep it that way said Communications Director Kyle DeBeer.
“At most filing in district court would cost about 15-thousand we believe that under the Texas education code that document is confidential because it evaluates the job performance of a teacher or an administrator” said DeBeer.
DeBeer also said releasing the information goes against the Texas education code, and now they’re asking for a judge to decide.
The Caruso family said they are respectful of teachers privacy, but they will not stop trying to retrieve the information needed in order to make peace with what happened to their son.
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