Painful lessons
DUXBURY -- If you're an official with the state Department of Education or the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination, you might want to get yourself down to Duxbury sooner rather than later to find out what's going on in this town.
Ah, Deluxebury. On the surface, everything looks good -- nice houses with picket fences, leafy streets that lead to the ocean, idyllic fields that will be protected to eternity.
Then there's the Duxbury school superintendent, Eileen Williams, saying on the phone a couple of weeks ago, ``This is a school system that is committed to respecting diversity in the system and the community."
Paging Mr. Rockwell, a Mr. Norman Rockwell.
Yet, sitting at Bob and Laurie Montuori's kitchen table, I can't help but wonder how much of the perception is reality, and how much respect for diversity this community really has.
The Montuoris, it's worth noting, are special people, having adopted seven kids over the last 30 years. The parents are white, but their kids come in just about every available color. A family portrait looks like a Benetton ad.
Bob Montuori is a teacher and coach at Brockton High. His children were typically hardship cases when he and his wife adopted them. The youngest is severely handicapped. The oldest have already gone to college and launched careers. None had encountered racism in school.
That is, until the family moved to Duxbury in 2004.
Sitting at his kitchen table, 12-year-old Leré Montuori is a tall kid, smart and poised, who talks in full sentences. He's describing his situation as a sixth grader at Duxbury Middle School with embarrassment -- how he gets regularly ``called out," meaning kids want to beat him up; the boy who telephoned the house to crack racial jokes; the kid who saw him drinking chocolate milk and said, ``You're black enough already."
There was the encounter, too, when he was called the worst of racial epithets on the school bus. And the day classmates bloodied him behind the town library.
All that's bad, but kids are tough at that age. What's worse, according to Bob and Laurie Montuori, is the reaction of school officials, which they said is just about no reaction at all. The harassers have been occasionally warned, never disciplined, the Montuoris said, and the taunts continued unabated.
Continued, that is, until the Montuoris pulled Leré out of school last month. His once-great grades were diving, and they couldn't be sure of his safety.
Think about that for a moment. Things got so bad for one of only four or so black kids at Duxbury Middle School that his parents, people with no history whatsoever of complaining felt they needed to keep their son at home. And still, school officials have done little.
``They didn't take it to heart," Bob Montuori said. ``By not taking action, they're giving the kids the impression that it's condoned. It's not just one or two kids, but a variety of kids."
I first talked to Williams a couple of weeks ago. She sounded concerned and thoughtful, but declined to discuss Leré.
``Are there bound to be conflicts between students on any given day?" Williams asked. ``Yes, but whether they're racial or ethnic conflicts, or someone doesn't like the clothes someone is wearing, we try to address those on an individual basis and help students make the best choices they can."
Then, last week, two Duxbury Middle School students, a brother and sister of Arab descent, were ethnically taunted on the bus ride home. The student who slurred them received a one-day, in-school suspension .
By yesterday, Williams seemed to acknowledge a broader problem. She said she has asked state education officials for ``technical assistance," and expects to have a consultant work with administrators on ``professional development."
I'm betting the consultant will tell them they owe the Montuoris an enormous apology. The family deserves infinitely better than what it got.
Brian McGrory is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at mcgrory@globe.com. 