Playing Twenty Questions with the MCSD

A child’s leg was amputated after being severely injured in a local classroom by a body-slamming contract teacher. Six months later, taxpayers may be asked to help settle a $25 million law suit that has been filed against the Muscogee County School District, Superintendent David Lewis and six other people and agencies connected to the incident.

Months have passed. It is time for answers.

So let’s play a quick game of Twenty Questions:

1. What did Montravious Thomas do while he was a student at East Columbus Magnet Academy that led to his assignment to the special program at the Edgewood Student Service Center?
2. Why was such a level of force necessary to subdue Thomas on his first day at Edgewood?
3. Who was present when behavior specialist Bryant Mosley was restraining the youth?
4. When the student told grownups at the school that he was hurt, why didn’t someone of authority call for medical help?
5. Who made the decision not to call an ambulance?
6. Was a higher ranking school administrator called while these decisions were being made?
7. If Thomas was up walking around after the incident in the classroom as the school district claims, why did Mosley have to carry the student out of the classroom and physically load him on a school bus outside the building?
   

   Montravious Thomas has undergone multiple surgeries since being injured on Sept. 12 of last year.

8. Why was Thomas sent home in a school bus instead of an ambulance in the afternoon, only to have doctors at Midtown Medical Center in Columbus decide to airlift him to Atlanta’s Egleston Children’s Hospital later that night?
9. Why did representatives of the school district and its legal team visit educators and staff members at Edgewood the day after the incident?
10. Why weren’t members of the school board notified about the injury until weeks after the incident?
11. Why didn’t the school district issue a news release about the injured student? Nothing was said about Thomas being hospitalized on Sept. 12 until a month later when All On Georgia-Muscogee first contacted Valerie Fuller, the district’s Director of Communications & Open Records Officer.
    

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    Click here for details about the $25 million lawsuit filed Monday in State Court.

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12. Why did the school district decide to sever its connections with Mosely?
13. Once attorneys for the Thomas family began filing Open Records requests, why didn’t the school district respond as dictated by law? That same question applies to MCSD’s lack of response to Open Records requests filed by various news agencies?
    

    Attorney Renee Tucker represents the Thomas family.

14. What is the status of an ethics complaint filed against Zehra S. Malone, a teacher at Edgewood who was involved in this case? The Georgia Professional Standards Commission did not act on this complaint and chose to return it to the local school system. What has happened to that complaint?
15. Why did the Columbus Police Department assign investigation of this incident to Lt. Consuelo Askew, an officer who also works at Edgewood as a Student Resource officer and who was at the school on the day in question? The CPD has not responded to repeated inquiries about the case leaving the public to wonder about the status of the official investigation?
16. Should Mosely face criminal charges for his role in the student’s injury?
17. Last October, when school district lawyers invited attorneys for the Thomas family to Columbus to view video from surveillance cameras at Edgewood, why did they decide not to include footage of Mosely carrying the seventh grader down the hall and to the bus that had already been posted on muscogee.allongeorgia.com?
18. Have school officials tried to cover up details of this case?
19.  How many educators and staff members at Edgewood are still working at the school and how many have been reassigned?
20. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation had been asked to investigate other issues in the school district. Will that request be extended to the Thomas case? The GBI was previously involved in the case but withdrew because it did not want to conflict with the police investigation.